I’m Sick Of These YA Novels Where The Protagonist Is ~the Chosen One~

It is super hot today, and it’s days like this one that I can’t wait for fall! So here is a little something in anticipation of cooler weather! The lower left and middle right photos are mine. :)

this is the most powerful image on the internet.. reblog to join the circle

Yeah, that sums it up nicely.

The two keys to recovery.

HEY WRITER FRIENDS

there’s this amazing site called realtimeboardwhich is like a whiteboard where you can plan and draw webs and family trees and timelines and all that sort of stuff. you can also insert videos, documents, photos, and lots of other things. you can put notes and post-its and, best of all, you can invite other people to be on the board with you and edit together!! 

this is really really awesome and a great tool for novel planning, so if you’re doing nanowrimo…. this could be good for you!!

So I'm trying to write a fantasy story, and I'm a bit hung up on one element of world-building. Language and names. I admit I'm not sure how one goes about coming up with fairly usual sounding names that aren't either a jumble of random sounds or just names from real-world languages. Since I'm not trying to write something with the scope of Lord Of The Rings I obviously don't need to invent new languages, but I'm still unsure of how to proceed. What would you recommend?

Oh man I HEAR you I am shit at names. Total shit at names. I’ve been referring to the names in my Nano story as ‘bullshit fantasy crap’ because I’m sure they will have to be tweaked later. If names are holding you back from the for-real writing stage, make a note that they’ll be changed later and charge on.

In most real world cultures, names have a very important context and are very carefully chosen. Even without that context, most parents spend a great deal of time choosing names for their kids. If you want a fantasy culture that is reflective of Chinese culture, for example, you have to research on what goes into naming children in that culture. Your naming conventions in your story are going to reflect your worldbuilding. Is there a particular religion that’s predominate? Names could stem from that. Or they could reflect on where someone is from, or a syllable is added to show which generation they were born in.

That’s all good and well, but actually creating names from scratch is the hard part. If you’re not a master at creating fantasy foreign languages and names, here are my recommendations

Go for nice, pronounceable sounds. Don’t smash syllables together randomly in order to make it look cool, say it out loud to be sure it’s actually something people would use. Xisdhijbur is lazy keyboard smashing, try to avoid it. If you’re at a true loss, pick a real name (Maria) and change it until it seems both different and believable (Maerai, for example).

Steal blatantly from real life. If you want to get in depth, look at a list of the most common or popular names in different languages and see what they have in common (how many syllables, how common are certain vowels, etc). You can make up different cultures based on these different naming trends.

Avoid excessive grammar in names. There are real languages that use pausing and glottal stops (often indicated by ‘), but please don’t make names that look like Ti’pi’la’b’un. It looks silly and sounds even sillier. If you’re not confident you can use this in a way that would make sense in a language, I would avoid them.

Consider nicknames. A lot of American nicknames favor the ‘ee’ sound - Charlie, Christy, Katie, etc. In Chinese, the most common way to make a nickname is to repeat a syllable - Mingming, Pingping, Xiaoxiao, etc. Anastasia can become Ana, and so forth. If your characters have long, grand names, a nickname is often going to be used (depending on their personality). One thing I’ve almost never seen in fantasy is the tendency of people to often share a common name. This is a good way to do that.

For more:

The Art of Fantasy Names

What’s in a Name?

How to Chose Names for Fantasy Fictional Characters

Avoiding ‘Normal’ Names

Fantasy Writing Guide

Interacting with Medieval Iceland

Just made a new Instagram account for the Hall (@Fjorn_the_Skald over there). I know it’s not the best digital map of Iceland around, but here’s the first post, which promotes my interactive map of medieval Iceland for a general audience.

It needs a lot of work, so if anyone has suggestions for improvements, please do let me know! I haven’t had much time to work on it, with the chaos of my Master’s program and all, but I hope to improve it soon!

The Cast of PLL and their Favorite On-Screen Couple