People who are critiquing your story complains about . . .

[Solaris]

You creating new strange names and places.

I had people complain about how I changed modern day names to be something different. Yeah, so what? Parents do that with naming their children, so it is my right to do as the same as the author of the story! I have the right to create new versions of names or a name that is totally different of that name.

I had someone say I don't like your story because the names you gave to the characters is not real and they should be real names.

That came from a fantasy story and I informed everyone before I even put the story up that one of the names that is done in this story is from a name that I liked that was being used for another story a fanfiction story, so I took the name. Needless to say, I got a complaint about the name not being real but fantasy!

Even though I have a few names in my current Vampire Hunter story that I am working on, their names are totally different, but I got complaints that it isn't real.

Lets take for an example the characters in my second VH story.

Rorie, Kristina, Reenie, Sondra, Grayson, Darrien, Koranad, Atana and Adler.

Tell me can you tell which name or names are not real or more like sound very realistic?

You probably say only one or two names are not real.

Well, there is only five names that are real. Can you tell which ones are real and which ones ain't? Okay, you probably wrote the names down.

Here are the five names that are very much real Rorie, Kristina, Sondra, Grayson and Adler.

And here are the four names that are not real at all, Darrien, Atana, Koranad and Reenie. They are made up names. One is an altered version of Darren.

And yet, I bet if they were to name their own characters, they would make the names be as different as possible since there could be many Tom Dick and Harrys' out there.

That is the joy of being a writer, we can create names that are totally special to the story itself.

The characters usually make the Author write down the name that *they* picked out for themselves. Before JRR Tolkien ever wrote LOTR, was there ever anyone called Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond, Aragorn, Frodo, Faramir, Boromir, Gimli or Arwen before his stories were created or published, I don't think there were. But there are now!

If he was told to change the names to the present day set of names, the whole story would not sound as good as they do. I'm glad that he stuck to his guns as I will stick to mine about the names that I picked for my characters.

Beth

[Guest Agaib]

Whether or not you came up with it independently. I'm pretty sure Darrien is a real name. ^^

[Solaris]

Wow, you are right there is a person named Darrien. So it is a real name.

Beth

[La Flauta]

I can't think of a single fantasy novel that I've read that didn't have at least a few made-up or unusual names in it (two of my favorite characters are Veriladaine Sarrasri from Tamora Pierce's Immortals Quartet and Princess Cimorene from Patricia Wrede's Calling On Dragons series). I know that authors put a lot of thought into what they want to call their characters and in my opinion any reader that doesn't understand and appreciate that isn't worth bothering about.

[Psychostorm]

Well as long as you aren't banging out random letters on the key board to make a name I don't see the problem. I knew a guy back in Jr. High that did that and made a character called Bllixburggls or some such crap. For our next creative writing assignment I wrote a story about how Bllixburggls was raped and tortured to death. It didn't go over well with the teacher.

[bitBlackmage]

Some people do draw upon real names and stuff and sometimes its just coincidental. I mean the names and places in my lore are some times references to real life. Names should be left of of critiques at least I think.

[Keith Inc.]

Names should be left of of critiques at least I think.

Well, yeah, unless there's a problem with the names that impacts enjoying the story.

A family tale of long-lived characters that all had names within a few consonants of each other was a fucking mess to read. I don't remember the actual names but it was like four-syllable versions of:

"Bob turned to Rob who was holding Hobb in a headlock. They all turned as Boe and Roe entered, each turning to Bob for an explanation. Tob came in and shot them all with a weapon clipped to his watch fob."

I swear, you needed to read the story with graph paper.

I'm sure that a family with such traditions in legal names would just use nicknames around the dining table.

But you're right, there's no value added in a critique of made-up names for the sake of their being made up.