This is a picture of me in my kitchen today. Baking Challah and generally being domestic. It was such a striking resemblance that I had to put it here.
After all the baking and laundry and yoga and shopping got done, I sat down and clacked out another 1700 words on my novel. That amounts to 5 pages single spaced (not in a tiny font though, it’s about a 14pt.). This time I composed on the computer, which wasn’t too bad. I am trying out all the ways to see which one works the best for me. I’m still gathering information on that.
But here is my big question of the day. When you write a story, how do YOU choose the names of characters? I am having the devil of a time with that one. Right now, except for my main character, whenever I come to a place that requires a person’s name, I am writing it like this:
(NAME)
Pretty lame eh? And in my case I also have to give names to some things that are in another language, unknown to our earthling hero. So I am going to have to make some stuff up. It’s driving me absolutely crazy.
While soaking in the tub yesterday, I was giving this the deep think and I decided that good old Tolkien has taken all the good names. And he knew what he was doing too. I decided that the name Aragorn has everything going for it linguistically. All those nice soothing “ah” sounds. A good solid, rock like, but not harsh “g”. And a comforting steady, confidence inducing, faithful friend, “n” at the end. All the qualities of the character himself.
Contrast that with say…. Hitler. First off the word starts with “hit” this does not bode well does it? And if you added an “s” to the front you would have the word one might say if you got a personal invitation to join him in his mountain retreat for tea and bratwurst. And the “er” sound invokes all kinds of things for me… “crapper, _ _ _ _er, executioner, Lucifer, the list goes on.
My point is,
( she has a POINT ? )
that the sounds of words invoke certain things. Emotions and innuendoes and just plain spinal cord reflex reactions that we have when we hear certain sounds in language.
I find it interesting that Hitler will forever be known in history by his last name, not his first. Adolf….. a friendly word… there is that “a” again. And a non-threatening “d” (who was ever threatened by the word “donut”?) And just think that name is very similar to another hero we know from Tolkien…. Gandalf .
I rest my case.
Names are so important in a story and now I have a whole bunch of nameless people in mine and I am starting to feel really guilty about it…. I am rotten at choosing them, and even rottener at making them up. These poor people are wandering around not knowing how to introduce themselves when meeting new people. And no body knows what to say to each other in my story when they are pissed off. Thusly:
“Damn it (NAME), get your great honkin’ size 14’s off my foot for cryin’ out loud.” Just doesn’t CUT it. D’you see what I’m sayin’?
But other than this one (LITTLE) problem, I’m having a nice day…. How about you???
I gotta go now.
(NAME) has left the building….