Name that character...

I interrupt my marathon nanowrimo writing day to discuss names and the naming process. I was only today realizing that my main character does not have a last name. Naming characters is a strange thing for me. I don't like to think about it too much. It's almost like the character has to tell me his or her name. I just write it down (or more like type it) and there it is. I know that some people agonize over names and I suppose if you're writing some type of work where names are symbolic, maybe that's important. My names, in this case are not symbolic. They are just names, but I find that the wrong name can be like nails on a chalkboard. For instance, sometimes on a t.v. show or movie, a character talks about a person from their past and the name they use sounds false and empty, like it is not a real person. And it's not, I suppose, but I feel like with good storytelling whether its in t.v., movies or books, you have to sell your characters as real people, even if they are not. Now, I am not claiming to be an expert or anything. If anything I'm very much an amateur who still has a ridiculous amount to learn, but I just was thinking about names in stories and wanted to write about them.

Hornelius Unicornis above probably has the best (or at least my favorite)name that I've ever come up with. Unfortunately, he's not really a character I've written about yet.

This morning I also decided to be nice to my antagonist. I decided to show that she is a character that is not as bad as we think she is. It's funny that after I did this to her, I was reading a book, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger and one of the characters is a writer and it talks about her "growing a soft spot for the bad guy, like every other writer since Milton." I have sympathized with many a "bad guy" character (in fact, I tend to think that they are the most interesting characters when they are fleshed out and not so black and white) throughout my reading and watching life, but I certainly did not plan on doing this to my character. I still am not overly fond of her, but I have a certain amount of sympathy and respect for her now that I know a little more about her and that she is capable of thinking of someone besides her self.

I'm sorry if this post was a bit self-indulgent, but blogging in general is self indulgent a much of the time, anyway. And my "novel" is still crap...

Oh, and I did decide to meet the 4th week challenge that was given on the nanowrimo website of writing 5000 words in a day. Unfortunately, even though I did this, I decided to remove a whole section from the document. It was too bad to even send in a scrambled state. I now have 46,047 words. I think that 4000 more will be a breeze.

Edited to add, in case I don't post tomorrow, I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!