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.

Why You Will (Probably) Never Be As Famous As JK Rowling

Let us all take this moment to realize a hard cold fact.

None of us are probably ever going to be half as famous as JK Rowling.

Or Rick Riordan, or Stephanie Meyer, or Cassandra Clare, or Susan Collins, or any other huge contemporary authors. You're probably never going to have a movie made out of your books. You're probably never going to travel around the world on book tours. You're probably never even going to make enough money to live off of. This is even if you do manage to get published.

I'm not trying to crush dreams. I'm caught up in the same dream as the rest of you. But as much as we like to retreat into our worlds of fantasy and fiction, we do have to acknowledged the reality of the fact.

I'm not saying—just to make it clear— that I will and you won't muahahaha. No, this applies to me and Margaret just as much as it does to you. It's not because we're young; it's simply an occupational hazard of writing books.

According to information published by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), there were over 320,000 NEW book titles published in 2010 in the US alone. That's not including printing off more Harry Potters or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finns. That's new book titles. A great majority of these book titles will not do well. An even smaller percentage of those will become popular, and an even smaller percentage of that will become mainstream enough for the authors name to be recognizable. 

Here's an example that might be closer to home. Take a look around next time you go to a library or book store. Do you see how many books there are? Depending on the size of the library/book store you're at, there could be hundreds, maybe even thousands of books there. We'll forget everything that's nonfiction and wasn't originally published in the past... 20 years.

That's still a lot of books.

And of them, odds are that there are probably 20 or so that the lay man would be able to remember the author of. Those are really small odds. Becoming famous writing books is an exception, not a rule. Being able to make a good living writing books tends to be more of an exception.

Personally— as in this is my opinion— I would not want to be as famous as Rowling. I love her books, and I give her books credit for first making me want to write books myself. But think about how the rest of her life is going to go. She may be richer than the Queen, but she can essentially never write anything again. She tried and "it wasn't as good as Harry Potter". She will never be able to escape that shadow. The book that she wrote under a fake name was her attempt to escape it. She's obviously not entirely content to just rest on her laurels and I don't think I would be either.

I am going to take a moment to admit here though, that the title of this post is "Why You Will (Probably) Never Be As Famous As JK Rowling". Who knows? I doubt that she herself thought that she was ever going to be the authoress of books on the 10 Most Published Books of All Time list. Maybe you will become that one in 7 billion. 

The odds are though, as you can see from the 1/7 billion proportion... not exactly likely.

World Building 101

So, Author Forward real quick - I wrote this ages ago and let it waffle because I didn't like how it turned out. However, since I haven't posted anything in forever...I hope it does give you some aid and advice, you guys.

Hello there fellow writers! This is Margaret of the Vinshire Sisters, and I’m sure you’re all asking ‘who?”. Yeah…so, I’m the master (mistress?) of procrastination. If there was an Olympics for it, I’d get a Gold Medal.

Except I’d drag me feet in showing up and miss the medal awarding.

So, incase you hadn’t figured it out yet, you’ll probably be seeing more of Amanda.

Let’s jump right into today’s subject – Basic World Building 101: Why You Need World Building.  World building is something that more and more authors have begun to neglect. Now, before I say anything, no you do not need Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones level of world building…but I kindly point out to take a close look at how popular those books are.

As to how I know what I’m talking about…well, I am a massive fan of world building, for your information. The current story and characters I’m working on have been running around in my head for 4 – possibly 5 – years and I’m still not done with world building. As I’m writing this, I’m working on an extensive family tree that goes back several hundred years and leads up to my main character.

I am also mildly psychotic.

But, we won’t talk about my debatable sanity today.

Now, a recent favorite of authors recently is that they don’t thoroughly explain the what’s or why’s of why something would occur in this world, or they don’t give enough background so something will make sense.

This leaves readers confused and irritated, and in my case, frothing mad.

“But!” You protest “I write fantasy/sci-fi/mad ramblings of an insane mind!”

It doesn’t matter. You still need to make some sort of rhyme or reason or sense. Just squeeing “Science!” or “Magic!” whenever something doesn’t make sense or – even worse – not explaining anything at all and throwing it out there, expecting the readers to accept it, is more likely to make them want to take the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, and promptly beat you into unconsciousness with it.

There’s an awesome quote by that neatly sums it up like this: “The difference Between Fiction and Reality? Fiction needs to make sense.”

This is unfortunately true – sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s happened in real life, no one’s going to believe it if you put it down in a book.

Now, I will admit that sometimes you can’t explain everything, and that’s alright: all readers, when picking up a book, will have to ‘suspend disbelief’ in order to read it…but if they ‘suspend disbelief’ so much that they can no longer read the book as a story because it’s too dang ridiculous…well, you’ve failed. Sorry. No other way to say it.

I know this seems like it should be pretty obvious guys, and almost all of you are most likely rolling your eyes, but there’s been innumerable times where I stare at a book and go like “…Whaa? Did I miss something?” and flip back several (hundred) pages, trying desperately to find something that didn’t exist in the first place.

So, summary: World Building – DO IT.

How To World Build

World building isn’t actually that complicated. Time consuming to the max? Absolutely. Hard?

No. All it requires is a few simple questions.

The simplest way to world build is to ask questions. Why, What, When, Where, and How are the most basic ones. Know how the government works, know what the culture requires, know when/why people die, know what’s socially inacceptable and acceptable, know the creatures, know the foods, know the jobs, know the history, the legends and myths, know the wars.

To sum it up neatly, know almost everything that’s different in this new world you’re creating. Know it like the back of your hand.

(This is, after all, world BUILDING. You need layers, you need depth, you need a hefty dose of reality to make it believable.)

It’s going to be difficult at first, but the questions will come easier as time goes on. Even now I ask questions about my world.

Something I also recommend though, it is – again – time consuming, is to write a guide book to the World, so you can A. Remember it, and B. See if it makes sense. Think of it like your textbook on Ancient Civilizations. Anything that would be mentioned in a standard textbook about Ancient Greece, you should know about your world.

Amanda is of the opinion that, "History is perhaps one of the best things you can come up with for your world. If you can come up with a history for your world, it will make everything a lot easier to come up with. Partly because almost everything we have in our world related back to history. Our culture, our politics, the types of jobs we do, the things we eat, the way we interact with foreigners... Pretty much everything stems from the past. It doesn't require something extensive, just a basic timeline—the major events. But it can do a lot in the long run."

And that’s pretty much how you world build. As stated before, it’s simple.

It’s also incredibly hard. And Time consuming.

And required, frankly.

So  yes, it’ll take time. Yes, it’ll take work.

But if you’re afraid of that….

Then why are you writing in the first place?

-Margaret V.

P.S. Don’t feel too bad, you guys. Even Amanda is guilty of the “Not Enough World Building” charge. 

Music and Playlists

I'm sorry! But the only way I can think to start this post is school.

Oh, school. School, school, school. Despite how much we may hate it, the public schooling system really is a blessing. We are being handed the education that millions of people would have and did die for in the past on a silver platter. Unless you go to school in a rather poor area/district, then some other sort of platter, I would imagine.

My dad told us that when we were talking around the table about getting handed stuff on silver platters. He told us that if he ever had a silver platter to hand stuff to us on, he would have sold it a long time ago. Oh Father of mine. Pay attention to the types of things people say. You can bet your bottom dollar that I’m sticking that in a book somewhere sometime.

I’m not going to go into my classes or anything because I honestly doubt that any of you care that much, but I can say I honestly think that this year’s going to be good for me, albeit long. Very long. But I think my AP English class in particular is actually going to be really good for me. I’m going to say right now, you’re probably going to get a lot of recycled ideas from my teacher, because he’s already pulled out quite a few I make mental notes to tell all of you about.

To celebrate surviving the first three weeks, I’m making a post I’ve been wanting to make for a while about music.

As I write this post I am listening to the song Anna Rose by Vienna Teng on repay on Youtube. At the very end of this post, I’ll tell you ever single song I listened to while writing it. Just so you can get a feel for the type of stuff that I write to.

One of the biggest, in my opinion, disadvantages that we writers have to admit to movies and television is our inability to add music to our writing. Maybe that’ll be the next big thing, adding music to ebooks or something, but for right now with regular ink on paper, we can’t put music to our writing like a director can to his movie. Sometimes this can be a major disadvantage. There are a ton of epic moments in movies, and from these epic moments are usually spawned the best epic music.

The scene from Disney’s Mulan when she makes the decision to cut her hair and join the army for her father? You can feel the epicness in the room. When Hiccup is stuck in the lake area with Toothless the dragon and Tootheless trusts him for the first time? You can feel the tension and the wonder not just because of the brilliant animation (How To Train You Dragon is one of my all time favorite movies). No one can ever forget the Imperial March from Star Wars.  Anything by Hans Zimmer is automatically the best thing performed in the past twenty years.

The point is that music is very influencing. It gets to our brains in a different way than most anything else. Music can draw emotion out of us quicker than almost any literary piece. A 3 minute song can say more than a 500 page novel (*coughTwilightcought*).

This a comment I directly received. I will admit to it to all of you now. I do write fan fiction. Despite the many bad things that are said about it (I will also freely admit that much of the bad rep is very well deserved), it really is a great opportunity to get experience writing and getting feedback. Like training wheels or an aspiring musician covering a song. (There will be a post on this. Perhaps several.) But, not too long ago, I wrote a chapter and suggested my readers listen to a specific song while they read the chapter. This was part of one response I received:

         “Can you recommend a song we listen to each time you make a chapter now? That made it so much more effective and emotional than it would have been on its own.”

The scene was supposed to be a very emotionally packed one, involving a woman getting over the loss of a miscarriage. Obviously, advising my readers to listen to a song (Consonance- Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood OST) added another layer of emotion depth I doubt I would have been able to breach on my own- especially not considering I only had a handful of hours to write it.

The point that I’m trying to get to is not that we need to give up hope on ever being able to convey emotion as well as a collection of notes, but rather that we use said collection of notes to help us convey emotion.

There have been thousands of experiments done on the effects of music over the course of history. Humans naturally like music. It’s just a fact of life. We might not all be drawn to the same types of music, but almost all of us like some sort of music or another. And the type of music affects us.

While usually people talk about this in reference to you can seriously damage your brain or you sprit by listening to the wrong types of music, I am more pointing out the fact that the type of music you listen to really can change the way you write.

If you listen to the right type of music, your ability to write certain scenes can improve. Epic music helps you write epic scenes (and I need all the help I can get in that area). Sad music helps you write sad scenes. It gets you in the mood; helps evoke the emotions you’re trying to express on the page yourself.

The opposite holds true too. There are very few things harder than writing what’s supposed to be a touching love confession while listening to Three Day’s Grace “Time of Dying”. Even if you don’t know the song, the title of the song should be a tip off to the type of song it is and it’s non-conduciveness to happy fluffy feels.

And I’m not saying you have to listen to music. Rick Riorden says that he doesn’t listen to music at all when he’s writing. He says it makes it harder for him to focus and sometimes I agree with him. Sometimes you just need absolute silence to write the scene the right way.

I also think that it helps me personally more than it hurts though. Whatever your cup of tea happens to be. I have one friend who likes to listen to songs that tell a story. I personally can’t stand listening to those types of songs while I’m writing because they’re trying to tell a story while I’m trying to write one. It just doesn’t work for me. She, however, swears that they help give her ideas.

Margaret really likes listening to songs that lyrics are relatable to her characters. She’ll frequently send me some lyrics to a song she just listened to so that we can marvel over their relevance together. “I like lyrics a lot. If I can find a song that has lyrics that goes with my character, I'll usually snap it up. And my writing music isn't necessarily music that I'd listen to when I'm not in the mood for that sort of writing. (I'd say when I'm not thinking about my characters, but I'm always thinking about stories, so I can't really say that.) Just the other day, I picked up a heavy metal song because A. The lyrics were awesome, and B. the song was really powerful. I don't usually listen to metal, but when I'm trying to write something fairly serious, Katy Perry isn't going to cut it.

Instrumental I highly recommend, particularly anything with blasting trumpets. (Pirates of the Caribbean; Man of Steel, and a few other movies have some awesome soundtracks that I'd snap right up). It's good for moving, powerful pieces. Also try for some softer songs, sadder ones, as that helps with sad, emotional pieces.”

I personally usually go for songs more for the music itself than the lyrics of a song. I’m a huge fan of writing to movie sound tracks (How To Train Your Dragon, Fullmetal Alchemist, Inception, Avengers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings ect.), Lindsey Stirling/The Piano Guys who are usually only instrumentals, Explosions in the Sky, and David Lanz has some of the best piano compositions of the past few decades (Try writing something to Cristofori’s Dream. It’ll be awesome, I guarantee it).

I also listen to a lot of show tunes. The Wicked sound track can give me chills on a good day. It’s just amazing. I do listen to a lot of normal lyric songs too, though. I’m a generally optimistic happy person, but I can almost guarantee that there will always be a suggestion for a Fray song for me to listen to on Youtube. Within Temptation has some great writing songs. Then there are a few other gems I just happen to find in my experience and tuck away for the right mood.

There are a lot of different ways to find these different types of song. The easiest way is to get suggestions from other people (I suggest pretty much every song I’ve mentioned, by the way). It’s slightly riskier to just click on the suggested videos that Youtube gives you because you can never quite be sure what you’re going to get, but that’s how I discovered Lindsey Stirling, my favorite Jason Walker song “Echo”, “Set Fire to the Third Bar” by Snow Patrol, most of my favorite Owl City songs…  Pandora can also suggest some really good ones. That’s how I found David Lanz.

         “What can I say? Art feeds off Art. Good music can help with good writing. Again, it really depends what you're trying to write. Don't pick up a song you know would be awesome for writing because it isn't something you don't usually listen to.” -Margaret Vinshire

While we authors can’t directly use music to influence the readers (yet- I don’t think music with ebooks is too far out there to be honest), it can still be a very valuable tool in our repertoire. As my dear sister said, art feeds off art. Choosing the right music to listen to while you write can make a difference, so make the right choice. There are a lot of options to choose from. Choose wisely.

And don’t forget to enjoy.

P.S. I hope the long post makes up for not having posted anything for a few weeks

(Anna Rose- Vienna Teng)

(Haunted- Taylor Swift)

(Short Hair- Mulan)

(We Are One- Lion King 2- Simba’s Pride) As far as the movie goes, eh, Romeo and Juliet. But the music… oh my goodness honey.

(Down to the Sea- Little Mermaid 2- Return to the Sea) What can I say? I had it stuck in my head a few days ago.

(Follow Your Heart- Cinderella 2) No comment.

(Antebellum- Vienna Teng)

(Harbor- Vienna Teng)

(Radioactive- Imagine Dragons cover by Lindsey Stirling and Penatonix) Lindsey Stirling is a just amazing. End of story.

(Traveling by Ambulance- Monarchy) My favorite song for writing about malaria

(Birth and Death of a New Day- Explosions in the Sky)

(What’s Left of Me- Nick Lachey)

(The Call- Regina Spektor)

(Little Wonders- Rob Thomas)

(Bad Day- Daniel Pewter)

(Set Fire to the Third Bar- Snow Patrol)

Some of these songs I replayed multiple times in a row, some of them I only listened to once.

How to Write a Novel

Okay, so I know that we haven’t done anything for weeks now, and you might be wondering what’s going on and if this is the beginning of a second end, but I promise you it is not. Things have just been pretty busy lately.

Small update:

At the beginning of the month, we managed to get to spend some time together in person. For those of you who don't know because you haven't read all we've written (not really that much unfortunately), Margaret and I met online. We got to know each other through a mix of a writing website, email, chatrooms, and Skype. We have met in person before, but this was the first time we actually got to spend an extended amount of time together (it was two days). While there was a TON of awkward giggling for the first day and a half, by the end of the last day and the day she was going home, we managed to talk like normal human beings and one of the things we discussed was the story I am going to be writing for this blog. We (more I, but I'm sure something she said inspired the idea to land in my head) managed to come up with an end, which mean that I'm likely to start writing it soon. I have the chapter outline about 3/4 done.

She went back to school on Monday August 12 2013 and my first day back at the evil death trap called “High School” was today.

Begin to cry young ones.

School is coming upon us all. Not only did school begin today, but I have spent the past two/three weeks frantically trying to finish all of the summer homework from my AP classes I was supposed to spend all summer doing. I told myself I could neglect it only if I was neglecting it for editing my book.

... let's not talk about that. Last summer I wrote a book. This summer I completely failed on the editing thing.

So yes, school is here. That means let time for writing. Hopefully it will also mean a return to structure and perhaps more steady uploads. Or it could have the opposite effect and we'll be so distracted that we won't... but let's hope for the first one, yes?

Hmm. Anything else? Margaret managed to fill in two plot holes! Yay! That’s always an awesome feeling.

Now, this post is not all just updating, though that probably will consist of about half of it. I just wanted to share this one thought that was actually shared with me a few days ago. It was actually used in a completely different context, but it was about goals and setting them and all that and that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? It also ties in pretty heavily with some of the feelings I’ve been having myself lately.

The title of this post is “How To Write A Novel” and I do have to apologize for the slightly misleading title. I’m not going to be describing a foolproof THE way to write a novel, or even my way of writing a novel. Personally I don’t think I have the right to write an article like that until I actually have my name in print. But that’s beside the point.

We all have an ultimate goal in mind. Whether this goal is to get published, or maybe your goal is to be able to live off writing, or maybe your goal is to be the next JK Rowling (I’m gonna tell you right now, straight up, there are some goals and aspirations and dreams I can approve… if you think you’re the next JK Rowling… Not to be depressing or smashing your dreams to tiny pieces, but… I wouldn’t count on it), it is a goal.

So imagine this goal as the top of Mt. Everest.

And you’re standing at the little village at the base of the mountain where people plan their expeditions.

Look up.

It’s a looooonnngggg way to go. 29,029 feet/8,848 meters.

It doesn’t just look big, trust me, it is. And it’s not going to be easy to climb it. The people that climb it have to go through a lot to get to stand on the top and proudly yell “I’M KING OF THE WORLD!”

But every climb starts with a step. And then more steps after that. And even more. And a lot of steps. And in this case a lot of ropes and pulley systems and other people ahead of you to lead the way and or hoist you up a sheer face.

With those lots of steps, frozen sweat, ropes, and support system, even though you started at the very bottom, you can wind up at the top.

That is how you write a novel, or publish a novel, or whatever your literary goal may be. You take it one step at a time as you can, until you do get to stand at the top of that mountain and shout that you are indeed, King of the World.