I’m really picky about the names I choose for the characters in my stories. If I don’t get the right names in my head from the start, my writing falters. I can’t use the names of anyone I know just in case they think I’m writing about them. Not a problem in many genres – there are a few people I wouldn’t mind murdering – on paper of course - but in erotic romance I’m not so sure my friends would want to be the woman writhing on my pages or the woman sandwiched between two guys or the guy with a big... well maybe they would. But if I picked the name of a pal,I’d have them in my head when I was writing and that won’t work.
What do readers think of the names we pick for our heroes and heroines? Does it put you off the story if the names don’t give the right vibe? Not liking a character’s name wouldn’t stop me reading a book – well unless it was Smedley Ponsonby-Farte perhaps. Apologies to any Smedleys reading! But the time I spend finding the right ones for my characters - you'd think I was studying brain surgery.
My heroines are Kate (more than once) Chloe, Addie, Holly, Susie, Polly, Lucy, Daisy, Erin, Jo, Flick and Imo - to name but a few. I obviously like the 'ee’ sound at the end of the name. In fact both my kids have names that end this way.
My heroes - Charlie (arggh - slipping into it with the guys), Ethan, Nathan, Christian (all ending the same), Jay, Jax, Jack, Jake (I obviously like the J sound), Beck, Will, Ed, Alek and so on.
I can see a pattern. The men's names are mostly short and hard sounding, while the women's have two syllables and are softer. Regardless of whether they are human, werewolf, faery, vampire or demon, I always seem to go for something fairly traditional.
I think part of my concern in getting the right name is my problem with some fantasy books. If I can’t remember a made-up name from one page to the next and if I can’t pronounce it in my head as I read, I struggle. For me the name has to resonate from the first time I read it. Even with the writer’s description, I still want to draw my own image of the character.
So - what do you think - do you care what the character is called? Does it matter more to me than it does to you?
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Sexy fiction, hot topics, your favourite LI authors posting -- what's not to like?
Opinions shared on this blog are the authors own, and there is no doubt about it, the fiction is HAWT! So rate us A+ for adult content.
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11 comments:
Try http://nymbler.com it's perfect for this sort of thing.
Too easy. I do like to make life difficult!! Thanks for the link!
barbara
I had a character names Jax too, expect she was a woman. And imagine my sense of looming horror when I realised I was about to put her into a scene with a character named Max. I had to lampshade it and have her laugh about the smilarity. In a later scene she shot him. :D
I agree that if the name is unpronouncable then I'm not going to latch onto it - unless it's done for comedy purposes I suppose. And that distances the reader from the character.
Oooh Jax and Max - that is funny. Yep, shooting sounds a great solution.
I sat today staring at long words to see if I could create a name from the insides of one of them.
eg Ari - from Staring
Hoot - from Shooting.
It can work sometimes I can while away hours instead of working!!
It's always weird for me to read about characters with too familiar names. Or if my and the characters name are the same it can get pretty uncomfortable.
That's a good point about reading a character with the same name as you. My name is so - er - boring - sorry to the other Barbaras out there - it rarely happens. Then I chose the name Flick for the ditzy girl in a story to be released in January and decided I liked the name Flick and used it for my Google account and CC name etc etc I like Flick much better but she's a real idiot in my upcoming story. I might live to regret the change.
Yes, the familiar names is tricky, because I might already have a lot of emotional associations with that name that will colour the way I look at that character. Maybe that's a reason for choosing weird names, I mean how many people will be able to say "I couldn't bond with the heroine because I was bullied at school by a girl called Raven." ;-)
Last year I finally wrote at least part of the story of a character I'd had in my head for years. But first I had to change his name, as in the meantime my sister had named my nephew that. And given that there was a load of sex in the book it would have been way too weird to still use that name when it's now associated with a little boy in my mind.
So it's a balance between finding a name that's unusual but not too unusual. One that certain movies stars fail to get right! You'd think that they would consider how their child is going to fair at school or how they are going to learn to write their name. Mine is easy to write - three letters only - but see
http://listoftheday.blogspot.com/2008/03/stupid-celebrity-child-names.html
I'm okay with any name unless I can't pronounce it. Then every time I come across it in the book I'm jarred by trying to pronounce it in my head. Though one thing that bugs the heck out of me are names with an apostrophe stuck in (like in sci-fi) by someone trying to be cute or witty.
I find myself just skipping over those novels with names I can’t pronounce or if I really really want to read them I'll just mentally replace the weirder names so they don't disrupt the flow of the reading too much.
I'm wit you Crystal. I won a free book from Ellora's Cave with this entry for a terrible first line contest.
Long ago, on the planet of Efterhjyern, there lived a woman called Prhhtukjsellg who had two children, Neelhuhwhel and Bob who were determined to find the golden dildo before the monks of Wkkuherkjk-t realized what they had in their hands and sold it to the Hffierhbjhtts from planet Mkkeuuyel.
I missed that trick with the apostrophe but I did get the hyphen!
barbara
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