In my dreams, people never have names...
May. 9th, 2005 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranIn my dreams, people never have names.
Even when they come fully formed, with surprising personalities and insights. Looking at the stories I have on the to-be-written pile, names are my biggest problem. Hardly any of the characters waiting to be brought to life have any more than a placeholder ("the Lord of Rivertown", "the Demon-Aided Assassin", etc). Even in The Silver Bowl, the lack of names for supporting characters is something of a restriction for my writing. I suspect that a lot of the scenes in Chapter 1 would come out very differently if I knew the names, as Dalmin would, of every person in the village.
In real life, remembering names is also a problem for me. I'm pretty much guaranteed to forget a stranger's name within seconds, unless I really make a conscious effort.
Thinking up names slows me down. It stops me dead in the middle of writing scenes and sometimes it even causes me to write scenes differently to avoid having to think up names on the spot. Using placeholders doesn't seem to work at all, although, come to think of it, even in The Silver Bowl, there is only one character, Masamee, whose name is so much a part of her character that I wouldn't change it. Actually some of the other characters probably WILL have to get renamed - I'm like the name "Dalmin" less and less now, as I try to build a Kor vocabulary to match it.
It's only just occured to me that this is something that I do badly - and that if I could be better at it, I'd be able to write a whole lot faster and easier. And, strangely, inventing names used to be something that I used to do well. I loved almost all the names in Circle in the Stars and Ketorek. I think it's something to do with language and worldbuilding again. If I can imagine at least the sound and the feel of the language, then the names will come to me. If I can't, it's a sign that things aren't fully formed yet, that I don't know enough about the story world to bluff convincingly about it. I've never been a big fan of preparing background before writing a story, but I'm starting to think that, for names at least, it might be worth a try.
Even when they come fully formed, with surprising personalities and insights. Looking at the stories I have on the to-be-written pile, names are my biggest problem. Hardly any of the characters waiting to be brought to life have any more than a placeholder ("the Lord of Rivertown", "the Demon-Aided Assassin", etc). Even in The Silver Bowl, the lack of names for supporting characters is something of a restriction for my writing. I suspect that a lot of the scenes in Chapter 1 would come out very differently if I knew the names, as Dalmin would, of every person in the village.
In real life, remembering names is also a problem for me. I'm pretty much guaranteed to forget a stranger's name within seconds, unless I really make a conscious effort.
Thinking up names slows me down. It stops me dead in the middle of writing scenes and sometimes it even causes me to write scenes differently to avoid having to think up names on the spot. Using placeholders doesn't seem to work at all, although, come to think of it, even in The Silver Bowl, there is only one character, Masamee, whose name is so much a part of her character that I wouldn't change it. Actually some of the other characters probably WILL have to get renamed - I'm like the name "Dalmin" less and less now, as I try to build a Kor vocabulary to match it.
It's only just occured to me that this is something that I do badly - and that if I could be better at it, I'd be able to write a whole lot faster and easier. And, strangely, inventing names used to be something that I used to do well. I loved almost all the names in Circle in the Stars and Ketorek. I think it's something to do with language and worldbuilding again. If I can imagine at least the sound and the feel of the language, then the names will come to me. If I can't, it's a sign that things aren't fully formed yet, that I don't know enough about the story world to bluff convincingly about it. I've never been a big fan of preparing background before writing a story, but I'm starting to think that, for names at least, it might be worth a try.
