Writing Tip #1: Naming Your Characters

Characters’ names play a very important role in your story or book. You need the perfect name. For example, what if I’d named Mahalia ‘Elise’? ‘Elise’ doesn’t sound like an evil fairy name, but Mahalia does. (Note: If any of you readers are actually named Mahalia, no offense.)

Or what about Eugenia? Suppose I’d named her Sarah?

You may be wondering where I got all the names in my book. Well, for most the evil fairies, I got them from this website:

http://www.behindthename.com/random/ 

It’s just a random name generator, but it worked for me. 

Besides all that, you need names that fit your characters. For example, I chose the name ‘Lucy’ for a six-year-old orphan girl in my book because it sounded like a poor little girl’s name. What if I’d named her Nancy? It doesn’t have the same effect; it wouldn’t had worked as well. 

About changing character’s names— it’s never too late to change them (unless you’ve already written books about them;) During the writing process, you can change them many times if the names don’t sound right. I did. Almost every one of my characters has had a different name at some point—and some characters have had two different names.

Speaking of such, I named almost all my characters after my friends. You may want to do that, too, with your friends. You can; but it depends on the setting. You can’t name your main character Madison if the story takes place three hundred years ago; the name wasn’t around then (as a first name, of course). But that doesn’t mean you can still base the character on your friend! Or you could temporarily name the character after your friend, and switch it later. The bad thing about that is, sometimes you don’t want to switch—but depending on the setting, you’ll have to.

If it fits your story, I think it is a great idea to name your characters after your friends or family. When you’re writing and you see your best friend’s name in the story, you can feel the story so much more; you can put more emotion into the story; really make it come alive. That is the upside. The downside, of course, is you don’t want anything bad to happen to them, for two reasons:  One, because when you write it, you don’t see the bad thing happening to your character; you see it happening to your friend, and of course you don’t want anything bad to happen to your friend. And two, you get worried about what the friend the character is named after will think. You make something horrible happen to your best friend Addie’s character, then delete it all because you think, What will Addie think? 

Here’s the thing, fellow writers.The hard fact is that if your whole story revolves around what your friends will think, it will not be a good story. I’m not saying that you should avoid your friends, ignore their opinions, and make bad thing after bad thing happen to their characters—actually, it’s a great idea to get your friends’ opinions. In fact, one of my best friends is now helping me with my next book. Like an editor/advisor. A lot of my other friends are helping, too, with proofreading and illustrating and advertising. The point? It’s a great idea to have your friends help you. Just don’t let your story revolve around what they will think about their character. If it’s too much trouble, just don’t put their name in at all, or give them a small part.

Dealing with number 1 can be more of a problem, sometimes. You don’t want anything bad to happen to those certain characters named after your friends; and if nothing bad happens in the story, it’s not going to be a great story. If you’re struggling with 1, think of it this way—the bad thing isn’t happening to your friend; it’s happening to a character named after your friend. 

So to sum up all I’ve said: naming characters can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. And it’s always fun.