#how to name a character

[creativepromptsforwriting]

How to name your characters

do not repost

Choosing a character's name is an important part of creating a story. You want people to remember your characters and the first step is the name. But how do you choose the perfect name?

Two things to keep in mind:

Clarity: Having names in a story that are the same or similar (and it not being a plotpoint) can be very confusing for the reader and especially in the beginning, this can hinder them in their reading. Memorability: Do you want your character to have an iconic name that everyone can immediately attribute to your story?

Unique names

There are a lot of memes about characters with very unique names (especially in YA novels). And if there isn't a good explanation for why their parents would name them Sunshine Bentley I would personally try to use a bit more common names. Character names don't need to be something unique for people to recognize them easily. Bella, Edward and Jacob are not unique names and you probably still know who I am talking about.

More questions to answer:

Association: Do you want people to associate something with the name? Another fictional character or a historic person?

Fitting: Should the name fit the person? Or should the name not fit the person, should the name even feel uncomfortable for the character? Also: Does the name fit the story you are trying to tell?

Length: The length of a name, especially if they are called by that name without abbreviation can give a different vibe to a character.

Nickname: Is that person called by another name?

Theme: Do you want the names in the story (or at least some of them) to fit a theme? Example: Sisters named after flowers, a group of people with names of historic figures.

You should also keep in mind the genre of your story, what era it plays in and the place/language those names should fit in.

More: How to choose a first name | How to choose a last name | How to use nicknames

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#writeblr #how to name a character #naming a character #how to write #writers on tumblr #writing community #writing advice #writing help

[nomohmoss]

#genshin impact #fanart #artists on tumblr #barbara #barbara pegg #kaeya #kaeya alberich #raiden shogun #ei #scaramouche #wanderer #diluc #diluc ragnvindr #al haitham #kaveh #chongyun #yae miko #not me looking at the almost finished pic and thinking well i wonder how it would look with a background #and then drawing albeit messily a bg for every character #also not mw looking at the tags and thinking i can add more titles and names

[kommsterkun]

Also I have still been writing, finishing up the last main character's character profile.

After this I'm gonna do some research to finalize some ideas on the magic systems, I think it's gonna be pretty sick.

Also no, I still don't know any of my main characters names. Still working on it.

#writing #how to name a character

[alfheimr]

the L in law stands for LOVED...its his birthday:)

#one piece #trafalgar law #i. i admit i dont know how to tag his family given his parents dont have names #trafalgar lami #donquixote rosinante #bepo #shachi #penguin #heart pirates #does anyone else get embarrassed tagging a bunch of characters at once. well anyway #the first one is pulled from my personal childhood experiences exploring tidepools in the pnw. theyre cold!!!!!!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy Thistle Debut Day!

#dungeon meshi #Thistle #Old dungeon meshi fans remember the days when it was ambiguous what gender Thistle was. #Now we know Thistle uses he/him pronouns but in my heart Thistle is still non-binary. Clowngender elf with poor coping skills. #I hope the anime-only watchers know that this is a character to keep an eye on. #Love (in it's many forms) and desire (in it's many forms) is the main course of Dungeon Meshi and THIS silly jester? #My goodness. What a perfect encapsulation of how one can hurt other's so deeply in the name of love. #The actions we take to 'protect' other's is often the route to doing the most harm. #Love is letting go. Sometimes that means control and sometimes that means saying farewell forever to someone.

[agentravensong]

thinking about how the extra area added on to a pacifist run of undertale, the true lab, is about alphys's past mistakes. how it ends with the story reaffirming that, despite the pain she's caused, the thing that matters is that she has now made the choice to do the right thing. she's still worthy of her friends' love.

thinking about how undertale doesn't expect the player to get a pacifist ending for the first time. how it's more likely than not that the player will kill toriel the first time they battle her, how lots of players don't initially figure out how to end undyne's fight without killing her, etc. what it expects — not even expects, really, but hopes — is that the player, if they care enough, will use their canonically acknowledged power over time to make up for those mistakes.

no matter how many neutral runs a player has done before committing to the pacifist run, the thing that matters to the characters, to the story, is that you've chosen, now, to do the right thing.

compared to alphys, the player honestly gets off lightly, in that you're the only one (other than flowey) who really remembers any harm you might have caused. and any direct guilting the game could have done about it is long past at this point. instead, as undertale often does, it makes its point via parallels: alphys caused harm, and she knows it. she has committed to being better. in doing so, she has unlocked for herself a better ending to her story. and she deserves it. she's forgiven.

those structural narrative parallels are all over undertale, if you know where to look. and that's one of the things that makes it so fuckin' good.

#undertale #alphys #true lab #this inspired by a mutual's alphys posting #and a discord convo i had a couple weeks back about ut's stance on ''punishing'' the player vs the monsters for their actions #and thoughts i've had generally post a certain fangame with a color in its name about just how well ut is structured as a narrative #everyone rightfully praises toby fox's character writing but stuff like this i think flies under the radar a bit by comparison #and it deserves to be appreciated #there's obvious Lore reasons why the true lab is only visited in a pacifist run (what's revealed about chara and flowey) #but this is the other half of it: the message of alphys's story hits hardest on a paci route post neutral runs #toby fox is a good writer more often than not

[smokestarrules]

#was talking to one of my siblings about this a few days ago and it really stuck with me. for me I will not make the connection that this #character and I share a name unless someone says something to me. otherwise I'll realize it eventually but it will take a While #like. thats [name]. that's not me. that's [name]?? #but my sibling says that they're actually taken out of the story for a bit if a character with their name is introduced because it's so #strange for their brain to process. which is So interesting to me #very curious to see how this ends up #smokey speaks #polls #500 #1k

[lylahammar]

Zorella, the centaur pop queen ✨

Thank you to everyone who helped me by voting on her final design in the poll from last week! I'm so so so happy with how she turned out 🥰

#I imagine her music sounds something like a happy medium between Sza and Ashnikko :3 #but maybe more EDM #her style is very raver girl so it fits #it was pretty funny designing basically a lingerie harness for a horse body LMAO #that was actually what inspired her design #I was thinkin about how it would be cool to try to combine strappy harness-y raver girl fashion with horse tack #I'm deffo gonna draw her more bc I already have so many fashion ideas for her #also I've realized that I rly love doing graffiti designs lol I got carried away with her name #it probs distracts the eye too much in the composition but w/e it was fun 😂 #my art #character design #original character #OC #centaur #OCs #eye strain

[mjulmjul]

Katya / Goncharov

#yeah ik ive posted them before sorry but i REALLY like how these look together #martin scorsese #goncharov #artists on tumblr #illustration #unreality #<— posters for a ‘movie’ that doesn’t actually exist but is a tumblr meme in which everyone pretends it does&makes content for it #fascinating how we’re immediately personable w katya by knowing her first name while only knowing goncharov’s surname keeps us at a distanc #combined with him being the only major character to go by a moniker it emphasizes just how much he's been consumed by the role he plays #who is goncharov? does he know and keep it secret? or has he too lost his sense of identity? #it's reflected in these posters as we SEE katya but goncharov remains elusive - yet clearly time is running out for them both #lakjdklf ok im done now i never post meta on here so im having fun with the fictional movie #btw I updated both of the illustrations compared to the original posts but will leave those as they were #woudl be cool if my post showed up. u can do it tumblr

[words-writ-in-starlight]

listen I expected literally Nothing from the D&D movie okay, like I can't make it clear enough that I expected the most soulless money grab with a good cgi budget imaginable, I went in having already gone through every stage of grief and landed on acceptance and LISTEN

I fucking CRIED during this dumb RPG movie. it wasn't just "not terrible" it was objectively good with a clever plot and compelling characters and sincere emotional beats. this movie loves D&D so fucking much and it NAILS the "a bunch of goobers try to be cool and accidentally discover The Power Of Friendship And Also Great Violence" classic D&D party vibe. their barbarian's last name is fucking Kilgore and my entire family cried in the theater.

I hope they make twelve of these motherfuckers.

#honor among thieves #dnd #dungeons and dragons: honor among thieves #holga kilgore #she is a BARBARIAN whose name is KILL GORE like who among us has not been in a party with this exact character #some new player who picked whatever they were told was the easiest class and gave them a name that is 98% a joke #and just piggybacked their backstory onto the most experienced player's as like rp training wheels #and then smash cut 60 sessions later and we're all getting choked up over john dingus or whatever #do you motherfuckers know how rarely i cry????? about ANYTHING????? #god it was so good #i am going to watch this an unhealthy amount #i want a separate movie for every red wizard and also one about xenk's backstory #his name is X E N K with an X these writers have played some fucking DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS #do i have to buy dead in thay now?????? i think i have to buy dead in thay now #i literally ran dnd on friday and this movie put me in WITHDRAWAL i want to play some dnd Now

[egophiliac]

just thinking about hair and faces

#art #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland spoilers #twisted wonderland episode 7 spoilers #twisted wonderland book 7 spoilers #i don't THINK this counts as face horror but just in case #face horror #for your daily dose of me losing my mind over anime characters #i don't know why the hair thing surprised me so much. i think because i thought it was funny that lilia named silver after his hair color. #like ha ha lilia is hilariously bad at names how cute and silly! #oh. oh it's kind of a Thing. #anyway i am excited to see where the heck all of this stuff with silver's various dads ends up! #we still don't actually know who killed meleanor! #we still don't know literally anything about dad draconia! (dadconia? dradconia?) #we don't know what happened to the macguffin gem with its magical dad-saving powers! #(surely this will not come back to save a certain dad at a later point. of course not.) #man i was not expecting episode 7 to be all dads all the time #i mean i'm here for it but #hey remember when the highest stakes were who was gonna win the big talent show #then robots started kidnapping people and now we've just escalated from there #episode 8 our cat is going to turn into a drippy ink kaiju and we're going to have to mecha battle him to save the world or something #each member of diasomnia pilots a limb and we gattai into a giant robot dragon and hold on i gotta submit this spec script to aniplex brb

[lotus-pear]

god i love skk sm i wish gay ppl were real :(

#LOTUS DRAWING ACTUAL POSES AND NOT JUST BUSTS??? WOAH #i swear i actually know anatomy and stuff i just never draw it bc it's too much effort #going to bed <<<<< staying up until two thirty to draw your otp #ALSO.. for those of you who know i'm rewatching bsd w my friend whose never seen it before.. we finally got to ep9 #and she IMMEDIATELY clocked in on skk's toxic exes energy😭😭 #also she calls chuuya childe bc hes a ginger and his first reaction to seeing dazai was “fight me >:)” #she was like “omgg..hes part of the evil organization🤭 and has beef w the protag (he wants to fuck them😏) *giggles* wait. TARTAGLIA😨😨‼️” #I WAS TRYING SO HARD NOT TO SCREAM.. I COULDNT LET HER KNOW HOW DISTRAUGHT I WAS HEARING THAT FOR THE TENTH TIME #anyway we finished s1 and chuuya's her fav character so far let's see if she can learn his actual name and stop calling him childe😭😭 #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bsd #dazai osamu #osamu dazai #chuuya nakahara #nakahara chuuya #soukoku #skk #lotus draws

[mitwodlemi]

(Spoilers for seasons 1-2 of TMA) HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!!

I got hyperfixated on The Magnus Archives back in November and now I can finally post some fanart for it! Here's my season 1 and 2 dump. I have much more stuff for the later seasons, which I will be posting soon hopefully.

Enjoy my drawings of the Eye's special little boy!!!!!

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #tim stoker #sasha james #elias bouchard #johnathan sims #jonathan simms #trying to cover my bases here #timothy stoker #fanart #tma fanart #mimi makes art #digital art #tma spoilers #ermmm yeah. okay bye #art #please repost with credit i didnt have time to put my name on all of these i have to leave for work in like 5 minutes lol #also ignore how my designs for each character vary wildly from drawing to drawing. im just living my truth

[umblrspectrum]

hi heres art so you pay attention to me now go read the tags

#ive been rewatching episode 7 like its the only thing on youtube and made note of many things #first off. the solver can only have one host. nori mentions skyn wants to kill off all the other solver hosts (with the dds) and disregards #the idea of both uzi and doll being its current host when they get chased #plus the main solver possessions only occur when skyn is out of the picture (the fightt in ep 7 is only after n decapitates “tessa”) #solver uzi is possible too but i dont count her cause she doesn't have the yellow #personal theory is that its more an instinctual response to overheating or something and not full on possession #second off nori calls the solver cyn. how does she know that name #cyn was on earth and only showed up to copper 9 recently and i presume nori's been here her whole life #it probably wasn't the other dds cause none of them made it down and they're all more savage beasts #since cyn specifies n's team retained their personalities and that makes me think the other teams didnt #also also we should've immediately questioned tessa arriving in the same type of pod as the mds when they were revealed to not be sent by j #im running out of characters also the people who dont like when i use tags like this can bite me #murder drones #murder drones nori #artori? that sounds cool #ill probably just stick with nori though #i have so many solver heart refs now #art #episode 7 #murder drones episode 7 #murder drones episode 7 spoilers #using the same black for shadows as my lineart doesn't work when i have to draw thin things over it #murder drones spoilers

[taikoturtle]

My Friends: have you seen this TV show?

Me: no, but thanks to tumblr,

#i dont watch everything #but thanks to tumblr #i’ll never need to #i absorb TV shows through tumblr mutual osmosis #this is how i feel with all the motherland fort salem posts right now #i know the character’s names #and a vague idea of things #but i think ive only ever actually watched 30 min of episode 1 lol

[firstligamen]

(late) valentines

#dungeon meshi #dungeon meshi spoilers #wont tag the characters but will tag the ships for blacklist purposes ig #farcille #kikimari #benihien #? i have. no idea abt how their ship name works ill be real #labru #lythrun #my art