Name My Characters, and possibly give them some appearance-based traits

Wed, 30 Dec 2015 23:05:34 GMT

Genre: just-past-modern fantastic realism meets cyberpunk paranormal romance

Characters: College-age layabout who is handsome and clever, generally quite lucky
Woman a few years older, in Shadowrun she'd be a runner, possibly a street shaman.

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Nano (or other writing!) prep: Track your Words

Thu, 08 Oct 2015 19:16:12 GMT

I was going to write up a post of links to word trackers, but this site has lots of the widgets.

Do you track your wordcount? When you're doing nano, do you use their site exclusively, or do you keep your words somewhere else? A widget tracker? A spreadsheet? What about when you're not doing nano?

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Nano (or other writing!) prep: Good name sites

Tue, 06 Oct 2015 13:54:25 GMT

So, you're writing something! Good, good, that's always a good ~~first step~~ no wait.

So, you're planning on writing something! (or pantsing, in which case come back to this post in November, or whenever you write it ;-)

You probably have characters, and they probably need names.

(I got through two very long chapters of a theoretical serial without naming the characters, once. I'm pretty sure the Finder is just named Finder by now).

Names with Meaning
Behind The Name is the most accurate, comprehensive name site I've found.
Think Baby Names is also pretty good.
20,000 Names has nice lists: "Dark" Names. "Weather" Names. And so on.
Want to name a character appropriately for a historical American era?
the Social Security Database goes back to 1879 with the top names for each year.
Via anke: "In case anyone wants to name someone from Germany, www.beliebte-vornamen.de has lists of the most popular baby names from 1890 to the present. just pick the birth year and see"
And here's a huge resource on historically accurate names: The SCA's name articles
A Name-suggester site ("I like this name." "Try these names.") via meridian_rose

If you can still get your hands on a phone book, that's a great way to pick out surnames.

Or check out Wikipedia's lists of most common surnames by location.

Names with no Meaning
Fourteen Minutes has a lovely random-name-sound generator
Springhole has several name generators
Seventh Sanctum is like the granddaddy of name generators
Chaotic Shiny has quite a few name generators, too.
This one's new to me (Mithril & Mages) but makes some fun names.
Serendipity Generators via meridian_rose

A list of Naming resources via meridian_rose

Baby Name Wizard, via inventrix and Cal's long and useful discussion on Behind the Name and Baby name Wizard.

There! Now that all your male characters are no longer named Jack (or maybe that's just my problem), you're ready to go.

Well, I mean, your characters are ready to go...

...well, at least they have names.

Know any more great sites? Let me know!

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Alder's Grove

Name My Characters, and possibly give them some appearance-based traits

Nano (or other writing!) prep: Track your Words

Nano (or other writing!) prep: Good name sites