It depends on the story your writing.

For me, I tend to write in the fantasy world so I tend to use a bit obscure names that I think fit. For example, one of my worlds is named Illyria and that's a real place that I know even Billy Shakespear used as a far off, mystical place. Or I take a name just twist it a little (taking "Libya" and making it "Lybree") or as someone said, naming it after a person is always a nice way. For example, a town I have is called "Casimir" (since the meaning fits the town) which is the name of a person in real life surprisingly.

Me, I'm still young (not even twenty) but I love writing. Whether it's a tiny project I'll drop within a short while, a few skits, a requested script for VAing auditions (Nothing long of course and just for people on forum projects), fanfiction, plotting future projects (*nervous laugh* a LOT of projects....) and of course my big project, my fantasy novel. It's not like I'm a devoted prodigy that can't live without her work but I'd never be able to drop it completely. I write for myself mostly because I love my characters and my imagination won't let their stories die completely even if I don't spend all my time working on it. Would I like to get published? Hell yes. But who knows? My work may be crap for all I know. I'm not claiming to be talented.

Now, as for what this person would have to say to convince me to quit, they would have to try very hard. I'm a stubborn person sadly. I've been working hard on things like my big project and quitting even though I know it'd never get published is a even bigger waste than continuing to work and not get anything in return (physically at least). If anything, if this were someone like an older, experianced, writer, I'd say, "Thank you for being honest with me. Could you please tell me how to improve my work instead of expecting me to quit completely?"

Weird, I saw a couple of copies of "Proven Guilty" paperback at a bookstore this weekend.

The character just shows up inside my head  one day and says,  "HEY! Oy! *Waves arms* Listen to me!"

That pretty much fits most of my characters . My heroine for the story I'm working on came from some random character I was working on for an RP but then she kind of put into a lot of ideas that fit her story to explain why she is the person she is. Then before I know it other characters (like the main one responsible for setting her down the road of crap she has to trudge through) end up appearing in my head and on the paper usually the way they want. It's kind of odd. Usually I have an idea of a character I want and try to plan it out with said character including giving them back stories, appearances, names that could or could not be tentative based on what they originally came to me as but when I actually start to write them they change a lot than what I intended. However, usually I like the change because it feels more natural but if they go too far I can pull them back a bit.

My favorite example of this is one of my primary characters, Hilliard. Originally, though he was a charismatic leader his problem was he was going to be a shameless, beat up upon, funny flirt. But because he ended up being noble born he ended up having a certain air that gave him class and  when he flirted it was usually done as a gentleman. And he never got hit like I wanted him too, shame, because the character I got from writing ended up having traits and characteristics that made Hilliard himself that didn't match up with some of his original traits.

I was wondering if the concept of sharing characters with other authors if it is a particularly good idea or other people's thoughts on it.

For me, I've got a character in my story (secondary character) that is kind of like an alter universe version of one of my fellow writer's/friend's that was granted with permission. Or for him he said he was planning of having alternate universe versions of my two main characters for my primary story appear as short cameos on the battlefield in one of his books and for his first book he's writing he borrowed a character of mine I actually liked a fair bit called Madam Butterfly (still granted with permission). Likewise, my sister for her story has a short appearance of two of my "villains" in the past world of her characters as well as the concept of the two Empires from my story running under the explanation that ties the two stories as "In the realm of the Universe there are different worlds with different stories and people. For a split moment of existence these two world's stories crossed."

The problem I find is sometimes having to find ways of dealing with said crossover character like when I write a situation as well as the responses for the character Ody based on what I have read of my friend's work and what he tells me and he gets really haughty at me saying something along the lines of "NO! That's not him at all!". When I'm left responding (quite skeptically) with asking him what he thinks the character would do instead only to give me something that fits the realm of his story (like Ody is somehow a master of weapon dances, several fighting styles, half breeds and his swords are ALIVE) and me having to remind him in the universe of my story magic and demons and all that have a different way of running while trying to find compromises to make it "satisfy" him but keep it within to realm of reality. Likewise, when my sister borrows my universe even for a sort portion of the story it's very hard to work out since she has different views on how my Empires should be and how her characters fit into it all as well as mine. It's not as bad as with my friend but there are certain clashing views when she wants a character of hers to go over to the more "evil" of the two Empires to try and convert people when in the scenario worked out with my characters (that are supposed to be on the opposite side based on what she wants) but then she realizes there's a problem since my characters are on the "lesser evil" side. Which of course leads to arguments on how it works to fit into the scenarios planned but fit the history of that one point in the two worlds.

So, do people think it's too much of a hassle of using other author's characters? Good idea, bad idea, why it is, just what do people think of it?