Boarders writing a Novel Part 12.

[Bluetiger]

Liger (or Lyger) is an awesome name for any character. ;)

Have you ever heard of Liliger? ( Cub of ligress and tiget) In my opinion they are the most beautiful animals in the Universe. They are more beautiful than lions, like Valyrians are more beautiful than humans.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120921-liliger-liger-lion-tiger-big-cats-animals-science/

[Myrddin]

(almost) All my character names start from real world, historical, or mythological names. If they come out similar to what someone else has used, it's because we're all digging in the same mine. :)

In my opinion, names that are created by throwing random letters together look false most of the time. There are exceptions, of course. But for the most part, names should have some sort of meaning at its core (when using real names), as well as "look" like the character on the page.

ETA: I use Word to do all my writing. When I got my iPad, I tried a bunch of different aps, and didn't really like any of them. Then when MS released Word for iPad, it had everything I needed, so now now pay $6 a month for Office 365, which also allows me to share files between devices using either the Cloud or Dropbox..

[EruditeFool]

I just use names that are real names but are generally uncommon.

How many people anymore name their kids Titus or Siegfried? Exactly.

I also created one for a future book by taking the name "Karen" and modding it to "Karina". It felt surprisingly natural for a name.

[Myrddin]

I think my most made up name is "Nashlin"

My god-daughter's name is Nashla (half Ecuadorian, half Lebanese), so I took her name and just altered the end. I'm not sure where her mother found it (i searched for meaning and origins but found nothing), but it's a cool name.

[First of My Name]

Most of my names are made up, when I think of a character I just keep trying names until it 'clicks.' Sometimes I use little tricks to help it along. For example I needed a name for a female pirate, and I borrowed from dangerous fish. So it became Cavana Barradis, after the piranha and the barracuda.

Sometimes I'll just select a letter from the alphabet and work from there on out.

[Snikt5]

I tend to swing between altering normal names to make them cooler: Jack becomes Jacquard, Martin becomes Mertyn, Michael becomes Mikel and using inspiration from around the room: Lenovo laptop became Lenolva, my wife's Sophie Kinsella book became Kisella, Samsung became Hamsun etc.

[The Marquis de Leech]

The big thing to remember with names is keeping them culturally appropriate. If you have a society where people are called things like X'verios and Ymigh, don't call your protagonist Sam.

[iiandyiiii]

Wrapping up the final edits and cover art for my second novel, a fantasy-satire-homage to ASOIAF, Game of Thrones, and the internet fandom. Unlike my first novel, I outlined the entire plot in advance, and wrote quite a bit faster.

[Andrew Gilfellon]

Yes. It's normal self doubt.

If you thought what you were writing was awesome right off the bat then you'd be Stanek.

[First of My Name]

You know I feel like I have okay ideas but my actual writing, my prose and such, is just kind of shit. I write and write and I've always read a lot but it doesn't seem to get any better. Do any of you guys ever struggle with problems like this?

I feel like that most of the time, in spite of what others say. I'd say it's normal.

[iiandyiiii]

Yep. Self-doubt is normal. This is how I see it: I just love to write, and plan to continue to write and release my books whether or not they're big successes or not. I hope I'm good at it, but there's a possibility I'm not. My first book got pretty good reviews, but there were definitely a few people who didn't like it -- and that's okay. If you enjoy writing, then write. If you don't enjoy it, then stop.

[Zoë Sumra]

Arguably, if you can stop, you're not cut out to be a writer.

[Weeping Sore]

Arguably, if you can stop, you're not cut out to be a writer.

Tell that to Harper Lee.

[henderson]

Yesterday, I published HONDUS POINTE, my first fantasy novella, on Amazon.

[iiandyiiii]

Congrats, Henderson! Best of luck on sales.

[red snow]

I'm not writing a novel but a comic. Yesterday I discovered that plotting that a character dies is far easier than writing said character. I'm already feeling bad for having to kill him. I'm hoping it means I'm on the right track as I delibearately wanted to make his death substantial by investing interest in him. Still it's a weird process to go through.

[red snow]

You know I feel like I have okay ideas but my actual writing, my prose and such, is just kind of shit. I write and write and I've always read a lot but it doesn't seem to get any better. Do any of you guys ever struggle with problems like this?

Practice makes perfect. I mostly look back on scrawls and cringe. Every now and then I see a paragraph or (on a rare occasion) a page and think "I like it at least". I'd urge you to find a good sentence and work up from that.

[Ser Fingerbones]

Currently in the earliest stages of writing a historical fantasy novel, very much inspired by ASOIAF. Have written one chapter (about 2050 words), and I have a number of ideas of where to take it from here. Going for a multiple viewpoint idea.

The basic story for the royal family is that the king has died (King Temidor) and never confirmed his heir, as his eldest boys are twins - Hectarion and Cassion, and both are set on sitting the throne. I have another idea about a smith's son (Pete) travelling to the capital, and the descendants of long-forgotten vikings returning to their homeland (Pete's island - Odain) and wanting revenge on the realm for exiling them. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into it. I thought that posting about it here will motivate me to work on it a bit more.

[henderson]

Congrats, Henderson! Best of luck on sales.

Thank you very, much for the kind words, iiandyiiii.

[Zoë Sumra]

For a while I’ve been chipping away at my series’ next instalment – the next one that has historically needed drafting, at any rate – and I’m now working at it in a serious way: it is starting to develop a spine, though it still has a few massive holes where I am dead certain of points A and C but not the event B that bridges the two. Per the current plan it has two intertwining timelines involving the same characters at different stages of plot development, merging into one at the end. If I pull it off it’ll be good – full of mirroring situations, with the one current non-time-bound character available to comment thereon. If I don’t, it’ll be two books, one per timeline, the first one being quite short and ending on a cliffhanger (I don’t like to end on cliffhangers. I’m writing a series but would like each book to be a coherent piece).

I think the difficult bit of writing something this episodic is deciding what to work on next. To an extent, one of the timelines is more like writing six consecutive novelettes than part of a novel, and my short fiction structuring ability’s always been dicey.

I may have some good news about Sailor to a Siren to share quite soon – if I do, I might need to add something between Sailor and Rough Diamond, as a fifteen year plot gap could be considered to need a bridge. A while back I started something set about three years after Sailor, which could do with resurrecting, once I’ve got round the difficulty of how to un-kill one particular character.