Name Generators

So my abhorence of character name generators might have come to an end.

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I decided to do another Google™ search for character name generators (you never know what is going to turn up, right?). After sifting through the usual culprits for such a thing - a fantasy name generator, an RPG generator, an article on how to pick good character names... ugh - why do I always fall for you, and when will I learn that you're an article, not a generator - I was surprised to come out the victor in this ever bloody battle. Check it out!

http://www.adammaxwell.com/writing/extras/character-name-generator.html

The site also has a writing prompt generator that looks promising, but that is far from the point. The point is that I found a character name generator with interesting names. Let's start in the surname category (last name, folks... c'mon).

A Sampling of Typical Surnames to pop up in a generator:

• Sanford
• Nelson
• Ball
• McDonald

A Sampling of Surnames in Mr. Maxwell's generator:

• Zysett
• Javis
• Horseford
• Brog

I mean, seriously... you probably couldn't find these last names in a list of the 1000 most common surnames in America, could you? Yet they exist, and should be acknowledged in literature for existing. What's the fun in everyone always having the surname Smith, Jones, Johnson, Martin, etc?

I have to say that this generator has greatly energized my pre-NaNoWriMo planning for this novel. The plot is coming together nicely, around characters I have written about in the past... which I love, and hate all at once for a number of reasons I'll explain later. Even a sub-plot or two is starting to emerge because of these characters and their past interactions in my writing. I'm excited to finally have a sense of direction for this project.

NaNoWriMo Countdown: (including today) 4 days... whoa.

On a Day Like Today

On a day like today, I really wish I had bothered to keep up with computer programming.

You can laugh all you want at the fact that I spent many hours in high school sitting at a computer, programming my life away. Bet you didn't know I got a 3 on the Computer Science AP for C++ (because saying something like that makes me feel like an uber-genius, when in all honesty… I'm just an uber-dork who wasted two and a half years of high school on something I barely understood instead of two and a half years of college, thousands of dollars, and GPA points).

But, in all seriousness, today is one of those days.

I wanted to get a start on my NaNoWriMo preplanning. Some people start this process December 1^st (the day after NaNo ends). Some never preplan. I'm starting about ten days early because I want some idea of where I need to go with my story, but I don't want the rigid outline I know I would break if I spent months ahead of time planning it.

My pre-NaNo planning stages:

• Characters:
  
  • Biographic info
    
    • As extensive as the character will allow it to be, plus the effort it will take to pull teeth to get the rest of it
      
  • Relationships
    
  • Identify MC (Male or female)
    
  • Establish POV characters
    
• Plot
  
  • What personal catastrophe is going to hit the MC? How will he/she deal with it?
    
  • POV characters – how are they going to take how the MC is dealing with this?
    
  • What kind of an ending do I want to see it have?
    
• Research
  
  • Maps
    
    • Familiarize myself with the place where this is supposed to be taking place.
      
    • Possibly create a map if I end up making up a place
      
  • History (if location is real)
    
    • What has happened here? What kind of history does this place have, and how do the people here treat it?
      
• Etc., etc…
  

I think you get the point.

However, in my pursuit of pre-planning, I ran into the one snafu that I always get caught up in when creating a character. The name.

Almost anyone I have collaborated on a writing project with can tell you I am great when it comes to developing plot twists. I chew them up and spit them out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, at the same time. Chuck Norris is the only one who can do any better, and that's because he's Chuck Norris. My fatal flaw, my Achilles heel, my poorest showing is in generating character names. I cringe to think about anyone reading my Left Behind fan fiction stories, or Flyboy Club RPG posts, because I have had as many as three or four characters with the same first name.

We'll talk about the fact that I used to write fan fiction about the Left Behind series another time… right now, focus on the character name issue.

I have found tools on different websites which randomly generate names. For a while, they worked – but eventually the same names came popping back up, and I was stuck in the same boat as before.

So I started searching for computer programs whose sole purpose was to generate character names. Multiple exist. However, the freeware versions (the only ones I can afford) suck… because you can't get to the full features without buying the program, which I am apparently too cheap to do.

Picture starting to come clear?

Basically, I would love to be able to write my own random name generator program, but because I focused on other things besides programming in college (i.e. history, creative writing), I couldn't write a program to save my life. I wouldn't even remember where to start. Thus, the reason why today is a day like today.