A Character By Any Other Name...

...or any name, for that matter....

If you're like me (or even if you aren't), you may have some story bones in your mind, a few plots floating around on the edge of your thoughts, some type of fictional writing in your cells every moment of the day, but until you find that perfect name for your character, you'll never get that first paragraph on paper to your satisfaction. (what can I say?!).

Looking for fun places to check out names for my heroine, I came across a wonderful page of naming websites. Really thorough and good stuff...my personal fave was the ethnic tabs for names at the 20000names.com site.

If you can't find a character name you like after checking out all these sites...well, I can't help!

Writing-World.com's Character Naming Resources

Happy Naming and writing!

Beth

Characters. Again.

Yeah, again.

So I've decided to work with this lovely young lady character who's been haunting me for at least a year, on and off (mostly on when I decide to write fiction and off when I don't). I keep thinking I know her, only because I know the portion of her that will show up in my story (because it's scarily similar to myself in that respect), but this weekend I've been realizing new things about her: she just earned a degree (Masters? Ph.D?) in Russian (or some Eastern European language), she's had a rough go of it with her dad (along with her siblings) and has this immense crush on a real bad boy who's gonna, of course, be the hero.

Problem is, I know the story structure, just not how to get deep into her depths. In my search to solve my own character problems, I'll share with you a few links that have me thinking...

Four Methods for Interviewing Your Characters by Laurie Schnebly-Campbell (I can't believe I didn't have this one posted already--Laurie's stuff is priceless)


Seven Common Character Types by Terry Ervin II

Create A Character: Bringing Personality to Your Characters by Leslie Oliver

Happy character creating,
Beth

You Say Plot, I Say Character

From an innocent question from a non-romance fiction writing friend, I've started thinking about that elusive question I managed to snuff out when I gave up novel-length fiction writing for freelancing (but the question was never quite answered)

Plot or character? Which is more important? How do you write?

I'm going to go into thoughtful introspection with this on my other blog (www.writer-in-progress.blogspot.com) over the weekend sometime, but in the meantime, here are a few articles to make you think about which you consider most important, how it impacts your writing, etc.

And note--neither is better than the other as long as it results in you finishing the damn book!

Character Driven fiction by John Morgan Wilson

Character Driven or Action Driven? by Martha Alderson (who's penned a terrific book on plotting: Blockbuster Plots, Pure and Simple)

Creating Characters from Plot by Melanie Anne Phillips

That should be enough for now--get reading so you can get writing!

Happy Plotting (or Character-izing),
Beth