What’s in a name? Well, if you are writing a fictional novel, probably everything. After all, if your characters are not believable, your novel will not be believable. If you choose the right names for your characters, you are halfway home on setting the scene and using people’s inner stereotypes to help them visualize and relate with the character.
If this is something that is challenging for you and it has been for me as a writer, then I would like to recommend a very excellent book for you. This is indeed a book that is in my personal writing library bookcase, and one that I may not use very often, but when I do it sure comes in handy. The name of this book is;
“Writer’s Digest; Character Naming Sourcebook” by Sherrilyn Kenyon, 2005
The author of this book recommends going to baby naming sites on the Internet by the year based on the age of your character. If you’re writing historical fiction she recommends going to the genealogy records on the Internet for that past period, and era. This book is great because she has the book set up by culture, nation, and it has a reverse lookup index to help you in choosing names for your characters.
In fact, I can remember when I was creating a science fiction work trying to figure out the names for characters because these would be other than human characters – I was completely stuck actually. I did not start writing the novel because I couldn’t come up with the characters names. This is a real dilemma and if you are a fictional writer, I’m sure you have the same problem creating believable names. This is a great book and one you should have in your writing library. Indeed, hope you please consider all this.
How to Name Characters in Fictional Works - A Book Review
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