Sunday, August 15, 2010

Inventing characters' names

I named my first hero Blade Masters. He's a studly, rich city kid turned sharp shooter who masters everything but the heroine. My WIP heroine is named Joni; her dead mother loved Joni Mitchell.
I think naming characters is one of the 'funnest' aspects of writing. Names can conjure an image, make a statement, generate embarassment or pride for the character. I dislike names that are hard to pronounce or long embellishments of a 'normal' name.

3 comments:

  1. I agree about difficult to pronounce names. Or ones you're not sure how to pronounce. I remember Hermione in the Harry Potter series as an example. I had no idea how to pronounce her name until like the third or fourth book when SHE sounded it out for another character.

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  2. Agree about the difficult to pronounce names. Irish name especially. Niamh pronounced 'neeve', Nuala pronounced 'noola', Aislinn pronounced 'ashlin' and as for Siobhan! Had a girl in one of my classes with that name and found out it's pronounced 'Shi-vorn.'
    Moral is, use obvious and easy to pronounce names so that the reader can immediately identify with them.
    One thing I've never known - boy's name Jesse - is that Jess or Jessie?
    But one of my heroines was Jessica, known as
    Jess.
    Another thing I learned - don't have similar sounding names - Annie meets Danny sounds like a line for a limerick LOL.

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  3. I like creating names. I used to name my stuffed animals as a kid. :)

    Giving character names and doing research are two of my favorite things about writing.

    I recently bought a book of names and it has come in handy so far.

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