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30DoW: Day 3
Aug. 3rd, 2010 12:13 pm3. How do you come up with names for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
Seemingly random processes it seems. When I first started writing, I'd just take normal names and use them, regardless of whether they matched the story setting or not. I was also ten.
Later, in middle school ages, because I wanted "original" names, I'd glance around at objects around me that had product names, or just words at all, and rearrange them so it formed what I would call a name. Also acceptable to me was taking real words I remembered and doing the same thing, like when I decided it'd be a good idea to lob off some letters of "okonomiyaki" and use that.
Nowadays, I try to think of names that fit what the story I'm writing. Whether that means I need "real" names, ones that would fit in the everyday, or if I have to make some shit up, I try to make it fit logically in-world.
It's a laboring process though, because I can spend weeks trying to figure out the right name for a character, while others just fit like a glove first time in. I still don't have names for any of the main characters in my noir story, and that's in the expanded outline process at the moment.
Seemingly random processes it seems. When I first started writing, I'd just take normal names and use them, regardless of whether they matched the story setting or not. I was also ten.
Later, in middle school ages, because I wanted "original" names, I'd glance around at objects around me that had product names, or just words at all, and rearrange them so it formed what I would call a name. Also acceptable to me was taking real words I remembered and doing the same thing, like when I decided it'd be a good idea to lob off some letters of "okonomiyaki" and use that.
Nowadays, I try to think of names that fit what the story I'm writing. Whether that means I need "real" names, ones that would fit in the everyday, or if I have to make some shit up, I try to make it fit logically in-world.
It's a laboring process though, because I can spend weeks trying to figure out the right name for a character, while others just fit like a glove first time in. I still don't have names for any of the main characters in my noir story, and that's in the expanded outline process at the moment.