And it's KT.
No, in all seriousness, I'm going to be talking about naming characters. Which I think has been done before, but I am ME and I name my characters my own way, right? Right. Hopefully.
Well, I happen to really enjoy naming characters. And hate it at the same time. Some names literally just come to me, and others I debate over for hours, days, years (not really). Most of the time, a main character's name comes the easiest for me. And it's a mix between the name fitting their personality and then sometimes shaping their personality to their name.
And a lot of the time, that personality thing happens to come from the meaning behind their name. In which case, babynames.com is the best invention ever. Let's take my characters Devin and Ember, for instance. Devin's name means "descendant of the dark-haired one." Um, well, Devin has dark hair, so that fits. But his name was a case of it just fitting his personality. Ember's name meaning is a little obvious--it has to do with fire/a spark. And I can sometimes see her being kind of sparky like that. And astrologically, she's a fire sign. However, her name came to me first more so than her personality. So, in that one book, my naming came from both sides of the spectrum.
...And then there's the fact I have an epic fantasy and I did that sometimes annoying thing that fantasy writers do. And I made names up. For instance, my MC's name is Lanani (which, if you want to pronounce it, it's "Luh-nah-nee"). I don't quite remember HOW I came up with that, but I was just writing and *poof* Lanani's name appeared, and I ran with it. To me it doesn't seem that weird anymore, but I know that if more people read it someday, I'm probably going to get some weird (figurative) looks... not to mention the male lead's name is Ranu. Weird. I know. My apologies.
And that's pretty much the way I name my characters. I look for meaning, how it fits the character... and sometimes I just make things up. And, actually, unlike some other people, it's not hard for me to name a character after somebody I know, or a name similar to mine (I have a character named Kate, too).
How do you guys name your characters? Any things you avoid in particular? (I do try avoid names I absolutely hate, unless it's a character I want people to dislike. Mean author is mean.)
Showing posts with label wednesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wednesday. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Wednesday Doesn't Blog...
...she VLOGS!
AHA! Here it is. Vlog.
While this video uploads (which is taking forever), I shall ramble. In the video I talk about finishing things. Or not finishing things. Mostly I ramble (like I'm doing now) and can't complete my thoughts. But I thought vlogging would be an interesting change up. So. There's that.
...load...
LOAD FASTER, DANG IT. Oh, happy leap day! I feel special to be blogging on a day that won't exist for the next three years.
ALSO. I didn't mean for me to talk about finishing things riiiight after Laina finished her first draft for her novella thing. It just happened.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Wednesday is a Therapist.
(FIRST. I apologize for missing last week. It's been a rough February. SECOND. This is late today because I had a meeting and then work after school)
People have said it before, and I'll say it again.
Writing is therapeutic.
Not in the "OH I AM SO MENTALLY DISTRAUGHT; WRITING WILL CURE ALL MY PROBLEMS" way, but writing is a form of self-expression, and so it can be therapeutic in the sense of subtly expressing your emotions.
Obviously it's hard to express anger or depression when writing a scene in a novel or a longer story because it may not fit in with the other scenes and style of writing you're using for that novel. But sometimes straying from your norm and writing a piece of flash fiction, a poem, or a stream of consciousness-like piece, may help to let out what you're feeling.
Or I suppose you could write a journal or diary entry. I'm not much of a journal person because I hate writing about myself or my life, so I usually take the other routes I mentioned above.
I think a lot of what I'm saying is common sense and it's already been said before, but yesterday I was very angry and I wrote a poem and it does really help sometimes. I was still angry and upset after I wrote it, but I did get something out. Instead of doing something damaging with strong emotions, it's good to do something creative and productive.
Does anyone else use writing therapeutically like I do? What kind of stuff do you write?
People have said it before, and I'll say it again.
Writing is therapeutic.
Not in the "OH I AM SO MENTALLY DISTRAUGHT; WRITING WILL CURE ALL MY PROBLEMS" way, but writing is a form of self-expression, and so it can be therapeutic in the sense of subtly expressing your emotions.
Obviously it's hard to express anger or depression when writing a scene in a novel or a longer story because it may not fit in with the other scenes and style of writing you're using for that novel. But sometimes straying from your norm and writing a piece of flash fiction, a poem, or a stream of consciousness-like piece, may help to let out what you're feeling.
Or I suppose you could write a journal or diary entry. I'm not much of a journal person because I hate writing about myself or my life, so I usually take the other routes I mentioned above.
I think a lot of what I'm saying is common sense and it's already been said before, but yesterday I was very angry and I wrote a poem and it does really help sometimes. I was still angry and upset after I wrote it, but I did get something out. Instead of doing something damaging with strong emotions, it's good to do something creative and productive.
Does anyone else use writing therapeutically like I do? What kind of stuff do you write?
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Wednesday Lacks Inspiration.
This past week I was assigned to write a short story in my creative writing class.
I was VERY excited because we haven't done any truly creative stuff yet, and I like writing short pieces occasionally. However, as soon as i got the assignment, *POOF* Writer's Block appeared. And he was vehement.
We had two days in class to work on the story, both of which I spent staring at the computer screen, wondering what the heck to write. And I asked for suggestions on twitter, and thought more on it at home. Nothing anybody said, nothing I though, gave me one spark of an idea. Last night at 1 AM, realizing the rough draft was due today, I picked out a piece I wrote a year ago that no one's read and revised to fit more so with the assignment.
Yes, that's kind of cheating, but I wrote it and it's a short story and it worked. (Stop judging me. VEHEMENT. WRITER'S BLOCK WAS VEHEMENT).
While it was a short assignment and in the scheme of life, not overly important, it was one of the strongest cases of writer's block I've had. Usually I have ways of getting out of it. Music. Automatic writing. Reading others' work.
But nothing worked. Not even my "Let me just start writing and whatever happens, happens." That's my fix for EVERYTHING. That's even how I've started writing WIPs (Total pantser here, guys).
Unfortunately, I still have no ideas and that story has been peer reviewed, so I have to continue to use it and mold it for the assignment, but I hope that this writer's block won't continue. Because writer's block for class work is the worst seeing as they have a deadline and a grade.
What about you guys? What's the worst case you've ever gotten?
I was VERY excited because we haven't done any truly creative stuff yet, and I like writing short pieces occasionally. However, as soon as i got the assignment, *POOF* Writer's Block appeared. And he was vehement.
We had two days in class to work on the story, both of which I spent staring at the computer screen, wondering what the heck to write. And I asked for suggestions on twitter, and thought more on it at home. Nothing anybody said, nothing I though, gave me one spark of an idea. Last night at 1 AM, realizing the rough draft was due today, I picked out a piece I wrote a year ago that no one's read and revised to fit more so with the assignment.
Yes, that's kind of cheating, but I wrote it and it's a short story and it worked. (Stop judging me. VEHEMENT. WRITER'S BLOCK WAS VEHEMENT).
While it was a short assignment and in the scheme of life, not overly important, it was one of the strongest cases of writer's block I've had. Usually I have ways of getting out of it. Music. Automatic writing. Reading others' work.
But nothing worked. Not even my "Let me just start writing and whatever happens, happens." That's my fix for EVERYTHING. That's even how I've started writing WIPs (Total pantser here, guys).
Unfortunately, I still have no ideas and that story has been peer reviewed, so I have to continue to use it and mold it for the assignment, but I hope that this writer's block won't continue. Because writer's block for class work is the worst seeing as they have a deadline and a grade.
What about you guys? What's the worst case you've ever gotten?
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Wednesday Gets Inside Your Head.
In other words, I'm going to be annoying and talk about psychology.
Character psychology, that is.
I've been taking AP Psychology this year, and I've found it remarkably helpful with writing (as one of my CP's could tell you. Like, helpful to the annoying level).
But honestly, you have to be in your character's head, right? Well it's a little important to know how a mind works, assuming your character is a human, yeah?
For example, let's take my character from my 2011 Nano, Ember. She says hi.
She had a problematic childhood. And then lived in a forest alone from the age of eight until she was almost 18. Obviously she's going to have psychological effects from that.
Or, we could just say she's weird. ;)
For Ember, she'd grow up without the presence of a lot of people and would therefore be scared of them and not socially adept. She also would think more like an eight-year-old than an eighteen-year-old because that's how she knows to act. She doesn't have the experience and observations of peers as she grows older. Ember would also probably have symptoms of feral child syndrome.
Conveniently, I was learning about all of this in psychology (and sociology) while I was writing my Nano (I did not plan it that way, I swear), but if you don't have a psychology textbook handy, research on the Internet is undeniably a great idea.
Characters will sound way more authentic if you know them really well. And if their brains work the same way ours do.
Unless they're alien. In that case, I would like to know about alien psychology.
(DO you have any alien character?? Or just ones with problems, like me?)
Character psychology, that is.
I've been taking AP Psychology this year, and I've found it remarkably helpful with writing (as one of my CP's could tell you. Like, helpful to the annoying level).
But honestly, you have to be in your character's head, right? Well it's a little important to know how a mind works, assuming your character is a human, yeah?
For example, let's take my character from my 2011 Nano, Ember. She says hi.
She had a problematic childhood. And then lived in a forest alone from the age of eight until she was almost 18. Obviously she's going to have psychological effects from that.
Or, we could just say she's weird. ;)
For Ember, she'd grow up without the presence of a lot of people and would therefore be scared of them and not socially adept. She also would think more like an eight-year-old than an eighteen-year-old because that's how she knows to act. She doesn't have the experience and observations of peers as she grows older. Ember would also probably have symptoms of feral child syndrome.
Conveniently, I was learning about all of this in psychology (and sociology) while I was writing my Nano (I did not plan it that way, I swear), but if you don't have a psychology textbook handy, research on the Internet is undeniably a great idea.
Characters will sound way more authentic if you know them really well. And if their brains work the same way ours do.
Unless they're alien. In that case, I would like to know about alien psychology.
(DO you have any alien character?? Or just ones with problems, like me?)
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