WriYe Blogging Cricle: Characters and Names

Characters: How do you come up with your characters? Do you pull from real life and people you know or someplace else? Do you have a hard time with characterization or find it a breeze? 

Bonus: Names: How do you come up with names? 

They kind of just come to me. I usually figure out the plot first and the characters fall into place. Sometimes a name really sticks with me or a picture I see on Pinterest and it starts an idea that grows. My character develops with it. There are times when I have the characters in my head but they don't have names so I give them a temporary name until one finally fits the character.

I don't pull characters from real life or people I know. A character might have a certain trait, but I would never base a full character off of someone I knew. It would be too weird for me because I don't feel like I know people well enough to actually write about them in my story and it makes me a little uncomfortable. So, I stick with creating my own characters with maybe a trait or two from someone I know. Do this makes it less complicated.

Sometimes I do have a hard time with characterization. My MC for Hourglass was a lot harder for me to get into his head but after a few exercises I was able to do some. Also, the writing group I'm a part of really loves doing character building so I pulled a lot from that as well. I might not have joined them for their fun but I certainly learned by reading back on what they did. Maybe next time I'll join them. 

Bonus Answer: Sometimes I meet someone with a really cool name. I work with kids and some of the children that pass through the center have some interesting names but I don't always use them. I usually get my names from a baby names website. The one I've been using a lot has been Nameberry. I've also been "collecting" names in a file called "name bank" that I can reference if I need a name quickly. I can access it anywhere so it makes it easy to add more names to it as I hear them.

The Editing Process: My Ending Sucks

Does editing ever make you want to rip your hair out? Because that's what I'm feeling this week. I'm still on lesson two of How To Revise Your Novel. This novel is really long and I feel bad for the people who wrote an even longer novel.

Basically, I've come to the conclusion that the ending part of this novel sucks and that it's going to need a massive overhaul. Well, the whole novel needs an overhaul but the ending needs one especially. It's awful. The ending shouldn't be awful. I think I have too many fillers and info dump because I was rushing to get this over with.

This is probably another reason why I don't actually want to publish this novel, Dowsers. I don't think I had much inspiration writing it. Hopefully the editing will go well. I plan on posting the first chapter by 217 on Wattpad.