Hello everyone and welcome back! I'm glad you were able to stop by today and I hope the week has started off by being nice to you. I have started it by desperately just wanting to sleep all day, which still sounds incredibly tempting, but all this 'responsibility' and 'work' stuff that I apparently have to do is getting in my way. Stupid March and it not having any real holidays.
So I've been sucked into this game where you create plagues to destroy the world. It's fascinatingly addictive and surprisingly difficult. However one of the things that always catches me is that in the beginning you can name your disease, and of course I pick something absolutely ridiculous (I destroyed the world last night with Pegasus Eggs, it was awesome), but that got me thinking about other things, which is why naming stuff will be today's topic!
I've mentioned before how a name can make or break something whether it be a world feeling or just the emotion of the immediate scene. If you're writing a touching romantic moment it would be really awkward to have someone's name be Corkstab McHithbottom, and not just because that's weird to type in general. It would completely cause your brain to become derailed in the middle of reading. Sure it would make sense if you were putting that in some action sequence (I'm picturing a pirate ship or an old-timey train for some reason...) but in a romantic 'The Notebook'-esque standing-in-the-rain moment, that would just be weird.
Names are everything, but sometimes just figuring them out is the hardest thing to do. Especially for your main character because their name is going to be the one that follows you the most, and if you end up hating it halfway through the story it is going to be absolutely terrible. It needs to be a name that fits their personality, makes sense with how they look, and matches the other characteristics that you have in mind for them. Now sure, can you give them the name Angela Lightheart and have your story be about how she discovers she's actually the daughter of a nephalim, if you wanted to be that person who does such a thing. I'm not saying that a play on words isn't fun sometimes (I STILL love Remus Lupin FOREVER, I felt so STUPID for those 5 minutes) but sometimes...I don't know, once in a while I get a kick out of them (see previous statement) other times when I feel like I'm being beaten over the head with a complete lack of anything I get annoyed. Maybe if it's the main character is when it drives me crazy the most? I don't know, Professor Lupin is the best!
Something else to keep in mind, and this is something that (for some reason) dawned on me suddenly while working on 'Through the Broken Mirror' is that while people's names may not always be exactly attributed to what their job is, like Billy Evilguy, but maybe their parents had hoped they would have normal lives and wouldn't grow up to want to rot the world's food supply. I named one of the antagonists Gus, and at first that was a placeholder because at the time I literally couldn't think of a single thing better. Then I got to thinking 'You know...his mom probably didn't know he'd do all this stuff. She probably thought about how perfect her baby boy was and how he was going to grow up to do all sort of perfect things, and his name is actually Augustus, and that is a strong, awesome and kickass name for a leader!' It wasn't like she knew he would run a carnival as a ringmaster and do other plot-spoilery stuff. So the name ended up staying, since it make him seem more like a normal person who was thrown into a much bigger situation (and the Augustus stuff I literally just discovered, please don't make fun of me) and I thought it was neat.
Remember to make sure that your names are things that aren't going to make you want to punch someone every time you type it. I think I already said something to that extent, but I do mean it. Sometimes if a name is just too long or just to out of place it makes putting in scenes with that characters into a chore. That isn't what you want to have happen. Honestly I assume the reason JK Rowling gave Voldemort his name is because she got sick and tired of putting in 'He Who Cannot Be Named' anytime he was mentioned. That would drive me crazy and I would end up deciding 'screw it, dude gets a real name or I give up on everything'. I'm sure that's not what actually happened, but you get my point about the getting sick of typing in something part.
Thanks everyone for stopping by today. With all hope I will be back on Friday. Hopefully there won't be something else that prevents me. I also hope the rest of the week is super nice to all of you so have a great time!
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