WIP check in day 16

[lilly_c]

How is today going for you?

Poll #14062

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

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Today I

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wrote
3 (37.5%)

edited
2 (25.0%)

posted
0 (0.0%)

researched
3 (37.5%)

sent to beta
0 (0.0%)

had a break
2 (25.0%)

dealt with life
2 (25.0%)

My progress is

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Mean: 4.12 Median: 4 Std. Dev 2.32

*head desk* 1		1 (12.5%)
2		1 (12.5%)
3		2 (25.0%)
4		0 (0.0%)
5		3 (37.5%)
6		0 (0.0%)
7		0 (0.0%)
8		0 (0.0%)
9		1 (12.5%)
Fantastic! 10		0 (0.0%)

Discussion: naming original characters. When you use original characters do you find it easy or difficult to name them?

When I use oc's I already have a rough idea of their name by the time I've written a couple of scenes with them in. I recently had to name a child oc for one of the fics I'm currently working on and it was quite difficult to come up with something suitable and I ended up using a baby name generator and it give me a unisex name that fits what I want as I haven't yet decided on the gender but I’m going to let the fandom characters tell me that part.

Comments

[lea_hazel]

I'm going to crack down now because I got some writing done last night and I want to carry the momentum through while I feel good about things.

I agonize a lot over names, because that is a thing that I like doing. Sometimes I even spend an hour or two making sure that OCs don't have names that sound too alike, start with the same letter, alliterate or rhyme, or even necessarily have the same number of syllables. I... may have a problem.

[lea_hazel]

I did end up writing some. :)

[linaewen]

Doing some editing today as part of a rewrite of an old fic and as a way to get back into a writing frame of mind after being gone for awhile.

I don't know that I find it difficult to name original characters, but it's definitely important to me, and I can't really write about them until I know their names. So I spend a lot of time early on trying to figure out who they are, and can't proceed until I have it figured out. I sometimes use canon names that are uncommon that have the right "ring" I want to them for my character, or I try to figure out a name according to what it means and have it match my character's character. It's all part of the research process before I start writing, and I enjoy it a lot. I've done it enough now that I have a list of names to go to when I need a new character.

[krait]

Aaaaahh, naming OCs! WORST PART.

Not kidding; I have at least one old story with two characters "named" &*%$ and #@$&, because of the sheer difficulty I had in naming them! At least with two distinguishable random character strings I could get on with the rest of the writing. *throws hands in air*

[the_rck]

I use a really good baby name book, one that lists variants of names from many different languages. Most of the naming of OCs that I'm doing these days is for folks not from Earth, though, so I'm tending to tweak the names I pick because I don't want to accidentally pick a name that's really, really common in, say, Hungarian or Portuguese and label it as an alien name.