Choosing Your Character Names

Have you ever been in the midst of typing a story when a character you just created badly needed a name? When the regular Mary, John, Paul or Sue wouldn't do? If the answer is yes, then join the club, a lot of writers and aspiring authors have this problem, myself included. Fact is, if you're writing a story, chances are you will need a character and that character will need a name. 

So what do you do? How do people come up with these names?  

There are actually several ways to go about this:

Look Around You

In my case, specifically, if it's a minor character, you know, like an odd stranger or villager, I simply pick names from the people around me ... a la co-workers . Consider also the names of family members, friends, colleagues etc that could come in handy.

However, for major characters,I generally recommend a bit more effort.

New at Writing? Consider Pre-writing

An idea is Born

I’ve always flirted with the idea of writing a novel but didn’t get the actual push to start writing until after watching the movie Jurassic World. Yeah, I know it sounds odd, but the first scenes of the theme park were so visually inviting, it got me into imagining what my own world would look like.

Story outline 
So after the idea then what? Depending on who you ask, it’s generally a good idea to have some form of story outline. It could be something as basic as a rough draft to plot out the 3 essentials:
-The Beginning
-The Middle
-The End