McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Author Chats?
meg_evonne:
to simple to identify by location as in middle ages? Sam from YYY for Sam YYY.. or Pam from Foundation Line ZZZ as in Pam ZZZ or even Pam102 ZZZ etc Might help keep the characters straight and their locations in the readers mind. Simple and easy. Could have fun with the isolated groups developing their own names or the others getting unique while the isolated keep to names grounded in 2010 for example.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: meg_evonne on June 25, 2010, 04:37:15 PM ---to simple to identify by location as in middle ages? Sam from YYY for Sam YYY.. or Pam from Foundation Line ZZZ as in Pam ZZZ or even Pam102 ZZZ etc Might help keep the characters straight and their locations in the readers mind. Simple and easy.
--- End quote ---
Hits scale issues, though. You come from a city of a billion people, you do kind of have to specify "no, it's Fred from 93274546 _West_ Pico della Mirandola" and that makes them long enough that you might as well have longer names to begin with.
There's also the issue of: here is a thousand-person mission from Sirius seven hundred and fifty light years to the Hinder Stars. Thirty of these people are called Fred and come from Bolshograd. Precisely how many people in the Hinder Stars will find "Fred the guy from Dorian Grey Street, Bolshograd, Sirius" suitably distinct from "Fred from Bosie Douglas Street, Bolshograd, Sirius" when most of what's in their heads is "OMG travellers from another star" ?
(I have been using "Fred" and "George" as my first two default name fill-ins for examples since I was eight or nine; no reference to our own Iago or to the sodding Weasley Twins is intended. I suspect it came from reading something about the chunk of European history that had rather a lot of monarchs with similar and overlapping full names. Likewise "Bolshograd" as a rough translation of "big city"._
Kali:
Reminder bump! Tomorrow, Sunday June 27th, in the Author_Craft chat room at 4pm Eastern, we'll be getting together to discuss all things authorish, including names, software, and whether or not 'authorish' is an appropriate grammatical construction.
Kali:
The universe is trying to tell me something.
I'll be there when I can, but we have a big blob of red on the radar screen that's oozing in our direction. Either that, or it's raspberry jam... No, no it's definitely a thunderstorm. Since I'm still on dial-up, I tend to fry modems if I stay connected during t-storms. Start without me! I'll be there when this passes.
Ink Slinger:
:( I had to bail early! This is a great idea though. Thanks.
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