On naming characters

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Any suggestions on female character name for my novel?

Romance/Sci Fi Novel
What are some suggestions for a nice female name in a romance novel? I do not want to be too generic, and I would like something that an audience will find pleasant.
 
Character Description: 19, independent, shy, naturally attractive, goal-oriented


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Jonnie Comet
 

Try baby-name guides, many of which are on the Web.  Given a few names' meanings you can decide how you want her to be called.

A problem of this kind is like a band searching for a name for their act.   To my mind, the name of the band always comes first, like a kind of thematic idea; it suggests the style of music, the style of performance, the number of instruments and even the personalities of the players.  Without a name, a band has no clue.

I think a character is much the same way.  When you think of a character, you think of his name first; then you come to 'know' the person almost as though he were a *real* person you have met and are getting to know.   I tend to make use of astrological signs, ethnic background, placement in family (1st child, youngest child etc.), lefthandedness/righthandedness, age, day of the week when born ('Monday's child is fair of face', etc.), religion and other factors to define a character.  Knowing the meaning of the character's name is just one more part of that.

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Regarding spelling - Learnt, Dreamt, Leapt, Burnt, Knelt, Slept, Spelt...etc

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Resolved Question

A question regarding spelling - Learnt, Dreamt, Leapt, Burnt, Knelt, Slept, Spelt...etc?

I have grown up using words like learnt or slept or spelt...etc all my life. I watch TV (I have the subtitles on due to sometime being unable to hear things properly), and even then they're said and spelt with the 't' on the end (instead of it being learned, it's learnt for example). 
 

I have always been taught that this is correct. 
 

Recently, however, I've had people come to me and basically pull me to pieces by saying that I don't know how to spell or write. They say that dreamt isn't even a word and that it's dreamed - the same for many, many other words. Basically, they're saying that all of this is incorrect, even though I hear it and even read it every day (I was watching BBCs Merlin yesterday and I swear Gaius saying 'learnt'). 
 

A few days ago I think someone pulled me up because I had used burnt, and then said that I was wrong and that burnt wasn't even a real word - that it was burned, even though burnt sounded completely right to me. 
 

I don't understand. Until now (even in school), I was never told that words like those were 'unacceptable', and yet now I find myself attacked by some people who say things like 'you can't even spell correctly' or 'those words don't even exist'. 
 

I'm really confused. 
 

Do they exist? Have I been spelling things wrong all these years? 

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Jonnie Comet

The difference between '-t' and '-ed' has fallen largely into one of usage, not strict rules. As an author I found myself doing this too inconsistently and finished up making up my own 'rule' for it-- and then following it. I call it the Burnt Toast Rule. 

I use the '-t' ending for past participles and the '-ed' ending for simple past. This follows the use of when the verb form is being used as a participial, such as in 'burnt toast'. You would not say you ate 'burned toast' for breakfast; you would always say (or mean to say) 'burnt toast'. So for the past participle I follow the same rule-- 'I burned the toast' and 'I had burnt the toast.' Consistently used, this begins to make sense. 

The problem in US usage is that people (particularly young, less-well-read people) tend to *assume* the '-t' ending is either standard, regular usage (it's not, in the US) or else indicative of an elevated awareness of language (read that: pretentiousness). I had a journalism student, writing about the cheerleaders for the paper, write that they 'ampt up their routines'. This failed the spelling and editorial checks and I asked her about it. She said, 'Yeah, you know; like to amp it up.' 

This-- I discerned-- was (then, 2002) slang usage for 'amplified' (after which you wouldn't use up anyway). I said, 'Then spell it correctly.' --meaning 'amped'. 

She thought the '-t' ending made words look more intelligent (really?) and must have seen that the ampt really didn't look or work well at all, but stuck to her misconception. 

Unfortunately UK usage is falling under too much US influence and is becoming more of a mishmash than ever. For writers the best tactic is to gain a familiarity with the most formal and/or most educated British writers using standard written and edited English ('SWEE') and to learn from and perhaps emulate them.   I have the Prince of Wales' excellent 1984 architecture book A Vision Of Britain and determined that whatever usage the POW is using *must* be the *proper* form; so I tend to use that when it matters, such as in third-person/omniscient narration and in nonfiction.

   

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Asker's Comment:

All the answers were really useful and pointed out the difference between British and American English (didn't realise there were that many differences). Thanks Jonnie for the 'burnt toast rule' - it actually made things a lot clearer :) Thanks

This question about "How long does it tak… " was originally asked on Yahoo! Answers United Kingdom

How long does it take to become a good writer?

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How long does it take to become a good writer?

My writing skills suck, and that's putting it nicely. I was wondering how long it takes to become a good writer and how to become a really good writer?

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Jonnie Comet

It takes decades.

Start by reading.  Read all the literature you can.  Enjoy and understand the stories; but pay attention to the authors' craft-- how they use the language, how they describe things, how they set up the plot and provide suspense, and so on.  There is nothing wrong with sort of copying another author's style, at least when you are getting started.  Many people have begun this way.  I wrote Love Me Do as a modern (1970s) take on The Great Gatsby.  My style is/was very different from Fitzgerald's; but even when I teach Gatsby in the classroom today I am sort of amazed at myself for having understood (and sort of copied) his book so well... when I was 17.  And Love Me Do is not at all a bad book.

The second thing, as you begin to read a lot, is to try to discern good writing from bad.  Avoid Nicholas Sparks and Stephanie Meyer.  They tell great stories but their craft is not worth emulating.  They write after their audience-- 8th-year girls.  Move on from that. Read Vonnegut, Rand, Delterfield, Trollope. Explore stuff you never thought you would like. Again, study craft. 

Sting, the bass player for The Police, once said, 'Whenever I run out of song ideas I go back to my craft.'  He sits and plays the bass for hours on end, for days on end. And we thought this guy was good; and still he practises.  Why? --because there is truth in the adage that one learns well by doing.   So, do.  Write everything and anything that comes into your mind.   Read, think of something, write that down.  Critique films, TV, the books you read-- decide what is bad and good about each.  Criticise your own writing from days/months/years ago.   Improve it.  This is not playing for an audience; it is practice.  But it's the only way you can grow.  To avoid attempts, even when they (will) end in failure, is to choose to not improve.  You can't pitch a ball till you try to do it.   So, try.  Fail.  Learn.  Try again.  Fail again.   Learn more.  And repeat. 

As you write, go back to the books you liked, read alternate passages, and compare them.  Is your grammar/mechanics/spelling/usage equivalent to that guy's?  If not, why not?   Evaluate and improve.  This is called editing.   It's been said that there are no great writers; there are only diligent editors.  All writers are editors before they are 'famous published authors'. Get out of your head the idea that the first endeavour is the purest, the sweetest, the most valuable because it's so pure and sweet and original.  That's Romantic; and whatever they write, no good writers are purely Romantic.   They believe in hard work-- and that lies in editing, revising, critiquing, really looking judiciously at what they have written. There is nothing accidental or innocent or 'pure' about it.  All art, including literature, must be deliberate.  It's what makes it 'art' (artifice: that which Man creates).

During the editing process, I take my work in a 3-ring binder to the beach.  (It's where I live.)   I sit there reading like it's someone else's work, like it's from a student or someone, with a blue pen in hand, and truly beat up the whole text.  'Stop repeating,' I write.   'Delete this,' I write.  'What idiot wrote this?' I write.  I put myself into the mindset of the reader.  Then I fix it so 'he' will like it (even when it's just me). It's all about the reader.   If you don't serve the reader, why are you writing?  You write to be read-- that is the definition of an author.  So think of how it reads when you read it.  If it rots, fix it.   That's your job.

I'm sorry for preaching at you but there is really no easy way to do this without just doing it.  There is no app for your iPhone that you can buy and install and *become* a good writer.  You have to just start doing it, like riding a skateboard.   And you will fall on your bottom and become injured-- in this case, in your ego-- and you deserve to get slapped about a bit by it and then you will learn.  And you will go at it again, and again.  And then you will have succeeded, because you will have succeeded.  And no-one can ever take that from you.

There are plenty of easier things to do.  You could sell flowers in a shop.  You could flip burgers at McDonald's.  You could deliver newspapers (does anyone still do that?).  But you want to write.  So what are you reading this drivel for?  Start writing. 

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Asker's Comment:

I thank you for giving your time to help me and help me realize that it's not going to be an easy process, more like a difficult one. This was a good answer, thank you.

This question about "How long does it tak… " was originally asked on Yahoo! Answers United Kingdom

  

Which Hurqhada? --on 'period' research.

I have been doing a edit of Deirdre, the Adventurer, essentially a content edit on a text that was ‘more or less’ done in 2008 (I had got involved with SCS by then and devoted effort to ‘new’ paperback editions of Wanderer, Vol. 1, and Oyster’s Pearl, Vol 2).  It needs a bit of fleshing-out as well as some clarification (and elimination!) of details and so I have been revisiting some of the particulars of the story, especially as it progresses through Greece, Egypt and India.

At this point of Vol. 3, Deirdre hitchhikes south along the Suez road and winds up in Hurqhada on the Red Sea shore.  This episode takes place in October-November 2000.  But what I have found was that there is no real information available on the Internet about Hurqhada during that time period.

Unfortunately this is typical of the Internet these days-- everything is so focussed on the newest and latest that history itself is becoming irrelevant (witness Facebook’s ‘Timeline’, in which nothing before a member’s joining FB is mentioned).  I am put in mind of how ubiquitous the Atlantis resort at Nassau’s ‘Paradise Island’ is (just Google ‘Nassau’ and see how many of the first ten images are of this monstrosity).  Note that nothing is ever mentioned any more that, as late as the 1980s, Atlantis was just a sand-dune island covered in beachgrass where pigs were herded-- and it was called Hog Island.  (Enjoy your stay at Hog Island, friends.)

This is not a war zone-- this is construction.  The whole town looks like this.

In doing this sort of research I have identified two major issues (problems) with researching a ‘period’ piece of fiction:

1. Most information available through modern means (i.e., the Internet) is only current.  This is a problem when you need information from 10 or 12 years ago about entities that were there then but are not now (the Straw Market in Nassau, which burned down in about 2003) or must avoid entities that are there now but were not then (the big outlet mall at the end of Nassau’s East Bay Street, itself recently rehabilitated, that was built in 2005).

2. Most-- nearly ALL-- information about exotic places is meant for the tourist, not the researcher.  This is a problem if you need to know which day the rubbish is collected, or how much two-bedroom flats cost, or what the high-school term schedule is like, in, say, St John’s, Antigua.   All you get are airfares, hotel rates, and leisure activities.  You get nothing about the very real people who live, work, learn and pay taxes there.

Originally I had bought a really good road map of the region (at Borders!) and later looked up the place on Google Earth, where I was gratified to see that Hurqhada was represented by a satellite image from about 2003.  This was sufficient for Deirdre’s time period (she is there in October-November 2000).  Since that time development has increased exponentially, to where Hurqhada is now the prime Disney World-like resort of the whole Middle East.

When I first have Deirdre land in Hurqhada, she remarks that the place looks like a war zone.  This was evident to me from Google Earth; I later discovered that it was evidence of massive development going on all over the region.  Streets are being made or torn up, construction supplies are everywhere-- and yet the photos, aerial and otherwise, show no details about the people doing the work, their vehicles, their work schedules, and especially not where they live.  The reality behind the promise of new resort space is kept hidden, the unattractive underbelly of a region in transition from a sleepy fishing village to a first-class, world-renowned resort.

In part due to my own frustration I made sure to have Deirdre make comments about this; in her idealistic, youthful pseudo-liberalism she wonders what changes will be imposed on the locals whom she admires and cares little for the paying guests who invade Egypt and who have no care at all for the locals’ ways (which she respects and studies at length).

This recent aerial view of Hurqhada shows the developed waterfront busily entertaining tourists whilst 300 metres west, a new resort will rise upon the huge clearing of sand.  Imagine the dust, concrete powder, noise and ugly earthmovers disturbing your (expensive) holiday in the sun.

So we novelists are left with a dilemma: how to depict a location during a time period of the past without being able to ensure we’ve got it accurately.  Now I know there is a simple solution to this: we write fiction; therefore we just make it up.  Fortunately, in the case of Hurqhada, no-one will be able to tell.  Since the information about what the place was like in 1999-2001 is not available to me, it’s probably not available to anyone else either.  The only people who could debate with authority would be those who were there on holiday in that time period; and that’s just about no-one, since no-one had holidays there back then.  And of course I don’t have to be so particular as to state something that couldn’t be considered credible given even the least bit of latitude.  That's only the novelist's job, after all: to depict a reality that isn't real, yet 'feels' real, without confusing it for the reality that really is.

I just prefer to have it right, when I ever can, that’s all.  But… oh, well.

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Jonnie Comet on nontraditional publishing

from a PR flyer-- 12 September 2011

In your opinion what is the effect of established methods of publishing?

  The current model of publishing, espoused by all the major publishers, retailers and, unfortunately, most authors is to have an expensive, premier agent in Manhattan approve your book, send it to a large, famous and well-established publisher as well as to his friends at the New York Times, have Ingrams distribute it to Barnes and Noble, and then sit back and wait for the Today show to schedule your TV interviews and the filmmakers to call.

  Though a precious few do find success this way, what I call the ‘B&N model’ is inherently flawed in numerous ways.  Conspicuously, it gives voice to only a very elite few.  If the agent has never heard of you, he will regard your voice as unimportant to the market and unlikely to earn him any money, since if you were any good he would have heard of you.  Notice that, besides being circular logic, this attitude cements the agent(s) as the chief arbiter between what gets said by whom to whom, the gatekeeper of free speech in a free market.

  And just because something is not out in the market now doesn’t mean it wouldn’t do well in the market if some industrious marketer got off his bottom and set to work.  The job of the agent and publishing marketer is to sell what’s not already there.  To me, the very fact that it’s not there suggests an opportunity.  A marketer should want to be the first and only one to discover new talent and to reap the benefits.  But to the average publisher or agent, the fact that it’s not there, for whatever reason, suggests that it has no right to be.  He’d rather take an easy 15% from a sure thing.

  Notice that this model relies heavily on the author’s either being a name already known to the media world (such as Tina Fey or Anne Coulter, both of whom worked hard in other areas of media to gain their reputations) or knowing someone who can do you a favour and read your otherwise unsolicited manuscript.  If you maintain that this is the only or even the most desirable way to get published, answer this: how famous are you already; or how many agents do you regularly golf, bowl, drink craft beer or attend university reunions with?

  This model of publishing has existed since at least the 1920s and remains the default which most retailers, publishers, distributors and agents (as well as authors) think is the only sensible way to publish and market books.  It’s flawed ethically and economically.  I’ve tried for years to figure out why it persists; and I can only imagine that it’s centred in ego or establishmentism, something more having to do with the personalities in question than with logic, common sense or marketing savvy.

In your opinion what are the benefits of nontraditional publishing?

  A small book-by-book publisher, whether selling through small shops or online, operates by nature and by necessity on a much more efficient scale.  The biggest benefit comes from adopting a Print-On-Demand (POD) scheme rather than relying on a huge and expensive inventory.  Under POD a stocking distributor has only to carry as many books as will sell before more can be printed.  This number can be as low as 1.  Compare that to a 25,000-per-title run by the average big publisher’s big printing contractor-- who pretty much dictate to the whole industry as it stands now-- with whom a lower-quantity run actually increases the price per copy.  This is a system based on waste.

  POD is more space-efficient as well, which results in less real estate needed for inventory, since the reorder point can be so low and the restocking time can be so fast.  It’s less shop to heat and cool, less taxes to pay, and more space that can be devoted to a greater variety of books.  In fact a ‘virtual’ bookstore, along the lines of an eBay trader, can be set up in anyone’s garage or basement, carrying only a few favourite titles and marketing to a very specific market-- though I always prefer a physical establishment where I can meet people and touch and open books myself; and I suspect most novel readers are of my mind here.

  And then, ethically, the POD model is purer and more sensitive.  Few, if any, books get returned unsold; so there is no paper waste.  I don’t have a problem cutting down trees to promptly produce a really nice copy of a book that has been requested and will be kept and cherished for generations; but I don’t want to chop down whole forests in Idaho and Oregon to produce hundreds of thousands of books when we don’t know if anyone even wants them yet.

  Despite these obvious and very real benefits, many people look down on POD titles as something less than being ‘really published’.  This is a snobbism that can only be bred of belonging to the ‘B&N model’.

  Why aren’t more publishers, even big ones, doing POD?  I think you should ask the print shops, who by virtue of their ‘requirements’ that they do only massive runs, thus binding the publishers to an inefficient relationship, rather dictate to the entire industry what may be done with what for whom.

What do you believe is the biggest drawback of nontraditionally-published novels?

  Most of them are not edited well.  It’s not the story that makes them seem amateurish, or any triteness about characterisation and dialogue.  Any of that can be overlooked when it’s got into an appropriate market.  It’s sad but true that most people with a computer word-processing program in front of them don’t have a sufficient grasp of English to be able to write mechanically well.  As a literature teacher I used to ask my students to ask of their own compositions, ‘Does this look like what I’ve read in this class?’  Are the conventions of writing dialogue observed?  Is the grammar similar?  Are there verb-tense or -agreement problems?  Did you use whom and who correctly?  Did you even check the spelling?

  I have come to suspect that one great reason for the inadequacy of amateur writers’ publications is their utter dependence on the functionally inferior MS Word spell-checker and grammar-checker.  They are absolutely atrocious and their suggestions should be regarded with scepticism or just completely ignored.  Get a real-life hardcover dictionary (I use the Collins, believe it or not, not the OED) and get into the practice of looking up every word before you select one of the spellchecker’s options.  You will produce a quality manuscript and learn English better besides.  And your attention to the actual mechanics of the language will elevate your story above those of the punters that didn’t bother and will ensure that those who read it can appreciate it on its more literary merits.

  It’s like racing a car-- if you think you’re a good driver worth notice, don’t let your car break down on the third lap in.  Failing because of mechanical problems is the worst way to go-- and most easily avoided!

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