1. True Names Have Power... My characters aren't real in the same sense that you and I are, so that doesn't really apply. And I don't take Faerie lore as particularly useful for my reality.
2. Could you possibly imagine an Orc called Legolas or Luthien? Boy, would he have gotten teased at orc school!
3. My characters don't get begun unless I know them well enough to call them by name - their real name - their TRUE name. My characters don't become real to me until I've been writing them for a while, and to write them for that long and not confuse myself, I have to refer to them somehow. I have to know the character before I can pick a good name for them.
If it's a minor character, one who's barely worthy of a name, it doesn't really matter what I call them as long as it fits the society.
The characters on paper aren't always the same as the characters in my head, so they can have different names.
4. Once I have a name on a character for a long time, it's hard to change it. But I can change it - in the end, these are only pixels on a screen.
5. Changing Polly to Jessa in a very late draft was very helpful in getting rid of Polly's unwanted character traits because it was easier for me to think of her as a new character instead of a revised old one.
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a couple quick thoughtless responses...
Date: 2007-01-28 11:05 pm (UTC)1. True Names Have Power...
My characters aren't real in the same sense that you and I are, so that doesn't really apply. And I don't take Faerie lore as particularly useful for my reality.
2. Could you possibly imagine an Orc called Legolas or Luthien?
Boy, would he have gotten teased at orc school!
3. My characters don't get begun unless I know them well enough to call them by name - their real name - their TRUE name.
My characters don't become real to me until I've been writing them for a while, and to write them for that long and not confuse myself, I have to refer to them somehow. I have to know the character before I can pick a good name for them.
If it's a minor character, one who's barely worthy of a name, it doesn't really matter what I call them as long as it fits the society.
The characters on paper aren't always the same as the characters in my head, so they can have different names.
4. Once I have a name on a character for a long time, it's hard to change it. But I can change it - in the end, these are only pixels on a screen.
5. Changing Polly to Jessa in a very late draft was very helpful in getting rid of Polly's unwanted character traits because it was easier for me to think of her as a new character instead of a revised old one.