Tag Archives: names

May 25, 2016 · 9:05 pm

Thoughts on Writing – Naming Your Character

In my previous post, I talked about choosing the right attire for the characters in your world. Today, I want to talk a bit about naming.

We’ve all heard suggestions for basic naming conventions. These are a few off the top of my head:

  1. Make sure each name sounds/looks different (Varying syllabic emphasis can help here–pay attention to where you emphasize the name. “Anna” has a different emphasis than “Blayloc,” for instance).
  2. Don’t have the same first letter of their names for multiple characters in the same story (For example: Jenna, Jim, Jack, Janice… oh dear. Isaac and I may need to revisit Distant Horizon and change a few names…)
  3. If writing fantasy/science fiction, don’t have long, convoluted names. Or if you do, shorten them. (I’m looking at you Shevanlagiy… Bit of trivia, when I wrote the first draft of The Wishing Blade a decade ago, I copy-pasted her name each time I needed to type it. Probably should’ve taken that as a hint.)
  4. Don’t have two characters with the same name (Unless this is part of the plot, at which point you still want the readers to be able to easily tell them apart.)
  5. If your name has too nice of a ring to it, Google-search the name to make sure it’s not already taken. (I once created an original character whose name I later realized was very similar to a DeviantArt stock artist that I often used stock from).

When I originally created my main character for the Exiles role-play campaign that Isaac ran (a story set in the Distant Horizon universe, which we plan to write later), I named her Emily Johnson.

Worked for the campaign, but looking back, I’ve been debating changing her name. There are two reasons.

One, she is supposed to be of Asian heritage, and so I have considered giving her an Asian surname (I haven’t decided which particular culture–Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc…). However, given that she lives in a dystopian world where English names are encouraged, and there’s a good chance that somewhere along the line, her father/grandfather/great grandfather might not have been Asian, I’m not too worried about this one. Name makes sense for the world of the story. Now, in areas which aren’t under the Community’s control, the names you see are going to be a bit different.

However, there is another Emily in the story: Lady Emily Black. While most characters wouldn’t know her as Emily, if Isaac and I ever delve into that character’s youth, we’ll end up with two Emilys in the same universe. If they were stand-alone stories in different universes, I’m not sure it would be a problem. Same universe?

Could be confusing.

My initial response was to change the main character’s name. (After all, there’s a story purpose for “Emily” regarding the other character: her mother’s name was Emma, and she was named for her mother).

But let’s take a quick look at the culture of the world, in which Lady Emily Black is a well-known, highly respected diplomat (at least within the Community). Thus, it makes sense that a family might name their child after her, hoping that kid would pick up some of her better-known attributes (and indeed, both characters play the part of a peacekeeper between the people they work with).

Not only that, Lady Emily Black is typically known as Lady Black, with Emily being relatively unused (unless we ever go into writing her backstory).

Based on those factors, I’m considering keeping Emily’s name as it is. I might still to choose to change it, giving her a different surname or changing her first name to keep the characters a bit more separate, but right now, I think I’ve got another set of names to worry about.

Jenna, Jim, Jack, Janice…

But… I like their names! I’ve grown fond of them! They all fit the character!

*Sigh.* Something Isaac and I will have to discuss and decide if we need to change before we do our final round of edits.

It’s not like we’ve got Camaraderie/Coalition/Community in the same book–

Or Crush and Chill (both “C” names, both based on their superpowers)—

Um… I’ll get back to you on that.

I hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂

Have you ever had to change the names of your characters for clarity? Would you change Emily’s name, or swap out the multiple “J” names a bit?

Looking for more naming tips? Try these articles:

http://thewritelife.com/6-creative-ways-to-name-your-fictional-characters/

http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/the-7-rules-of-picking-names-for-fictional-characters

http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/improve-my-writing/how-to-give-your-character-the-perfect-name

http://thewritepractice.com/8-tips-for-naming-characters/

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October 12, 2015 · 9:19 pm

Thoughts on Writing – Using Foreign Languages In Your Stories

Recently, I’ve been making edits to The Multiverse Chronicles. It’s a pseudo-steampunk fantasy story, and it’s very much not historically accurate. We’ve got dragons, dinosaurs (all right, all right, I know pterosaurs technically aren’t dinosaurs, but still), dirigibles, magic powers, a dragon queen who rules over Britannia, an Industrial Union of Prussia that makes automatons… The list goes on.

Still, we want to have occasional nods to reality, and it’s nice to know which parts of history we’re butchering before we actually butcher it. Since the world is supposed to (vaguely) resemble our own world, we’ve been trying to add flavor through various means, and our latest method has been to insert little snippets of other languages where appropriate.

For example, one of the end scenes of the Multiverse episodes involves a group of airship pirates. The name of their dirigible is mentioned, and the name is supposed to be in German.

Of course, neither Isaac nor I know much of anything about the German language, which is a recipe for potential issues.

In this particular scene, Isaac wants the name of the ship to roughly translate to, “The Spirit of the Iron Vulture.” The first step to renaming this in German was to use Google Translate.

However, from our experiences with Spanish classes in college, we know that online translators aren’t necessarily that reliable. So, whenever I try to name something or use a word that isn’t English, I may use an online translator to start with, but I will usually run it through multiple translators, and then take that translation back from the target language to English to make sure it translates correctly both ways. (I’ve had a few interesting translations when I tried that particular method, as the translator might have had the right word, but not the right meaning). I also try to look up whether words should go before or after one another, if there might be any changes to how the word looks based on what it’s modifying, and anything else that might be different in that language.

For Spanish, this isn’t quite so difficult because I’ve had a few classes, which helps me know what to look for. Even then, I’ve had a beta reader correct my Spanish grammar, and that was helpful to getting the sentence right (I had the wrong verb form).

For German… well… I don’t know German.

I’ve picked up a couple words here and there from Hogan’s Heroes. (Not exactly conducive to knowing how a language works).

I really wasn’t sure what we were looking for in naming conventions, especially since the name we wanted had the “of the” portion. Then I remembered that a friend from college had studied German, so I figured he might be a someone to ask. I sent him a Facebook message, and he was able to offer quite a bit of help.

When in doubt, ask someone with more experience than you.

When Isaac first chose the name, he ended up with “Der Geist Eisengeier.” (Note: If your ship’s name has “the” in the beginning of it, don’t forget to translate that as well). With a bit more checking, I ended up with “Der Geist des Eisernen Geier,” but it seemed a bit of a tongue twister (which I probably pronounce wrong, anyway, since I don’t know German pronunciation rules). Anyway, we asked if it would be feasible to shorten the latter to the former, but our friend pointed out that without “des” (of the), we would end up with a really long, run-on noun. He suggested “Der Geist Des Eisengeier” as a compromise, though he pointed out that German ships would often have longer names.

Isaac and I chose the compromise (Der Geist Des Eisengeier), though knowing about the longer names factor definitely makes using the full name a more feasible option.

As a writer, half of the process of story research is knowing what to look for. In this case, I suspected the language rules might be different from English, but I didn’t have enough knowledge on the subject to know where to begin. At this point, asking someone who does know (or at least has more knowledge than you) is a good way to find a decent starting point. This can be used for language, culture, special procedures, technology… anything. Of course, the more you read, the more you know when you should conduct research, and the more likely you’ll catch where you might have problems before a reader does.

I hope you’ve found this post helpful. 🙂 Have you ever had issues with adding words from another language into your manuscript?

(Another good example of doing writerly research can be found at Thrill Writing, a blog where the author interviews various experts about specific topics which are helpful to fiction writers.)

 

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