Why are fake names a huge struggle for me?
I have spent countless hours scouring the internet for names. For characters, yes, but also for fictional places. I don’t always want to tie a story to a specific place, so I need a generic, non-specific (ideally fake) name for a town or a business or, my current struggle, a lake.
It’s not that I don’t have ideas. I have lists… crazy long lists. But when I plop the names into the story, they sound so… weird. Forced? I don’t know what it is… but nothing sounds right. Even when I go back and read my older work, some of the names (both people and places) just sound off to me.
Do they seem off to everyone else, too? Or is it just me? How can I overcome this? It’s been an issue for as long as I can remember.
Whenever I start a new story, the leading man has the same name. Every damn time. I eventually change it (if I share it… not if it stays only with me). I’ve never posted anything here with that ‘starting‘ name. I feel like it’s just for me. I have no idea how to explain why…
But back to my ‘problem‘… why does every name I choose sound wrong? How the fuck am I going to name this lake without having it sound completely unnatural when you read it?
I’m at a loss… for words. Well, for names… which is totally a problem when I’m trying to write…
©2017 what sandra thinks
My children were supposed to be doing homework this afternoon, but instead they were flying paper airplanes into the ceiling fan to see how the fan would whip them in different directions. I swear, they can make their own fun with pretty much anything.
My birthday is less than a month away. The older I get, the less fun birthdays are. And my husband sucks at making anything like a birthday a special day. (See also Mother’s Day.) It’s not about gifts. I hate gifts. The needless spending of money stresses me out so gifts make the day even worse. I guess it would just be nice to feel special for a day… without much reference to my age. Even if I will only be 29.
what sandra thinks 