cornerofmadness

Editing and What's in a Name

Editing is a heinous beast. You heard me whine last night. I'm still whining. I literally am at the end of what I can do to chapter one of Machiavelli Moon on my own. Getting something back from others is one thing but I simply can not read it again. I think I will never finish my novel if I do. I have a years worth of editing from my writing group to do and I DO need to do something with nanomowhinging to make it live again. sigh.

And what's in a name. I think naming characters is often one of the most difficult things I do. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes I agonize for days, week only to change it months down the line. I do think names are important. Look at the angst we go through if we got tagged with a clunker of a name or the WTF moments when we see a name too bizarre for words.

I got to thinking about this while perusing Goodreads for free books. Some of the names are so ridiculous I'm quite sure I'd have issues taking the character serious. Occasionally you might decide on a weird name for a reason and that reason ought to be obvious in the text. For example, Temple Chevalier's name was very deliberately chosen. He's from a long line of Knight's Templar and his name is pretty much Temple Knight. He feels (rightly so) that his father could have cared less about him and didn't even bother giving him a real name.

Some of the names I've seen are SO tacky or dumb I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Take Tyra Banks Tookie De La Créme in Modelland. That is not a model name. That's a stripper name. I couldn't think of anything other than that for a name like that. We see someone named Aurora Dawn and we think 'must have had hippie parents.' There are names that suggest stuffiness or overly old fashioned.

Of course some names don't have the same meaning in the country of origin as here. Take Harry Hole. It's probably not even pronounced Hole but when i read those mysteries, you can just guess where my brain is.

So how do you come by your names? Have you ever come across names that have jerked you out of a story? Make a snap judgment (wrong or right) about a character based on a name.

And while typing this up, an email came in to tell me I sold another story. For more details head here WHEE