Coming up with names is not my strong point. It’s one area I’ve always struggled with, some days I’m amazed I was able to choose names for my kids!!
Sometimes, a name will just come to me and the story will flow, other times, I just can’t decide.
When I was starting my writing journey, I bought some baby names books and used to read through them to find names. Over the years, they have disappeared. I think I may have lent them to pregnant friends and never got them back!
Before Christmas, I got a new smart phone, and I downloaded a baby names app. My kids were quite surprised when they discovered it. It can be helpful, and sometimes not.
What I’ve been doing with the app is asking my kids for a letter from the alphabet. I know whether or not the character is a boy or girl, and put those details in the app and do a search, then look at the names that fit. It’s worked for a couple of characters lately, including Write on Wednesday yesterday.
Before I got this app, I would ask my kids for a name for a boy or girl and they would give me a name – until they started giving me their names most of the time!!!
This has helped me have more variety in my character names, instead of using the same few names over and over, and I hope this will give you some ideas on choosing character names if this is something you struggle with.
