A week ago I read an interesting post over on the Pink Heart Society's blog written by Scarlet Wilson (which by the way I think is a pretty awesome name for a heroine) entitled What's In A Name?
Which, as all good writing posts do, got me thinking.
You see in the current WIP, my heroine goes by several different names. Not versions of the same name eg Joanna is called Jo, Jody, Annie, Anna etc but by completely different names. She's a girl with a bit of a coloured past and she has a very good reason for not wanting to use her real name.
Now Scarlet has explained in her article that some readers, won't like the name of your characters (reminds them of someone they don't like, sounds like someone they don't like, someone they don't like named their daughter that name etc). And we all know that you can't please all the people all the time, but it did give me pause for thought.
But as I'm trying to be optomistic, I'm going to think about it this way: most heroines have one name and if your reader doesn't like that particular name, then you're sunk. My way, if the reader doesn't like one of my heroine's names, chances are they might like at least one of the others more!
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort - Herm Albright
2 comments:
Well, it's the same as trying to find a name for your child. Everyone's got an opinion. It was the name of the bully/dork/popular person at school. Or the name of their slobbering dog. Or something.
You just gotta go with it and hope for the best. Personally I don't mind heroine names too much. It's the heroes that get me. If he doesn't have a 'heroic' name then I just can't get behind him. Or in front of him. Or anywhere really. :-)
I thought Scarlet's post was good, too.
Names give me a lot of bother when I'm writing. I seem to use the same ones over and over and then have to use 'find and replace' to change them.
I've tagged you over on my blog (no pressure to accept).
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