Writing a Book-on-tape Part 1: I suck at names
I’m writing a book-on-tape. I’m skipping the book and going straight to the tape. I’m writing exactly what I would have loved to read at age 13. In fact the hero is even named Luke and has long red hair. I’m aware of how self-indulgent this whole thing is. It is a fantasy, there are flying airships. So don’t take it too seriously.
In addition to not being able to remember people’s names in real life, I am terrible at making up names. (Unless of course we’re talking about puns, then I’m the champ. I have a friend named Bronwyn. She has the best name ever for punning. Bronwynsaurus, like Brontosaurus. Bron-loser, change the wyn to loser. Etc.) I think I have all of the characters and locations figured out, but I do not have names for all of them.
I’ve only got four characters out of 11 named. It’s hard. I don’t want to give them stupid Fantasy names…
(Back to my story…)
The Hero, Luke. I’m back and forth on this one. Some days I feel too vain, other days I just don’t care.
An old captain, Malcolm Reynolds (Stolen directly from Firefly.) It is supposed to be an homage but I might have to change it a bit. Maybe I’ll change “Reynolds” to “Reyn” or “Renn”. Although that is starting to sound a little bit too Fantasy.
An upper class lady, Clare. Named after a contestant on Australia’s Next Top Model.
A scientist, Colin. Named after a contestant on Make Me A Supermodel.
I know… two people named after modelling-reality-show contestants. It’s just that I was watching these shows a lot while I was making up the story and these two fit the characters quite well. Although both characters have to be older in the story than they are in real life.
I still need names for an old Princess (40ish), a soldier, a tough-young-lady, a grumpy old man, a handful of bad guys and a few others.
Don’t worry, the Princess won’t be named Tyra.
You can use last names from whatever (book, movie, etc.) then just refer to the character by that one name. It’s not totally normal, but not “anous”-y either. Plus it seems kind of hard-boiled, like Deckard from Blade Runner. Actually I am looking at the imdb for Blade Runner and there are a bunch of names like this: Zhora, Batty, Astar, Burnett, Hesky.