Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Writing ABC - Characters #MFRWauthor #amwriting

Characters are one of the main elements of every story. There are layers to developing characters and strong ones are what the reader wants. There are a number of ways to bring chanacters to life and thus there will be more than one post about these intriguing people writers place in their book.

Names is one of the first. Finding other than Mary and John are a help to have the reader see a bit of the characters nature. Now some writers go a bit too far when naming their characters. Brick Roughstone is sort of a play on what they do. Now this kind of thing works in humor so choosing an outlandish name must fit the character. I've missnamed a character or two in my stories but the books are written and published. If I went back I might change their names. One thing to look at does the name fit the time period of the character. Choosing a name you like and discovering there never was a name like that in the time period you're writing. In contemporary fiction sometimes one will choose a name from the past to give the character a particular flavor. That is good but then the character's traits must fit the name chosen. Fantasy writers sometimes choose names that can't be pronounced. This can leave the reader scratching their head or sitting and stumbling over the name trying every pronounciation they can imagine. Not a good thing for the reader. Writing names so the pronounciation is easily scanned by the reader is good. I'm reading a fantasy right now that though  the spelling of the names looks strange when sounding them out the names make sense. Phonetically writing the names here really helps.

So names is the first order of business. Having a multitude of sources of names can help and this is something I've collected over the years. I'm not sure how many I have but there are a lot and I use them frequently. So remember names have power and names can gain a reader's attention. Also remember a name you may love could be one that turns a particular reader off. Choose your characters names with care no matter what genre you choose to write.