Naming Characters

My (limited) experience has shown me that if you write a lot and have a lot of characters, you're eventually gonna meet someone with the same name as one of your characters.

I have a lot of trouble with names. I find the ones that you think up on the spot without putting any thought into it work the best. They're probably quite common and boring but once you get used to them, they just work.

I find that over thinking and trying to come up with a name is just a waste of energy. Still, that doesn't stop me from doing it. I could spend hours thinking up names and never manage to get one!

Anyway, back to the point. The other day I was looking at an old plan for a screenplay i was thinking of writing and there were only four characters and one of them has the same name as a friend of mine. Of course, I didn't know the friend when I chose the names. This, luckily, doesn't really matter as I don't intend to write that script anymore.

But in Meowsie I have a character called Stacy. She's a minor character, but quite an important one. But since naming her I have become friends with a girl called Stacey. And now I'm so used to writing her name that I keep spelling my character's name Stacey rather than Stacy. Only a minor problem, but that's not the point.

Anyway this post is getting a little long and is a bit scattered and nonsensical, so I'll cut the final part short.

Meowsie has lots of characters. I've had to write a list of them all just so I don't forget their names, which has happened before. There are five main characters (three of which are main-main characters (is there a word for that?)), about four secondary characters, lots of tertiary characters and a good handful of villains. So it gets a bit confusing sometimes.

That's what you get, though, when you develop a whole world for your books. I'll touch on this in a later post, but for now, see ya.