WIP Challenge Check-in, Day 30 -- Monday

[linaewen]

Hello on Monday! Is it an awesome day for you, or are you thinking of going back to bed (or going to bed early, depending on your time zone)?

What writing-related pursuit did you engage in today -- or yesterday, if you haven't gotten going as yet?

• I thought about my fic once or twice
• I wrote
• I did some planning and/or research
• I edited
• I've sent my fic off to my beta
• I posted today!
• I'm taking a break
• I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment

For our discussion of the day, let me introduce you to the Writer Leopard:

When writing original fic or creating original characters for canon-based fic, how do you go about choosing names for your characters? Is it a big deal for you to have just the right name or does it not matter all that much?  How detailed do you actually get when planning your characters?

Comments

[linaewen]

I scribbled a few notes yesterday that should help me if I ever get buckled down to write. I need to make some time for that today, no matter what else comes along to make me procrastinate!

I actually don't plan my OC's with great detail -- some I don't even know what they look like or anything about their family or history. But I usually have some sense of what their personality is and how they will interact with the main characters -- and their names are very important. I spend a lot of time working on names. The canon I write in (Lord of the Rings) has a developed language that makes it possible to put names together so that they have some meaning in the language, so I try to do that -- or I look through the canon (which is huge) for names that are uncommon and little used and apply them to my characters.

[the_rck]

I wrote quite a bit yesterday, and I've done a little so far today. I'm pleased with my progress even if I'm not entirely sure about the plot development I've just put in.

For names for original characters, I frequently turn to a particular baby name book--- What to Name the Baby by Evelyn Wells. It's really useful because it gives a vast number of variants of every name it lists, variants from a lot of different languages. I can usually find something that sounds right to me, and if I don't, I take something that's close and modify it.

[insignia]

I have some vague thoughts that may qualify as "planning" if you're generous, but otherwise I'm not really getting anywhere.

Oh, and I'm sorry for the lack of a Saturday post; I completely forgot -_-

[hamimi_fk]

Names are super important to me. When it comes time for me to name an OC, I tend to go for unusual names--Box, Boti, Lykyhi, etc. I use generators for some ideas (usually for sci-fi/fantasy stuff) and google things like 'unusual baby names'. And since I purposely create a lot POCs, I look for lists of names depending on nationality. This tends to make me want to create bgs for the characters, usually simple stuff though like family members and a vague personality profile that I fill out better as I write them.

TV is a good resource for names if you watch game shows or just read the credits of a show/movie to see the names of the people behind scenes. The Walking Dead, for example, has someone named Jolly that works behind scenes as well as the music being by a guy named Bear. And while watching an episode of Family Feud, I renamed an OC after a contestant whom had a unique spelling of her name (Roxan instead of Roxanne).

Oh man, sorry. I love naming OCs. x3