30 Day Writing Meme: Day 3
Mar. 18th, 2010 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shamanicshayminDamn, I completely forgot about the cast from The Mute and the Siren from yesterday! Oh well, the numbers of male & female protagonists and villains would've been the same anyway. To make up for it, I'll be mentioning MatS goodies today and then some~
3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
Numero Uno: BehindtheName.org anyone? :3 I love looking up meanings behind names and applying them to characters I see fit. Take a Nurse Joy I have from Spiritomb's Awakening. Dolores Joy may not sound like much, but take note that Dolores is Spanish for "pain" or "sorrow". Match that Nurse Dolores Joy herself is depressed and basically drugs Alice in order for her to get to the next level, and yeah. XD
Numero Dos: I like cool names that sound great together. A great sounding surname can add a lot of punch too: Josephine "Josie" Sparks. Casey Turpentine. Marcella Pike. Or names that may not exactly be "regular" names but sound mysterious and bizarre all the same, like Bolt or Braid. I like taking Akira Toriyama's route and naming the characters after a series of puns or a pattern: in Matryoshka, everyone is named after something to do with textiles, fibers and clothes and the tools and methods used to make them. In Lepidoptera, everyone's named for famous animation/movie directors (Sidney Wood = Walt Disney and Ed Wood, respectively). Puns are fun, especially when you do your homework on them~ It's like searching for Easter eggs~ ♥
Numero Tres: Names that sound nice but also reveal a little something about their character. Like Tack Thatch, the "mute" of The Mute and the Siren. Freida Woolf is the headstrong heroine, the "siren" of the tale. She's a lone wolf and does what she wants, like ride motorcyles and coat her arms with tattoos. Freida, in a way, sounds exotic and almost sounds like the word "freedom".
Numero Cuartro: And sometimes, I name them after people. Not always, but sometimes. One of the main villains of Acmetropolis, Shiro(h), is named not just for the color white (and that he wears nothing BUT white in general, all the way down to his fur), but also after Shiro Ishii, the horrible commander of Unit 731, in which the Chimera experiments in Acmetropolis have a practice similar to. Amanda and Freddie are named after my two dogs as well as the directors they're named for (Freddie Kubrick could also be misread as Freddie Krueger), and the main villain of Lepidoptera, a studio critic named Irene, well... she was named after someone who did not like me very well. :P Balrog's name is a little complicated to explain, so I'll put up a little layout:
Cave Story: Balrog & Misery
Stephen King's Misery: A pet pig named Misery
Matryoshka: A pet pig named Balrog
Man, I put all this work into naming my characters I forgot about places. :P Same principles, I guess? I guess a dystopian city with a name like Acmetropolis stuck, huh? XD
3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
Numero Uno: BehindtheName.org anyone? :3 I love looking up meanings behind names and applying them to characters I see fit. Take a Nurse Joy I have from Spiritomb's Awakening. Dolores Joy may not sound like much, but take note that Dolores is Spanish for "pain" or "sorrow". Match that Nurse Dolores Joy herself is depressed and basically drugs Alice in order for her to get to the next level, and yeah. XD
Numero Dos: I like cool names that sound great together. A great sounding surname can add a lot of punch too: Josephine "Josie" Sparks. Casey Turpentine. Marcella Pike. Or names that may not exactly be "regular" names but sound mysterious and bizarre all the same, like Bolt or Braid. I like taking Akira Toriyama's route and naming the characters after a series of puns or a pattern: in Matryoshka, everyone is named after something to do with textiles, fibers and clothes and the tools and methods used to make them. In Lepidoptera, everyone's named for famous animation/movie directors (Sidney Wood = Walt Disney and Ed Wood, respectively). Puns are fun, especially when you do your homework on them~ It's like searching for Easter eggs~ ♥
Numero Tres: Names that sound nice but also reveal a little something about their character. Like Tack Thatch, the "mute" of The Mute and the Siren. Freida Woolf is the headstrong heroine, the "siren" of the tale. She's a lone wolf and does what she wants, like ride motorcyles and coat her arms with tattoos. Freida, in a way, sounds exotic and almost sounds like the word "freedom".
Numero Cuartro: And sometimes, I name them after people. Not always, but sometimes. One of the main villains of Acmetropolis, Shiro(h), is named not just for the color white (and that he wears nothing BUT white in general, all the way down to his fur), but also after Shiro Ishii, the horrible commander of Unit 731, in which the Chimera experiments in Acmetropolis have a practice similar to. Amanda and Freddie are named after my two dogs as well as the directors they're named for (Freddie Kubrick could also be misread as Freddie Krueger), and the main villain of Lepidoptera, a studio critic named Irene, well... she was named after someone who did not like me very well. :P Balrog's name is a little complicated to explain, so I'll put up a little layout:
Cave Story: Balrog & Misery
Stephen King's Misery: A pet pig named Misery
Matryoshka: A pet pig named Balrog
Man, I put all this work into naming my characters I forgot about places. :P Same principles, I guess? I guess a dystopian city with a name like Acmetropolis stuck, huh? XD
