Coming up with names for the various characters in your novel or short story can be a difficult task. Especially for your protagonist, you want the perfect name. Even for your supporting characters, you don't want to just assign some random moniker to each one. Think of books with unique or clever character names like in Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket and you realize the impact names can have. The right name can help identify the character's attributes without even using a single descriptive word about that character. For my novel Vacancy, it took me a long time to come up with names for the few characters in the book. In the early drafts of the first few chapters, I had not finalized names and just used initials, or a simple name like Kat. This was not a good idea, because then I had to go back and change all the "temporary" names to the final names.
For my protagonist, I wanted a formal, slightly nerdy name because that is what the character is. Some names I considered were Robert, Michael, William, but settled on Martin. I wanted to use a name that is usually shortened, such as Rob, Mike, Marty, but because the character insisted on the long version, I thought this would help to make him nerdy.
Instead of thinking up names myself, I needed help, so I turned to some of my favourite movies and novels for names for the rest of my characters, I even looked at baby names books, but they had too many names. One has 100,000 baby names, way too much work. In the end, I got inspiration from movies and novels in the same genre as my book, the apocalypse/zombie genre. So one character is taken from The Stand, by Stephen King, another character is taken from the film The Crazies.
Regardless, it was still not easy to come up with character names and I somewhat agonized over each one. Now that I am working on book two in the Vacancy series, I have to come up with more character names. I think I will turn to movies again as a source of inspiration, but I also found some guidebooks that just list various names that can be used for characters. One of my favourites lists names of pro athletes, It is a simple guide, with a wide variety of names. Here's the link if you are interested. I like the idea of putting "easter eggs" in my novel that ties back to popular movies and novels, but I might also just save myself some time and brain power and use a guide like this one.
http://www.amazon.com/Unique-Character-Names-Authors-Sports/dp/1500150797/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402764685&sr=8-1&keywords=marti+vance
Even still, I will still spend sometime trying to find names that are perfect for my characters.
For my protagonist, I wanted a formal, slightly nerdy name because that is what the character is. Some names I considered were Robert, Michael, William, but settled on Martin. I wanted to use a name that is usually shortened, such as Rob, Mike, Marty, but because the character insisted on the long version, I thought this would help to make him nerdy.
Instead of thinking up names myself, I needed help, so I turned to some of my favourite movies and novels for names for the rest of my characters, I even looked at baby names books, but they had too many names. One has 100,000 baby names, way too much work. In the end, I got inspiration from movies and novels in the same genre as my book, the apocalypse/zombie genre. So one character is taken from The Stand, by Stephen King, another character is taken from the film The Crazies.
Regardless, it was still not easy to come up with character names and I somewhat agonized over each one. Now that I am working on book two in the Vacancy series, I have to come up with more character names. I think I will turn to movies again as a source of inspiration, but I also found some guidebooks that just list various names that can be used for characters. One of my favourites lists names of pro athletes, It is a simple guide, with a wide variety of names. Here's the link if you are interested. I like the idea of putting "easter eggs" in my novel that ties back to popular movies and novels, but I might also just save myself some time and brain power and use a guide like this one.
http://www.amazon.com/Unique-Character-Names-Authors-Sports/dp/1500150797/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402764685&sr=8-1&keywords=marti+vance
Even still, I will still spend sometime trying to find names that are perfect for my characters.