I Found a Title!

Good news I'm sharing with you because I know you all care!

I found a title for my book!

Yes, the novel that I completed a year and a half ago finally has a name.

I would love to show you guys the process of how I came to the title and all the different ones that I tired out and dismissing and edited and tweaked... but I can't because it just kinda came to me when I have half awake this morning.

I go to a class early in the morning that starts at 6:00. There's time to go home afterwards before school, so usually I just wake up, roll out of bed, pull on a jacket and a pair of shoes, wrap myself up in a blanket and get in the car and sleep on the way there. Sometimes I'm half awake though and my brain goes into this odd half awake half asleep aether state. I'm awake enough that I'm controlling my thoughts but asleep enough that I'm not... it's really hard to explain.

Some of my best ideas have come from that state.

It's really weird, but awesome.

This morning I was in this aether mind place, and I was thinking about getting published and how excited I'd be telling my friends and family and you guys... and as I was, I imagined telling people "I found an agent who's going to represent Beguiled!" 

It literally just came to me.

Like I said, weird but really super awesome.

Has anything like that ever happened to you?

Name Hunting

FINALS ARE OVER. YAY. I did really well (see what I did there?) on all of my finals, just so you know. I’m still finishing the semester with a B in Chemistry, but the rest of the grades are As. And the B is a 89.4. My teacher doesn’t round up until 89.5. A tenth of a percent. It’s really annoying, but oh well.

For today’s post, I’m going to be making a throwback to one of the earlier post, True Names- Naming Your Characters. This was actually originally going to be a part of that post, but it ended up being really long and it wasn’t really needed to get the point across.

If you remember or want to go back and reread that post, we essentially set a handful of guidelines/suggestions for finding names for you characters.

• ·         The name should have some sort of relevance to the character. Whether that’s the literal meaning of the name, or just giving him a really ordinary name because you’re trying to give the impression that he’s a normal kid that got stuck in a crazy situation.
•         The name’s “weirdness level” should be more or less level with everyone else, unless there’s a particular reason why it’s weird. You typically should avoid a world full of Johns and Michaels with a main character named Mortsfy.
• ·         Likewise, you should not have a main character with a Japanese name living in 20 century Germany unless his/her parents are Japanese.
• ·         You should like the name. Not necessarily about to name your child that, but you should like it.
• ·         Balance the length and normality of the first and last names. If you give him/her a long first name, give them a shorter last name. Same with normality.
• ·         Please don’t use more than one middle name unless your character comes from a culture where you typically have more than one.
• ·         Even if your character does come from a culture where multiple middle names are common, don’t ever use words for a middle name.

Now with these guidelines in mind, let’s name a character together!

The character we are going to be naming is going to be a character I am literally coming up with on the spot right now for the purpose of this post. If you're looking for help or wondering if your character is good, you might want to try looking at a post that Margaret wrote (yes, she does actually write stuff) How to Make a Non-Cliche Protagonist

Our character is male. He is 14 years old, has brown slightly shaggy hair and brown eyes. He has freckles and, like most 14 year old boys, is gangly and awkward. He is dealing with an acne problem.

For simplicity's sake, he lives in our world during the 21st century. He attends a public high school, and has two or three really close friends. He'll probably never approach you, but if you approach him, he will try his best to be friendly and have a conversation. He has fairly good grades and he's in honors English and History. He is aspiring to become an author (*wink* bet he reads this blog too).

And... he's about to find out that he has the power to make things come true by writing about them. Why not?

So he writes a short fiction piece about finding dinosaurs on the moon and all of a sudden astronomers are going crazy because they swear they found a dino bone in a moon rock.

Time to name him.

Normally you are going to know your character's name better than I know this kid, considering he's only existed (in my head at least) for the past 3 to 5 minutes, which will make it a bit easier than this might be. Or it might make it a heck of a lot harder because you care more about him/her and want them to have the best name possible.

Margaret and I worked on naming him together, and surprise, surprise, she ended up doing most of the naming. I really hate naming characters. I really do.

Usually we/I start with a first name, but in this case Downes came up first for a last name.

Downes means "poet or storyteller". So that fits. It's also not ridiculously long or short, it's simple enough that most people could pronounce it, though if you're going to try to get away with a unpronounceable name, go with the last name rather than the first.

As for his first name, she said that she really wanted an A name. I was personally thinking of giving him a more feminine name, so when she suggested the name Adrian, I thought it was perfect.

Adrian Downes

We have meaning in his last name, he fits the parameters that we both wanted his name to fit into ("A" name and a slightly feminine one). It is something that you could expect to hear at a 21st century high school, but it's not so ordinary there will be two other boys in each of his classes with the same name. Both his last name and his first name are slightly out of the ordinary, but not so drastically that it’s too weird. And he doesn’t really have a middle name, so we don’t have a problem with too many of them.

I wanted to give you an example of the type of conversation we usually have when we’re naming characters together/helping each other name, but it was actually really easy to name him, so there’s not much to show.

I hope this was helpful for some of you as an example of the process!

True Names- Naming Your Characters

          "What do personal names mean in this language? Do they give power over people?"          "Yes, they do. Those who speak the language have two names. The first is for everyday use and had little authority. But the second is their true name and is shared without a few trusted people. There was a time when no one concealed his true name, but this age isn't as kind. Whoever knows your true name gains enormous power over you. It's like putting your life into another person's hands. Everyone had a hidden name, but few know what it is."

~ Eragon and Brom, Eragon, by Christopher Paolini, perhaps one of the best known young authors

Names have power. And while they don't actually have (as far as we know) the same sort of power that they do in Paolini's book, you cannot deny that power. Human beings by nature like to be able to categorize and name things/people. It's one of the things that leads to cliques and gangs and bullies and yada yada but that's a topic for another day and another blog. It's one of the things my almost literal genius (seriously, I think he's only a handful of IQ points away from genius level- he's just too violent and passionate about teaching Spanish to go anywhere else than teaching) Spanish teacher repeats over and over and over and over and over and over and over. When you're making a study guide, number, box, and name.

The very act of naming something makes it more personal and easier to remember. To have named something is to have given it the power to become something real and tangible. I think we've all experienced that one idea floating in the back of our head that we can't really put to words. Or maybe it's just a concept or an image but it's not really defined. But as soon as you try to put it words, you either find out how amazing it truly is or you discover that you're muse is going crazy and needs to get a reality check (or maybe a fantasy check :) *pause for crickets chirping*).

Putting names to characters and stories is vitally important. And it has to be the right name. It has to capture their personality and their spirit and their actions. Maybe it's ironic. Maybe it's perfect. Maybe it wouldn't make sense to anyone other than the author and the character's best friend. It has to have flare, it can't be too boring, it can't be too out there unless everyone else's is, it has to be something that people can say/think, it should have some form of meaning, it should make sense (no Japanese names for a 19th century German) and it should be something that you like. If you don't like their name then... there's not really much of a point in naming them such.

However, I personally hate finding names with a passion.

I'm not quite sure why that is. Margaret loves it with a passion. Which is one of the reasons I always ask for her help when I need to name something, be it a character or my book.

I just get very easily frustrated with the whole task. There are thousands of names out there, and that's not even considering making up a name for your fantasy novel where everyone has names like "Yylts" or something. 

For the purpose of this blog, I am only going to address how to give a character a fairly typical name. I don't mean Sara's and John's and Bob's, but no "Yylts".

There are a couple of different ways that you can go about looking for a name. You can either search for a name based on meaning, which is what a lot of people do, or you can just try to find a name that fits. It depends on which is more important to you. Margaret usually searched based on meaning, I usually don't. Unless I want a certain meaning or irony, I'll just try to pick a name I think fits the character.

It is typically advisable to balance the two parts of the name out. Length wise (a short first name with a long last name or vice versa) and normality wise (normal first name, weird last name or vice versa). To quote my sister, "Don't name the poor character Alpharius Liechtenstien, or something." Massive mouthfuls are generally a bad idea.

Middle names are of course optional. I will beg with you though, to please, never, ever, ever, ever, ever give your character more than a reasonable amount of middle names. If you're writing an Hispanic character, it would be appropriate to give her two middle names. However, there's really almost no other reason they need more than one. Especially if they're words, not names. There is almost absolutely nothing that you can do to make anyone take a character named Madame Elizabeth Raven Blood Diamond Raquel Richardson seriously. Elizabeth Richardson isn't a bad name. You add four middle names, and all respect goes out the window.


As for names that are actual words, you want to be careful. "Hope", "Raven", "Hunter", they're not automatic no-nos, they're real names. I babysit a little boy named Hunter. Adorable little red head. You just have to be very careful with them. Especially if you're trying to use them for foreshadowing.

Something that I have done in the past, is to pick someone you know from a class or church group or soccer team or something and try out a couple of their names for characters. Maybe use their middle name as a first name, or steal their last name as long as it's not too exotic/it fits your character's background. Mix and match between people. It ensures that your name is something that is actually used in the real world. As long as you're not picking a friend with a really odd name or spelling it's not even like you're stealing their name like it's an idea or anything. It's just another source to draw names from, like a baby website.

Speaking of which, if you've ever spent enough time looking on one of them for names, most baby naming websites actually have some sort of list or page for authors trying to find names for their characters. It's pretty interesting.

My favorite website is babynamer.com

Margaret really likes http://www.20000-names.com/


But you can use any of them. Google or Bing or Yahoo or whichever website you use can lead you to a lot of different ones.

They can be really good resources and they make the task of picking names for your characters so much easier.

I still hate doing it though. I hope you enjoy it more than I do.