First, for all those who want to know, I am fine! No rioting here in the immediate vicinity :)
Today I'd like to talk about names. Personally, I like names that are difficult to pronounce and/or pronounced differently from how they look. My own name is one of these, and in my life I have answered to many different pronunciations of it, which I mostly find funny. For a while my favourite name was Caoimhe (Kiva), but I have been persuaded that any possible future offspring would not appreciate being landed with the name.
It's different when you're writing, though. You don't really want a name that has to have its pronunciation explained, and if you do choose such a name you'll have to explain it at some point (e.g. 'Hermione' is explained in HP GoF). So I try to make the names I choose straightforward, and I try them out on people to see how they pronounce them. I still like uncommon names, though, so it's a fine balance between the obvious and the interesting.
One problem I have is names beginning with A - I have way, way too many of them. This is not just because A is the first letter in a naming dictionary - some of these names I made up myself. They pop up everywhere. In one book I originally had two of the point-of-view characters, a boyfriend, a best friend, the villain and a secondary character starting with A. It took me a long time to realise this, and then I decided to go through and change half the names so you didn't get mixed up (I was getting mixed up). For the next book, I was determined to avoid A-names altogether - but then an unexpected plot twist meant I had to have a main character with an A-name. Next book: Main characters both have names starting with A. I thought a long time about this and decided it had to be done. And yet another one (the one I've most recently been working on): two secondary characters have names beginning with A, and I did not notice this until they were in a scene together and I kept mixing up their names (they both also have n's and d's). It may not seem like a big thing, but it's surprisingly difficult to keep them apart in your head.
However hard I try, they just keep popping up.
And another thing: I keep running into people whose names I've used. In the last few months, I have met a possible flatmate, an actual flatmate and a writing buddy sharing names with different main characters, and none of the names are particularly common. One of my colleagues shares a name with a secondary character, which is really weird considering I made that name up.
Maybe these names are following me around, telling me to get writing, get writing!
Do you have any naming preferences?
Today I'd like to talk about names. Personally, I like names that are difficult to pronounce and/or pronounced differently from how they look. My own name is one of these, and in my life I have answered to many different pronunciations of it, which I mostly find funny. For a while my favourite name was Caoimhe (Kiva), but I have been persuaded that any possible future offspring would not appreciate being landed with the name.
It's different when you're writing, though. You don't really want a name that has to have its pronunciation explained, and if you do choose such a name you'll have to explain it at some point (e.g. 'Hermione' is explained in HP GoF). So I try to make the names I choose straightforward, and I try them out on people to see how they pronounce them. I still like uncommon names, though, so it's a fine balance between the obvious and the interesting.
One problem I have is names beginning with A - I have way, way too many of them. This is not just because A is the first letter in a naming dictionary - some of these names I made up myself. They pop up everywhere. In one book I originally had two of the point-of-view characters, a boyfriend, a best friend, the villain and a secondary character starting with A. It took me a long time to realise this, and then I decided to go through and change half the names so you didn't get mixed up (I was getting mixed up). For the next book, I was determined to avoid A-names altogether - but then an unexpected plot twist meant I had to have a main character with an A-name. Next book: Main characters both have names starting with A. I thought a long time about this and decided it had to be done. And yet another one (the one I've most recently been working on): two secondary characters have names beginning with A, and I did not notice this until they were in a scene together and I kept mixing up their names (they both also have n's and d's). It may not seem like a big thing, but it's surprisingly difficult to keep them apart in your head.
However hard I try, they just keep popping up.
And another thing: I keep running into people whose names I've used. In the last few months, I have met a possible flatmate, an actual flatmate and a writing buddy sharing names with different main characters, and none of the names are particularly common. One of my colleagues shares a name with a secondary character, which is really weird considering I made that name up.
Maybe these names are following me around, telling me to get writing, get writing!
Do you have any naming preferences?
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