Saturday, November 10, 2012

Naming Woes

In my current WIP - I have a character that has gone through four or five names already. I am struggling to find a name that fits him and fits in with the rest of the characters and the story. Sigh. It is proving to be difficult.

So for now I am calling him - 'The Character Formally Known as Kade' - until I find a more suitable name. It usually is not this hard for me to pick out name for characters. Every time I think I have found the name - I start using it and then fall out of love with it. And then I am back to square one.

How do you pick names for difficult-to-label characters?

6 comments:

  1. That's a tough one. I don't usually change the names of my characters. I pick one I like and I stick with it.

    You could try searching for a name on a baby names website, by meaning and see if that helps. Or start with a letter of the alphabet and scroll through some of the baby names starting with that letter.

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    1. That sounds like a great idea! I had searched by letter before but not by meaning that could open up some really cool possibilities. Will try it.

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  2. Try getting a random name picker. You can google it. It's helpful, because it keeps coming up with different combinations until you find one you like. I had a character once (in The Fourth Wish) who started out as Melanie, and then I tried to change it to something more current at the time, "Jessica". Well, Melanie refused to become Jessica. So she stayed Melanie. You might write a letter to your character along the lines of "Who are you, really? What do you want me to call you? I know that can sound weird to non-writers, but writers do things like that. :-)

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    1. LOL - Yes us writers be crazy people. Thanks for the suggestion. Finding some really funny random name generators online :)

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  3. Sometimes I just leave a blank space or brackets until I figure it out. ;) For most of the initial draft of my current WIP, one of my key secondary characters was known as "shipment dude" until his name finally came to me.

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    1. I am glad to know that I am not alone in this struggle.

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