I would like it on the record:
The worst thing about original fiction? NAMES. God, names are so fucking hard I do not even. Charlotte/Char came to me in a burst of YAY THINGS, and Jason’s actually a little baby Batman reference because Postcard and I crack ourselves up, but COP LOVE INTEREST DUDE, HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT I HAVE BRAINCAST YOU ALREADY BUT I CANNOT DECIDE ON YOUR FIRST NAME.
I mean, probably it’s because I think about Chiwetel Ejiofor a lot ANYWAY, so it’s not like it was a difficult leap, BUT STILL.
Currently waffling between Theodore/Theo (his mother’s the mayor and has always wanted him to have a career in politics, so I would totally have the excuse of Name Of A Former President, as opposed to Name Of My Favorite Character In The Westing Game Whose Name Isn’t Turtle) and Ira, because it’s from the Hebrew for “watchful” and there’s something wrong in my brain. I JUST WANT TO DECIDE SO I CAN START WRITING ESSAYS ABOUT HIM TO GET TO KNOW HIM, UGH.
For the sake of making this post even remotely useful to other writers: here are some places you can go to look for character names! Try the list of registered male names, female names and last names the US Census Bureau is kind enough to post online; try the fake name generator, which allows you to choose from a variety of name sets broken down by origin (though I should point out here that there is a “Hobbit” option); try this thing, which will generate whole lists of random names for you to choose from.
