Some of you may know that secretly, I still am.
Naming characters is often the hardest part of a story for me, and yet I CANNOT ever be satisfied with a stand-in name so that I can keep writing. {This problem has derailed more than a few stories.} The past couple of years, I haven't been writing nearly as many stories though, and when I do, I often leave the characters intentionally unnamed. Adds mystery. Saves time.
As far as real-life goes, I've kept a running list of potential baby names since I was about seven years old. However, for some unknown reason, I've stopped doing that lately. Until a few days ago, I had zero realistic girl name possibilities, and only a handful of old standby boys' names {Joshua, Caleb, Daniel, Matthew}.
But then my brain randomly clicked into High Gear Analytical English Major and I settled on two perfect girls' names. Not only do I love the names, but they double-handedly satisfy fifteen separate salutes to friends, family, and fiction. And they're not even ridiculous. {The names, I mean. The explanations are, naturally.}
And here they are.
Shut up. What do YOU do in your spare time?
~Stephanie
I have...*cough* fourteen *cough* baby names... eight of them being girl names, and all but one are full names. You could call it an obsession. When I find a name I like, I always have to make sure that the meaning is a good and strong one. It's beyond important to me. The meaning of your name, sets the tone for your life, in my opinion. Unless you decided to overcome it :P.
ReplyDeleteoh my gosh it constantly shocks me how much the same we sometimes are. HAHA.
ReplyDeleteand i used to be OBSESSED with the name Gabrielle. So pretty!
plus, naming characters is totally the hardest part. something that i found helps me, is i decide what kind of person/character they are, and then i search for names that mean some of the descriptor words. like i had a character in a story who was wild and crazy and drank a lot of wine, so I named her Layla which means "lover of wine" and the first time you meet her, she is finishing up a bottle of wine. things like that satisfy my inner nerd beyond all reason.
When I'm writing a story, if I can't think of a name I just leave a blank spot and keep writing. Feels weird to write a character with no name but choosing the names is always the hardest for me
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