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Now, if only I could muster up the courage to even try to send mine in… . It’s kind of one reason why I joined, too. Figured if I could get myself posting here for others to see and review, assist in it, I could go back over the one I want to get published and set forth in doing that…

YAY! Although, I do have CR to thank A LOT for that, too. It was a lot of CR’s suggestion to come here as a step towards that end goal. . I guess it’s just more the daunting idea of trying to get everything set and ready and not knowing and all that singular jazz as well as the apprehension of utter, continual failure that’s stopping me more at this point… . No, can’t forget the good. Otherwise you do become a hermit in the middle of nowhere staring at the candle, speaking to it, caressing it, telling it you love it forever and ever. I mean… No, that wasn’t from personal experience...

I will accept the hug but not the you sticking to fanfiction (though I do love your stories). And yeah, I sort of forgot about that, think I almost passed out the first time and I know I cried then too. Mustn’t forget the good. Interestingly enough, if I hadn’t come here to AFF I’d have never found the courage to submit to a publisher so you’re on the right track.

Damn…. :/ *hugs Bronx* *hugs tcr* *hugs everyone in the world except for Jeremy Hunt and the orange thing* And now I’m off to bed for a bit.

Yep, I had that same lack of confidence, still do, to a degree. I was very shaky with that first chapter I had posted, very shaky on the nerves. While I’m better, still am.

You and Pippychick are too kind. But seriously, I think the lack of confidence runs high in most writers and it’s a huge hurdle to overcome. Reviewers who tell you that you suck and nothing more, are most likely not writers themselves or they’d realize how deep something like that cuts.

I use the generators as a starting point because my mind doesn’t work well with blank sheets of paper, and the amount of time I fuss over it depends on the size of the character’s role. If I’m filling out a family tree, next to none. But if the character appears in the story with any appreciable role, I do spend time on them. The generators I deal with typically give lists, so it might be 50 names, and I’ll scan the list to see if any of them works, if not, I hit the “refresh” button. For characters with significant story time, I do try to make sure that the names are phonetically different, where possible, because names can mash together to the reader if you’ve got lots of “Jaimie” and “Jaden” and “Joe” and “Joey” and “Josephine” and “Jarred” and “Jefferey” and “Julian”, etc…. I know some people might dis on random generators, but to me, those are just suggestions, not like I’m saying “the next roll of the dice is...”, because it is my character I’m creating. And, as I work with characters, writing them, I’ll frequently change them anyway, adapting them to the circumstances, and how they write out on the story. (As I’m building a world, my DB is a couple of thousand characters, some more thoughtfully considered than others.)

Some erotic fanfiction is used to create insane crack pairings, other erotic fanfiction is used to fulfill the sexual tension that obviously exists but the original show can never do anything about. Sometimes it’s about an actual canonical pairing and we just want to see them have sex rather than infer it from the fade-to-black. Lots of anime shows are practically sex farces but without any actual sex, and we are just dying for the hapless guy to go to bed with all the girls that are always fighting over him. In short, it matters a whole lot what show you are doing, what character pairing(s), and what your motivation for that is.

As the title implies, I am wondering what thought processes (if any) people use in the naming of their story’s characters. Thoughts?

No, no, because when you don’t get that rejection, when they say, “Yes!”… it’s like nothing else in the world.

*sighs* *hugs CL too* I think I’m going to stick to fanfiction.

I think I’ve become immune to rejection. I just expect it now so it hurts less. But, man, yeah, hitting the send button is the worst, no, waiting is the worst, no, getting the rejection is the worst, no, it all sucks. Tell me why we do this again? (And I’m lying, it totally hurts and I weep inconsolably for at least two full days after each one. )

Oh, I really wouldn’t worry. Just as in RL, the people whose good opinion you’re worried about are far too busy deleting and editing their own forum posts while worrying what you think… I guarantee it *g*

I had a severe apprehension of joining. You can ask CR, she'll tell you... Lol. It took a good year of suggestions before I considered and another before I went ahead. Even then it was a 'do it now or you're not going to!' Then six months to post on the archive... That first time, I must have deleted and backed out a dozen times... Second chapter, while not as much, still had the hesitation... Now it's a good half hour of staring at it, with worried looks, before hitting the post button… The forums are almost as bad for me... I often rethink and delete everything to rewrite essentially the same thing. (Weird, I know.) It's a struggle with the demons and half the time that bloody angel's sleeping!

I'm kind of strange in this regard. Some just come to me like that (...I guess snapping fingers is a little pointless to show...) while others have taken a while. When I can't just come up with one right off the bat, I often form up a list of random names. Everything I can think of potentially working with regards to the world I am creating. A three column sheet that has given, middle, and surnames. Then I take a look through. It depends a lot on the character as well as the story and consequent plans. Usually I have a bit of an idea of what personality and whereabouts their character arch is going, so this helps a bit. But... A fantasy world is not likely to have Bob for an Elf (okay, someone's throwing tomatoes...), although I would love to hear a tale about Bob the Elf... Depending on the character, too, does the name suit them? At least with me, it becomes a challenge to find a name that I feel fits a character. There a many times, too, that I'll take an existing name that may fit, but doesn't 'look' right for the character and twist it. (For example: Erica - Arika, Zachary -Zakari, Xavier - Zavier.) People are quite creative with names, so I wouldn't be afraid to experiment. And finally, at the end of development, the epic question (well... To me at least): Does it sound like something someone would have? In my case, as mine is not fantasy, I cannot speak much there,but I'm guessing there might be similar veins as naming conventions help make a race... But, I will leave that to other, more experienced, people. Anyway... What I mean is, I have found that most people I know, myself included, have names that roll off the tongue... Most do not have a name like Rhodel Adriana Benedict. Many have something like Thomas Christopher Anderman. It may not roll off the tongue well, but it's not as much a tongue twister as the first... (Okay, the audience is throwing the beer bottles; I'm off.)

I holler out to whoever’s in the room with me “Give me a girl/boy name!” My kids love playing the naming game. Of course this is usually just for non MCs because the MCs usually come to me with a name already attached.

Hmm… I generally had good luck with LibreOffice, but then, I typically kept it to one file per chapter, so 50kwords is a bit much. Though, I’m on Gentoo Linux, and I’ve had an unstable build or two of it, so those unstable ones would crash. And anymore, I’m typically using a simple text editor using Latex as a post-processing.

I like the old dracula/alucard thing of giving them a backwards name. Hence the demon Eparlegna and his hobby of appearing in the sort of story that Tumblr’s more activist users do not care for. Also, occasional jokey/wordplay names. Otherwise, I just mess around until something fits.

I’ve seen sites with name generators keyed to several specific genres, too. Sometimes I’ll just flip open the phone book to random pages. One time I did that with the in-flight magazine on an airplane.

mix and match names of people I know. First name of one person, last name of another. I know someone who named his MC after our cat LOL

Random name generators help out a lot. (With some selection for balance and having it sound right.)

I’ve been working mainly in Word and Google Docs, to be honest. Anything I have in LibreOffice is small, so I don’t seem to encounter issues. Google Docs sometimes freezes up, but the autosave is extraordinary, and I’ve never lost anything. Word, of course, is what I use for most things I submit, because if the publisher wants it, I can convert to .rtf with relatively few complications. I wound up getting Scrivener, and I’m playing with it, but I’m not entirely overwhelmed, yet. That may change as I get further along in the process of editing.

Good luck with that. I don’t have access to Word. I will note that repagination when you have autosaves in LibreOffice tends to slow or gum things up when your file gets bigger than 50k words. Inserted art hurts too. I turn off autospellcheck while I’m working on my draft and slow saves to 10 minutes and it stopped crashing. Repagination and spelling take too many resources I think. I turn spelling back on for editing.

*crosses fingers* *crosses toes* *eventually ties self in knots and fall off of chair* … thud!