Fantastic names and where to find them - Alex English

What's in a name? I find that names say so much about a person that I can’t get really see my characters until I've christened them. But fantasy characters deserve fantastic names. Once I have one, they spring to life before me.

I keep a little notebook of juicy words, most of which I've snaffled while reading poetry, and this comes in very handy when coming up with fantasy character surnames. However, I do also use generators when I'm in a pinch (or just fancy some fun). Here are a few methods that I've tried:

1 Look on the map

It was when I was listening to Philip Pullman‘s audiobook The Collectors that this idea came to me. Pullman had named two of his characters Horley and Grinstead. As a former resident of Reigate these names are very familiar – Horley and East Grinstead are both nearby towns in Surrey/Sussex.

There are plenty of peculiar British town names, but of course you could use any location. Snodsbury, Pucklechurch and Picklescott are all fabulous. Mudford Sock sounds like a ready-made character.

2 Construct a compound noun

These work particularly well in fantasy and this method is a favourite of mine for coming up with surnames. In my current book I have a Quickthorn, a Daggerwing (which also happens to be a butterfly variety, another great source) and a Milkweed, to name a few.

This generator gave me Gravelweather, Stepslinks and Skyflake. Some for the notebook!

3 Try the Roald Dahl method

For a more commonplace character, you might try using your Roald Dahl name – take your grandparent’s first name and add it to the first thing that catches your eye. 

I’m Arthur Cushion.

4 Consult your inner librarian

Your librarian name is the first name of the oldest person you know followed by a last name composed of the adjective that describes how you move through a room combined with the main ingredient from the last sandwich you ate. 

Mine is Sarah Stompavocado. Read the full twitter thread for lots of fabulous ideas!

5 Get real

On a more serious note, for those of us attempting to represent cultures other than our own, it's worth spending the time to get names right, rather than sticking to what we might think we know. A recent CLPE report found a disproportionate number of 'diverse' characters named Jasmine.  

I find this name generator useful for generating realistic contemporary names, and it can be adjusted by age group and country of name origin. If in doubt it's always best to ask for help from someone in that community. 


How do you come up with names for your fantastic characters?


Alex English is a graduate of Bath Spa University's MA Writing for Young People. Her new middle-grade series SKY PIRATES launches in July 2020 with Simon & Schuster. 

Her picture books Yuck said the Yak, Pirates Don't Drive Diggers and Mine Mine Mine said the Porcupine are published by Maverick Arts Publishing. More picture books are forthcoming in 2021/2022.
 
www.alexenglish.co.uk

When the urge to give up is overwhelming - by Rowena House

Back in February this year, in the run up to the launch of The Goose Road, the work-in-progress stalled and I was seriously thinking about quitting the world of fiction. Three months later I’m up to my ears in historical research again, and carefully crafting the opening scenes of Book 2.

Why the change of heart?

Because in the intervening months I came face-to-face with the reality of not writing another novel – and ran away screaming.

I won’t go into details about the alternative career path I thought I could follow, beyond saying it would have been full-time for at least 18 months, then, potentially, given me some free time to write.

What I will admit is that on Day One of the initial training course I found myself in tears, because beneath the surface of the rational decision ‘to get a proper job’ there were demons who turned out to be worthy of Hieronymus Bosch.

These demons demanded more than time in return for a wage. My public behaviour and the sort of values I would have had to promote were also prescribed. When faced with such a loss of autonomy I couldn’t go through with it.

There were other, more practical factors at play as well, but standing at that cross-roads, with a yes/no decision to make, I saw more clearly than ever what a privilege it is to be able to express one’s worldview through fiction, and how much I’d regret turning my back on the opportunity to do it again.

So where next?

In terms of the work-in-progress it’s back to France, this time in 1944.

It is sad to be leaving the First World War behind after more than four years dwelling there in my imagination, but the Great War’s impact on France fed directly into the country’s role in the 1939-45 conflict, so the knowledge acquired for The Goose Road certainly isn’t going to waste.

In terms of character, I’m making deliberate efforts to differentiate my new heroine from the protagonist in The Goose Road, and finding the OCEAN personality profiling system hugely useful once more.

I blogged on ABBA before about these Big Five character traits and how they can be useful when plotting epiphanies. The link in case anyone’s interested is here.

One thing I didn’t expect back in February was how much the fun and games of launching The Goose Road would liberate me to write Book 2.

In fact, the month of guest blogs and pinging around social media all but exhausted my interest in Angelique’s story, which isn’t exactly helpful when the marketing effort for the book has in many ways only just begun. But it is great in terms of engaging emotionally with Manon, the heroine of Book 2. A good writer friend told me this might happen. So thanks, Eden. You were right!

Plotting Book 2 prior to the launch did, however, yield another unexpected benefit: because I knew that the heart of this story was something I truly cared about, the decision to return to it whole-heartedly was a positive, concrete and informed choice, not a mere cop out when confronted with those ‘proper job’ demons.

This little lesson might well not apply another time, nor to anyone else, since most of us feel our way into a story through instinct, trial and error, rather than by thinking about themes up front. But given how tough this business is, I wonder if delving into the heart and soul of our works-in-progress might not be a useful trick to maintain – or regain – momentum whenever the urge to give up becomes overwhelming.

 

Happy writing!

Website: rowenahouse.com
Twitter: @houserowena

BUILDING A CHARACTER FROM THE FEET UP by Val Tyler

Tomorrow, I’m going to a wedding. This is the long-awaited day for two people I love very deeply and I’ve been looking forward to it with both excitement and trepidation.

I am excited because weddings can be joyous occasions and this one, put together on a small budget, will be full of love and happiness. I have been involved with some of the arrangements and have no doubt the day will be creative, idiosyncratic and very wonderful.

But I am full of trepidation because of my shoes 

Don’t laugh! Being on my feet most of the day is tiring. All that standing, walking and dancing for hours on end demands the right footwear. Normally, that would imply slippers inside the house and trainers outside. But, when I am at a wedding my footwear needs to be more than comfortable. It also needs to be appropriate, stylish and elegant. It means wearing the dreaded high heels.

Put simply, high heels hurt. I am not accustomed to them. At a wedding, of course, I try not to show the agony as I dance or ‘work the room’. My smile is genuine, but it also masks the pain in my lower limbs and after it’s all over, a trek to the nearest station can be hell.

I want to enjoy this wedding from beginning to end and so I decided to go in to training. I started slowly and built up an hour at a time until I could wear heels all day long without any adverse affect. For the best part of a month, I have worn heels in the house and outside. I still wear walking boots when yomping across the hills because I’m not that much of an idiot, but at all other times my slippers and trainers have stayed on the shelf and I have worn shoes with heels. Modest heels to be sure – I’ve never been a six-inch stiletto girl – but heels none the less.

This has made a huge difference. Not only have my muscles strengthened, but something else has changed. I stand taller, obviously, but also straighter. My posture is better. I feel smarter and, because of this, I’ve changed the day-to-day clothes I wear. I’ve discarded my slopping-around-the-house trousers and wear the clothes I usually where when I am going out.

It was Alec Guinness, I think, who said he built a character from the shoes up. He’s absolutely right. In my heels I feel more like a businesswoman and, consequently, I instinctively pull back my shoulders and, believe it or not, start planning my day in a more organised fashion.

If this is what happens with me, then maybe it’s the same for the characters in my stories. I don’t think I’ve often described the kind of shoes any of them wear, but if you asked me, I could tell you exactly what was on their feet.

Usually, I start building the character from the inside with his/her emotions, feelings and thoughts, and possibly a physical element like freckles or wild hair. The shoes will follow, but only in my head. I don’t often mention them. I wonder what kind of difference it would make if I began with the shoes.

Trainers tell me the wearer is sporty. Kitten heels suggests a certain feminine cheekiness, while stilettos offer glamour. Wearing indoor slippers in the street suggest a kind of sloppiness, court shoes hints at the middle class, and walking boots tell me the wearer is a country person.

Is this approach worth a try or would I be stereotyping? I have a female friend who is very high up in the professional world. She wears trainers to work. Smart trainers to be sure, expensive trainers I have no doubt, but trainers none the less. I wear trainers to be comfortable and not because I am sporty. A country friend wore her very-worn hiking boots in to a smart London shopping street to try on her bridesmaid dress and felt totally out of place simply walking down the road. She was the only one dressed for the country. Does this tell me something about her character or, if I wrote it, would I be pigeonholing her?

Maybe an actor can start his/her characterisation from the shoes up because the character is already fully formed. When I write, I am creating the character, allowing the plot to draw out different character facets until he/she is fully rounded; at least, I hope they are.

When I started this blog, I thought I might finish by deciding to change the way I start developing my characters, but I don’t think so. I will take more notice of their feet because it is always a good idea to challenge the way we write, but I don’t think I’ll be starting there.

In the meantime, think of me tomorrow in my heels. I wonder whether I will return to slippers and trainers the very next day, or perhaps I will stick with the new me.

I'll let you know.

The Unknown Unknown – Anna Wilson

At Christmas I was browsing in a bookshop for ideas for a present for my husband, and I came across a pamphlet entitled The Unknown Unknown by Mark Forsyth. I, of course, read it before I gave it to my husband – what is the point of buying books for people for Christmas if you can’t enjoy reading them yourself before wrapping them?

Forsyth’s essay is based on the premise famously set by Donald Rumsfeld, the American Secretary of Defense during George W Bush’s administration. He stated that:

“There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say that there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.”

Forsyth goes on to say that this applies perfectly to reading:

“I know that I’ve read Great Expectations: it’s a known known. I know that I haven’t read War and Peace: it is a known unknown to me [. . .] But there are also books that I’ve never heard of; and, because I’ve never heard of them, I’ve no idea that I haven’t read them.”

It was while running workshops in schools last week that I saw that writing, too, is an unknown unknown, because writing is, of course, an exploration, a foray into the unknown: an expedition without a map. We write stories we had no idea existed until we come to write them.

This is particularly true, I feel, when working with children who believe they are not natural storytellers. This might be because they have not had much success in writing stories in school, or because they don’t enjoy writing, or perhaps because they feel hindered by language barriers, for example. They panic at the sight of the blank page: this is where workshops can be so beneficial in unlocking stories, in demystifying the unknown unknown.

Last week I was leading workshops with children of all ages, nationalities and language abilities in schools in Istanbul. We were exploring such ideas as “how to build a character” and “how to get started on a story”. The children all came with a blank sheet of paper, knowing nothing about how they would spend the next 40 minutes. As I waited for everyone to settle down, some children told me that they were not good at stories and that they had no ideas. I told them not to worry and assured them that with a couple of prompts, they would soon be fizzing with stories. But really, I too had no idea what would happen. Maybe the children would go away with their paper still blank. Maybe they would be paralyzed by nerves or fear or a simple lack of vocabulary, as many of them had English as a second, third or even fourth language.

We started one workshop by looking at a collection of random objects I had brought with me, which included, amongst other things, a badger’s skull, a necklace, a set of old keys, an asthma inhaler and an iPhone box. I encouraged the children to choose a couple of objects and think who might own them, what they might do with them, where they might have found them or from whom they might have received them. Within minutes I had children telling me stories about evil mermaids who used the inhaler to make humans breathe underwater so that they could be lured to the mermaids’ cave; people who were drawn into an iPhone app and transported to another world; an old professor who collected skulls and who discovered that one skull, when he touched it, allowed him to travel in time. Soon the children were scribbling away, either having a go at forming sentences or making mind-maps or drawing comic strips of their stories.

Not one single child knew they had those ideas in them before they came to the workshop, just as I have never truly known how any of my books is going to work out until I sit down to write it. I have encountered characters that have reared up from the darkest corners of my imagination and often wondered, ‘Where did you spring from?’ and have found ways of resolving plots that I did not have in mind when I first sat down to write.

Writing is a series of unknown unknowns; it is, as Joseph Conrad says about a blank space on a map, “a white patch for a boy [girl] to dream gloriously over”.

The blank page can of course instill fear, and conjures up that dreaded phrase, “writer’s block”, but for as long as I can see it as that “white patch”, it will continue to hold sway with its magic over me.

www.annawilson.co.uk