Where do my characters names come from?

Let me tell you. After so much research on putting a novel together, I have learnt, there are many commonalities. But each writer has their own individual strategies on putting their story together also.

I mentioned on a previous post, if you read it. ( READ MY STUFF YO!), that I don’t do outlines. I write a word, and then let the story lead me.

But what about the names of my characters?

Here’s what I did. I came up with the story idea. Then picture the character’s faces. I pictured their actions. I pictured their motivations, flaws bla bla bla etc etc etc.

Putting a name to them was a challenge. So what I did was this.

I went down my Facebook list. I thought about people I knew in the past, even as far as peeps I just met once. Some that weren’t even on Facebook, rather their names were dropped in my head when I brainstormed.

A lot of the names in this story are names of people I know or knew. Never exactly though. Sometimes it is a combination of someone’s first name, and someone else’s last name. Sometimes it’s someone’s middle name. Sometimes I even take someone’s name and change it a bit, but it’s very similar to the person’s name.

I don’t do this with all my characters, but there are quite a few.

So once I finalize this book. Anyone I know, especially my high school friends, will now easily recognize some names of people.

In closing, I never chose these names, based on relationship, I chose them based on coolness.

Back to editing.

RR