1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,680 This is MJ. I'm an author. I'm an artist. I'm an analyzer. Find out my work at MJMunoz.com. Welcome to Story Over Everything, Episode 10. 2 00:00:07,680 --> 00:00:15,680 This is for March 17th, 2023, and my question, my topic, my thing I want to discuss is, how do you name characters? 3 00:00:15,760 --> 00:00:17,960 For the Grow Bug books right now, I am... 4 00:00:18,600 --> 00:00:23,760 Well, I was stuck. I'm in an okay place. Well, let me start over. For the Grow Bug books, 5 00:00:23,760 --> 00:00:27,800 I have a bunch of characters to name. They are Grow Bugs. They are angelic, 6 00:00:27,800 --> 00:00:33,120 guardian angel type insects that are magical in their nature, and 7 00:00:33,920 --> 00:00:37,640 they're basically being angels on a mission from God. And 8 00:00:38,600 --> 00:00:40,280 that means 9 00:00:40,280 --> 00:00:44,040 that because I like accuracy, and I like looking into the roots of things, 10 00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:47,080 angels have the names of... 11 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:54,200 part of the name of God, the L part on most of their names, like Michael. It's not Michael. It's Michael. 12 00:00:54,200 --> 00:00:57,760 Gabriel. It's not Gabriel. It's Gabriel. 13 00:00:58,680 --> 00:01:00,440 Different names like that. 14 00:01:00,440 --> 00:01:02,440 Raphael, another angel. It's Raphael. 15 00:01:03,080 --> 00:01:08,760 So it's... I don't know what the... like the L in Hebrew means... has something to do with power. 16 00:01:09,200 --> 00:01:11,800 Kings or lords or judges are called Elohim. 17 00:01:13,560 --> 00:01:15,240 But the L part is in the beginning there. 18 00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:19,760 I don't know what the Elohim part means necessarily, because I'm a lay biblical scholar, 19 00:01:20,160 --> 00:01:23,680 so I don't really know as much as I could, but just giving you a little bit there. 20 00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:25,680 L is a common 21 00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:33,760 common used word for God. I believe... I would call, I guess, Arab or Arabic a Semitic language, 22 00:01:34,320 --> 00:01:36,320 and 23 00:01:36,760 --> 00:01:43,720 they call their god Allah as opposed to Elohim. Elohim, Allah. You can hear the similarities in there. 24 00:01:43,720 --> 00:01:47,400 The L and the H and the A at the beginning. Anyway, so 25 00:01:47,400 --> 00:01:53,200 they're commonly related things. So what I did was I didn't necessarily want to use like a 26 00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:57,000 full name of God, so I went into 27 00:01:57,840 --> 00:02:02,560 etymology, and I looked through the Bible, and I found that there's a weird coincidence 28 00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:09,560 where there's a city called Luz, which is called the house of God by one of the patriarchs, Jacob, and 29 00:02:10,080 --> 00:02:13,080 Luz means light, and Luz or Lu-x-L-u-z 30 00:02:13,080 --> 00:02:16,880 means light in like a couple different languages, Latin, Spanish, 31 00:02:17,640 --> 00:02:22,600 supposedly from what I've read, again, I'm a lay 32 00:02:23,440 --> 00:02:30,680 biblical scholar. It looks as if the Hebrew even for Luz means something very much like light, even though the Hebrew words 33 00:02:30,680 --> 00:02:36,040 for light or spark or flame or things like that are or and ash and 34 00:02:36,840 --> 00:02:38,840 nair, that's like a flame or candle. 35 00:02:38,840 --> 00:02:43,960 So they don't sound like Luz, but somehow Luz also in Hebrew according to multiple sources 36 00:02:43,960 --> 00:02:50,000 I looked at seems to suggest a meaning of light as well, and I thought well if you're coming from a 37 00:02:50,480 --> 00:02:56,280 theological perspective, isn't God light anyway? Doesn't God light up the darkness? And you have to understand 38 00:02:56,880 --> 00:03:00,160 my fellow writers who might be listening to this or anybody who else is, 39 00:03:00,800 --> 00:03:05,640 you know, I'm writing what I know. I'm writing from my perspective. My characters exist in a world 40 00:03:05,640 --> 00:03:10,760 where there's a godly figure, a divine figure who orchestrates and 41 00:03:11,280 --> 00:03:17,800 executes things if you will, which is how I believe our world runs, so I'm putting that worldview of mine into my fiction. So 42 00:03:18,520 --> 00:03:22,280 all this background that I jumped immediately into, I hope it's not disoriented, 43 00:03:22,280 --> 00:03:27,520 I hope it's exciting instead, but it's all to basically get to the point, the 44 00:03:28,120 --> 00:03:31,320 meat, the question of this, which is how do you name your characters? 45 00:03:31,320 --> 00:03:35,800 Well, I'm telling you how I name my characters, but I'm curious how y'all do it too because 46 00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:43,240 I'm not done yet. I still have more characters to name and I think I'll go ahead and name them in the interim before I get any feedback, 47 00:03:43,240 --> 00:03:49,960 but I still think it's a, you know, it's a relevant topic as a writer, so I thought I would go ahead and talk about it. So 48 00:03:50,760 --> 00:03:53,480 getting back to it, let me know in a little bit how you 49 00:03:53,960 --> 00:03:59,880 name your characters and I will ask the question one more time after I continue telling you how I name my characters. 50 00:03:59,880 --> 00:04:04,680 So, I think about the context, I think about the culture, I think about the history. 51 00:04:05,160 --> 00:04:12,760 Based on that, the fact that these are guardian angel insects, I thought I want them all to have something like L in their names, 52 00:04:13,560 --> 00:04:15,560 which I wonder if angel 53 00:04:16,280 --> 00:04:20,360 has anything to do with that, but I don't think it does just because it's a totally different language and 54 00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:27,080 angel in Hebrew is malach actually, so the word malach becomes angel in English, which there's no common 55 00:04:27,080 --> 00:04:29,720 sounds in there really and there's no root. 56 00:04:30,280 --> 00:04:35,080 Malach means messenger, but it also means angel. I think it can also mean like minister or prince. 57 00:04:35,720 --> 00:04:37,240 There's different, 58 00:04:37,240 --> 00:04:42,600 there's different contexts. Well, Hebrew is a very high context dependent language, so depending on what you're saying, 59 00:04:42,600 --> 00:04:47,080 in what context, it can mean many different things even though it's one word or one word can have several meanings. 60 00:04:47,080 --> 00:04:51,560 I'm sure there are some words that have a singular meaning, but then there are others that have multiple meanings. Anyway, 61 00:04:52,200 --> 00:04:55,640 moving on from there. So I definitely want that, that I'm going to go ahead and say that 62 00:04:55,640 --> 00:05:01,240 so I definitely want that that fragment in the name that carries the name of the divine or a name or a reference to the 63 00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:08,600 divine in my character's names. Now, these are magic angel, guardian angel insects like I said, but 64 00:05:09,320 --> 00:05:10,760 I'm also 65 00:05:10,760 --> 00:05:17,640 taking inspiration from tokusatsu. Tokusatsu, if you don't know, it's Japanese. It's a Japanese word. It means special effects. It refers 66 00:05:18,120 --> 00:05:20,680 most specifically to live-action Japanese 67 00:05:21,400 --> 00:05:23,240 film and TV, 68 00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:27,800 products, whatever, that feature special effects. What kinds of special effects you may ask? 69 00:05:28,340 --> 00:05:32,760 Supposedly, it's any kinds. What is the most typical case for the special effects that I'm talking about? 70 00:05:33,720 --> 00:05:35,720 Men in rubber suits, 71 00:05:36,040 --> 00:05:42,120 wrecking miniature sets of cities or countrysides. Yes, I'm talking about Godzilla. Yes, I'm talking about Ultraman. 72 00:05:43,140 --> 00:05:44,680 Monsters 73 00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:47,480 of gigantic size being fought by robots with 74 00:05:47,480 --> 00:05:55,000 the people inside of them piloting them in a combination robot at Super Sentai or Power Rangers as most people 75 00:05:55,720 --> 00:06:02,040 know it or a common version of it. And you know, they get into these combination robots and they combine together into a 76 00:06:02,680 --> 00:06:09,320 giant mecha that fights monsters. Then there's things like Kamen Rider and I think I already said Ultraman. And there's lots of other 77 00:06:10,360 --> 00:06:16,600 tokusatsu sci-fi products. Those are the kinds of things I'm into. I enjoy those a lot along with studying the bible and you know other 78 00:06:16,600 --> 00:06:20,360 other things. So I've got a weird wide range of eclectic interests. 79 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:22,120 So 80 00:06:22,120 --> 00:06:27,720 I'm bringing that all to the table. Also, I believe that anime has tokusatsu elements in it a lot of the time. 81 00:06:28,440 --> 00:06:35,480 I believe specifically Digimon is full of Ultraman and Godzilla and other tokusatsu references even to the point where 82 00:06:35,880 --> 00:06:41,320 in one later in the fourth season of Digimon, the children who are in the digital world actually 83 00:06:41,320 --> 00:06:48,280 become Digimon. They transform into them like a Power Ranger, like a Kamen Rider would. Maybe even like an Ultraman would you could say. 84 00:06:48,280 --> 00:06:54,280 Or you know Power Rangers or Super Sentai. So you know that's part of my context. So you know why is that relevant? 85 00:06:54,280 --> 00:07:01,640 Well, each of my first five Grow Bug books that I've written the drafts for and that I'm working on getting finished. 86 00:07:01,640 --> 00:07:09,640 Or you know, I'm working on refining them doing the drafts, you know second, third drafts, etc. And getting them all to be a cohesive unit. 87 00:07:09,640 --> 00:07:13,800 They're all inspired by different tokusatsu. I mentioned them all already. 88 00:07:14,040 --> 00:07:18,600 Godzilla, Ultraman, Super Sentai Kamen Rider or Kamen Rider then Super Sentai then Digimon. 89 00:07:18,840 --> 00:07:21,960 And I already told you why I consider that to be tokusatsu. So 90 00:07:23,160 --> 00:07:27,400 they're all inspired by those things. So I thought well, I'll give each of the 91 00:07:28,040 --> 00:07:35,240 Grow Bug characters in these books a name that is rooted in and based on the specific tokusatsu 92 00:07:35,240 --> 00:07:39,800 property that is being referenced or homaged in that particular book. 93 00:07:39,800 --> 00:07:45,800 So my first book I have Godzilla, which in the Japanese it's called Gojira or Gojira. 94 00:07:45,800 --> 00:07:51,800 And I just changed the emphasis on that. That's all I did. I'm pedantic like that sometimes. 95 00:07:51,800 --> 00:07:57,800 But anyway, I thought well, can I take you know, can I can I do can I take this 96 00:07:57,800 --> 00:08:05,800 can I take this suffix lose L-U-Z and combine it with Gojira somehow in order to make the angels name. 97 00:08:05,800 --> 00:08:09,960 Gojira lose. No, no, no, that's not what I want. Go lose. Maybe. 98 00:08:11,160 --> 00:08:12,840 Jiluz. Maybe. 99 00:08:14,680 --> 00:08:21,560 Ra lose. Possibly. Gojira lose. Ra lose. Something like that because that's breaking down Gojira 100 00:08:21,560 --> 00:08:24,120 into three different syllables and making a name out of it. 101 00:08:24,120 --> 00:08:28,360 And some of the angel names in the Bible are long. Michael. That's three syllables. 102 00:08:28,360 --> 00:08:32,440 Rafael is three syllables again. Gabriel. A lot of them are you think are that way. 103 00:08:32,440 --> 00:08:37,080 There's one. I don't know all the other angels, but you know, those are some of them and those 104 00:08:37,080 --> 00:08:40,840 are their names. They're all three syllables. So if I could do, you know, goji lose that would 105 00:08:40,840 --> 00:08:46,840 fit within the paradigm of what I'm doing. I'm I'm identifying a structure that I want to mimic 106 00:08:46,840 --> 00:08:52,120 or emulate in this instance specifically for naming these types of these particular characters. 107 00:08:52,120 --> 00:08:56,360 And I'm breaking it down and saying, well, you know, all of them mean different things. 108 00:08:56,360 --> 00:09:02,920 Rafael is the angel of healing. Rafa is healing and El means of God or whatever. That's how it's 109 00:09:04,840 --> 00:09:09,800 typically translated. Michael means who is like God. That is typically the angel known as the 110 00:09:09,800 --> 00:09:15,320 angel of the Lord. And it's supposed to be like this most powerful angel who represents God. 111 00:09:15,320 --> 00:09:21,320 So you would say this is the angel who is like God, not who is like God, the question, but this 112 00:09:21,320 --> 00:09:26,760 is the angel who is in fact like God because they speak in the space or name or in the presence of 113 00:09:26,760 --> 00:09:34,840 God instead as like an intermediary. And then Gavriel means I believe it means strength of God 114 00:09:34,840 --> 00:09:38,600 or like it has something to do with strength because Gavur is the strength of severity. 115 00:09:39,240 --> 00:09:44,600 And that's an angel of judgment. So like when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, I believe the 116 00:09:44,600 --> 00:09:50,200 text says that there the angel went and destroyed it. That would have that's identified in rabbinic 117 00:09:50,200 --> 00:09:55,720 literature as Gavriel or Gabriel the angel. So because he is severe, he is the one who brings 118 00:09:55,720 --> 00:10:02,120 down punishment. Whereas before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah actually Rafael was there 119 00:10:02,120 --> 00:10:06,200 because there were three angels, I believe it says specifically that visited Abraham after his 120 00:10:06,200 --> 00:10:10,920 circumcision. And that was Rafael was one of them who actually helped to heal or speed along the 121 00:10:10,920 --> 00:10:15,720 healing of Abraham's circumcision, which was a surgery which you would need to be healed from. 122 00:10:15,720 --> 00:10:24,920 So anyway, that's I'm taking that kind of concept of how it's broken down in the actual naming of 123 00:10:24,920 --> 00:10:31,640 angels according to the Jewish texts. And I'm putting that together with this concept. Okay, 124 00:10:31,640 --> 00:10:35,160 I got a tokusatsu and I've got this, you know, suffix that means basically of the divine, 125 00:10:35,160 --> 00:10:41,400 and I'm combining them together. So my first one, I've got two characters in the book who have names 126 00:10:41,400 --> 00:10:45,560 like this because they're grow bugs, there's a spider, and there's a praying mantis. And one of 127 00:10:45,560 --> 00:10:50,520 them needs to have one name and one needs to have another. So I think I'm going to go with gilus and 128 00:10:50,520 --> 00:10:57,080 Ralu's. And those sounds strange, but it's supposed to sound strange because these aren't normal 129 00:10:57,080 --> 00:11:02,200 characters. It's not an everyday thing. It's, you know, fantastical and wonderful. And I'm hoping 130 00:11:02,200 --> 00:11:07,400 that those names convey that. And that's part of the rationale behind, you know, how I'm aiming 131 00:11:07,400 --> 00:11:11,880 these characters. But I have more to say on the matter. I just need to pivot real quick and 132 00:11:13,560 --> 00:11:16,600 think about what exactly I'm going to say. So I'll be back in a moment. 133 00:11:19,240 --> 00:11:27,400 So in this instance, I am using kind of cultural and etymological and like a structural template 134 00:11:27,400 --> 00:11:32,360 that's been set up for me that I'm copying. So that works for this because it's kind of fantasy 135 00:11:32,360 --> 00:11:36,520 stories, you know, they're magical bugs, right? So it's kind of a fantasy story or set of stories. 136 00:11:36,520 --> 00:11:40,680 And it's a whole fantasy world that exists. And there is actually, well, I won't say that, but 137 00:11:40,680 --> 00:11:45,960 so I suppose how you name your characters should be dependent upon your context. If you're writing 138 00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:52,200 sweet romance versus if you're writing hard science fiction versus if you're writing, 139 00:11:53,080 --> 00:11:59,160 you know, fantasy or drama or literary fiction or whatever, you may have to change your approach. 140 00:11:59,160 --> 00:12:02,760 You may have to change rules. And I, I jotted down some things, which will be in the show notes. 141 00:12:02,760 --> 00:12:06,520 And I asked a couple of questions, you know, you know, do you just pick names that you like for your 142 00:12:06,520 --> 00:12:13,640 characters? Do you pick names that are related to the theme of the story? Do you pick names that 143 00:12:13,640 --> 00:12:18,360 are related to the title? If you pick something related to the title or the theme, is that just 144 00:12:18,360 --> 00:12:22,440 your main character or is that everybody? Or is it one of those books with an eponymous title? 145 00:12:24,200 --> 00:12:27,720 And then you have weird, well, I guess it's a whole different genre, but 146 00:12:27,720 --> 00:12:32,920 Popes, you have a kind of, they are, and they aren't eponymous. So like the shadow books, I looked at a bunch of them. 147 00:12:32,920 --> 00:12:37,880 They're not all called the shadow colon such and such. It's the living shadow is the first book. 148 00:12:38,440 --> 00:12:43,800 There's the eyes of the shadow. There's the black master. The golden master, I think is one. 149 00:12:45,320 --> 00:12:51,880 Lots of different titles. Lots of different titles. And I don't know, like as far as like trade dress 150 00:12:51,880 --> 00:12:56,280 is concerned or whatever, they all had an image of the shadow on them or the shadow menacing somebody 151 00:12:56,280 --> 00:13:00,520 on them. So that's how that worked. And that's more specifically talking about like series and 152 00:13:00,520 --> 00:13:04,360 things like that. But those were also, you know, much older books. Those were published in the shadow 153 00:13:04,360 --> 00:13:10,040 magazine. I think every month there would be a new novel. So, you know, 50,000 word, approximately 154 00:13:10,040 --> 00:13:13,160 40 to 60,000 words, I think is the length that they usually went with on those. But anyway, 155 00:13:14,680 --> 00:13:19,560 you have that kind of idea or, you know, I'm a Star Wars fan, so I'll read, you know, Star Wars colon, 156 00:13:20,520 --> 00:13:25,320 you know, Kenobi colon, whatever, or, you know, just Star Wars Kenobi. So you have it, you know, 157 00:13:25,320 --> 00:13:30,120 it's the name of the series plus the name of a character. You can do that. So eponymous titles 158 00:13:30,120 --> 00:13:35,720 definitely work. I don't feel like eponymous titles work for every genre, but there's probably, 159 00:13:38,200 --> 00:13:42,600 I don't know, I'm trying to think of books now. I'm trying to think of books in other genres. 160 00:13:43,560 --> 00:13:48,040 But like the only thing that's popping into my head at the moment is like, you know, The Notebook 161 00:13:48,040 --> 00:13:50,440 and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, because I know those are books. 162 00:13:50,440 --> 00:13:55,640 You know, The Martian, what's that, by David Rear, you know, that's kind of a misleading title. 163 00:13:55,640 --> 00:13:59,560 The guy's not really a Martian, but he's a human who gets stuck on Mars, so therefore he is a, 164 00:13:59,560 --> 00:14:03,480 technically a Martian, just like, you know, you and I would be Terran living on the Earth. 165 00:14:04,040 --> 00:14:10,760 So that kind of thing. So, and like, I don't know if, I don't know if most people want their titles 166 00:14:11,720 --> 00:14:17,960 to fake out their readers, or if they want them to be very direct and very clear as to what they are. 167 00:14:17,960 --> 00:14:22,760 Again, I suppose that depends on what genre you're working in. I think because I'm working in 168 00:14:22,760 --> 00:14:27,000 children's books, you know, Grow Bug Tales, or you know, so-and-so and the Grow Bug, which is the 169 00:14:27,800 --> 00:14:33,400 titling structure for my children's picture books, it makes sense. It puts an emphasis on the kid, 170 00:14:33,400 --> 00:14:40,120 and it puts an emphasis on the fact that you are having some fantastical element, 171 00:14:40,920 --> 00:14:46,120 some fantastical element in it, which is the Grow Bug. But I have veered into talking about 172 00:14:46,120 --> 00:14:50,680 titles for books as opposed to talking about names for characters, so I will pivot back to that 173 00:14:50,680 --> 00:14:57,640 real quick, and my humblest apologies for that. If you want to come back later, I will have an 174 00:14:57,640 --> 00:15:01,720 episode where I'm talking about titling books and titling series, but we'll get into that. 175 00:15:02,680 --> 00:15:07,400 Anyway, so there are different structures, and I'd be curious to see what other people 176 00:15:08,120 --> 00:15:14,040 do or how they pick their names. You know, for fantasy, there's always the temptation to just 177 00:15:14,040 --> 00:15:18,920 make up names, or for science fiction, more like Star Wars, which is a blend of science fiction and 178 00:15:18,920 --> 00:15:25,720 fantasy, I would say. You know, they have, there's no Steve, you know, there's no Steve Skywalker, 179 00:15:25,720 --> 00:15:32,120 but originally there was Zeke Skywalker, and Zeke is definitely a name or a nickname in the United 180 00:15:32,120 --> 00:15:37,800 States. So there's that, again, you know, Obi-Wan, but then there's also Ben. So there's kind of an 181 00:15:37,800 --> 00:15:43,080 interesting mixture of, you know, standard, you know, Earthling, you know, Western American type 182 00:15:43,080 --> 00:15:48,280 names, and then they combine those with with other things. So and again, that's just depending on your 183 00:15:48,280 --> 00:15:53,400 genre, I guess, you'll have to figure out what to do with that. But personally, I like names that 184 00:15:53,400 --> 00:15:58,200 make sense. I also, oh, here's another thing I wrote down, you know, when you pick your names, 185 00:15:58,200 --> 00:16:02,280 do you want to have them all start with the letter J, for example, or do you want to have them all 186 00:16:02,280 --> 00:16:05,720 start with different letters, or do you want to have them all make sure that none of them make 187 00:16:05,720 --> 00:16:10,440 sure you don't have a, I was gonna say Courtney and Whitney, but that kind of has a bit of a flow 188 00:16:10,440 --> 00:16:13,880 to it. You could have a Courtney and Whitney, but you probably wouldn't want to have a Courtney and 189 00:16:13,880 --> 00:16:18,760 a Cordelia in your book, because then that's two people who have core is the first part of their 190 00:16:18,760 --> 00:16:24,680 name. And I would think, I would think the first part of somebody's name is more impactful, has 191 00:16:24,680 --> 00:16:29,320 weighs more in the memory than the last part of their name, or the, you know, third syllable, 192 00:16:29,320 --> 00:16:34,360 fourth syllable, fifth syllable in their name, just, especially the way we come up with names, 193 00:16:34,360 --> 00:16:38,440 especially the way we come up with nicknames. Lots of people will come, you know, a Brittany 194 00:16:38,440 --> 00:16:44,520 will become Britt, Courtney will become core, a David will become Dave, all sorts of things 195 00:16:44,520 --> 00:16:49,080 like that. So, although I've never heard of Sean called the Shaw, but I guess he's dropping one 196 00:16:49,080 --> 00:16:53,160 letter doesn't really make sense, but some people do that for their names, depending. So, you know, 197 00:16:53,160 --> 00:16:57,320 and then, you know, do you want to consider nicknames in how you're naming your characters? 198 00:16:57,320 --> 00:17:04,040 I don't know. It depends. And I think that's, that's a big question, but I more just kind of 199 00:17:04,040 --> 00:17:08,120 wanted to talk about the mechanics of it. I've shared with you my methodology for how I'm picking 200 00:17:08,120 --> 00:17:15,800 names, at least for these fantasy stories. And then actually I will tell you for my global superhero 201 00:17:15,800 --> 00:17:21,640 story that I have planned, which will be, you know, series upon series, I do plan on each title 202 00:17:21,640 --> 00:17:27,000 character having their name. Of course, they have their superhero name, then they have their civilian 203 00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:32,600 alter ego, or however you call that. And because I want them to be all around the world, I'm not 204 00:17:32,600 --> 00:17:38,920 going to have them be called, you know, Bob, you know, Bob Champagne or Bob Shun Banye and, 205 00:17:38,920 --> 00:17:46,040 you know, Steve, I can't think of any other Steve Akbar or whatever. Like I would have names rooted 206 00:17:46,040 --> 00:17:51,320 in their culture, but I think a caution with that is you don't want to be silly and call somebody 207 00:17:51,320 --> 00:17:56,280 John. You don't want to be like a Japanese writer from in Japan calling people, you know, you don't 208 00:17:56,280 --> 00:18:00,040 want to have Tom, Dick and Harry and John Smith in your book. That's, that's a little too much. 209 00:18:00,040 --> 00:18:04,200 Um, but those are real names. So it kind of depends. I would say if you're going to do 210 00:18:04,200 --> 00:18:09,000 something like that, like a cliche cliche, you know, American or white American name, 211 00:18:09,560 --> 00:18:13,880 uh, for example, you would want to have one of those in a book and maybe they're a side character 212 00:18:13,880 --> 00:18:20,440 or something. Um, and you wouldn't want to have that be every single name, uh, just so that there's 213 00:18:20,440 --> 00:18:23,880 a better flow. But, you know, for me, that's, you know, that's my preference. And I'm saying, 214 00:18:23,880 --> 00:18:28,360 I think that's going to serve your audience better because they don't have this clash of all these 215 00:18:28,360 --> 00:18:33,400 names sounding so similar, where it becomes easy to confuse the characters for one another. And 216 00:18:33,400 --> 00:18:36,840 then it makes the story more difficult to follow because you have to think about this. You're 217 00:18:36,840 --> 00:18:41,480 writing to your audience, even though I think you should write what you want to write. You should 218 00:18:41,480 --> 00:18:46,920 present what you want to write in the most palatable way for your audience so that they can, 219 00:18:47,480 --> 00:18:50,760 they don't have to work as hard to track with it, you know, whether they're reading to it or 220 00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:55,560 listening to the audio book or whatever, uh, they should be able to easily follow along. 221 00:18:55,560 --> 00:18:58,920 Cause if you're not doing that, then I think you're doing it to service to your audience. 222 00:18:58,920 --> 00:19:02,440 And ultimately you're doing it to service to yourself because you're making your books less 223 00:19:02,760 --> 00:19:09,720 accessible, less easy to read. And, uh, yeah, so then definitely, uh, I don't like, um, certain 224 00:19:09,720 --> 00:19:17,400 constructions of sci-fi or fantasy names. They're too difficult to read a lot of the times. You have 225 00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:23,720 to really guess or work hard at how you're supposed to pronounce these names. For example, when I, 226 00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:28,280 uh, started earnestly reading Star Wars books, I read the, in high school, I read the Zon Trilogy, 227 00:19:28,280 --> 00:19:33,240 Timothy Zon Trilogy, which is the heir to the empire. Uh, what is it? Dark force rising and 228 00:19:33,240 --> 00:19:39,240 last command, I think are the titles of the books. And there's grand Admiral Thrawn, great villain 229 00:19:39,240 --> 00:19:45,640 name, simple one syllable sounds regal, has a bit of gravitas to it. Like, it's got a good sound to 230 00:19:45,640 --> 00:19:54,280 it. And then his, I dunno, uh, captain, I think it's captain Pellion, P L L E O N. I had no idea 231 00:19:54,280 --> 00:19:58,680 how to pronounce that. I think I only learned how to pronounce it once. Uh, I heard that there was 232 00:19:58,680 --> 00:20:02,600 an audio book or I heard maybe people talking about on a Star Wars podcast, but until then I 233 00:20:02,600 --> 00:20:08,440 was just like, uh, yeah, I guess it's whatever. And I honestly just glossed over it in my mind, 234 00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:12,280 which there was an advantage to that, especially for, you know, if you're putting out something 235 00:20:12,280 --> 00:20:17,400 as a print novel or an ebook only, or whether it's print or e format only, if somebody's just 236 00:20:17,400 --> 00:20:21,080 reading off the screen, you know, that you can kind of fudge things a little bit and get weird 237 00:20:21,080 --> 00:20:25,400 with how you spell things. But at the same time, do you really want to do that? Again, my argument 238 00:20:25,400 --> 00:20:31,560 for accessibility and for ease of digestibility, you don't want to now it's nice probably to 239 00:20:31,560 --> 00:20:35,800 spice things up a little bit, but again, would depend on your genre. And I don't think your, uh, 240 00:20:36,600 --> 00:20:40,360 literary fiction or your, your, uh, you know, sweet romance, you know, 241 00:20:40,360 --> 00:20:45,400 have crazy character names that stand out, but, uh, you can have names that work with each other. 242 00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:48,680 And I think that's really cute. I definitely think it's something you should do for something 243 00:20:48,680 --> 00:20:54,040 like that. Uh, a drama or a fantasy with team members, do their names really need to go together 244 00:20:54,040 --> 00:21:00,840 and have a certain music or symmetry or, uh, unity to them? I would say no, it's less, less likely 245 00:21:00,840 --> 00:21:06,760 that they need that. And I would say it's a detriment to you a little bit if you have all 246 00:21:06,760 --> 00:21:11,640 their names sounding the same. Uh, like honestly, as much as I love the Hobbit and I, I like the 247 00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:15,880 Hobbit more than I like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I think it's a better overall single 248 00:21:15,880 --> 00:21:22,440 story. And you know, because as you may or may not know, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was 249 00:21:22,440 --> 00:21:28,440 originally going to be a single manuscript of an, an enormous, immense, massive book. 250 00:21:28,440 --> 00:21:33,880 And Tolkien was told that he could not publish it like that. So he split it up into multiple 251 00:21:33,880 --> 00:21:38,520 pieces. Uh, and that's not apocryphal information that's coming from Blackstone on the audiobook 252 00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:42,440 version of it from the, uh, I don't know the appendices, not the appendices, but there's a, 253 00:21:42,440 --> 00:21:45,640 there's information from the publisher about the books and that's part of the history of 254 00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:52,120 the publication anyway. So there's that to consider. Um, but, but I'm getting to my larger point. 255 00:21:52,120 --> 00:21:58,040 Uh, while I can sort of appreciate the ease of remembering, feely, keely, poin and gloin, 256 00:21:58,040 --> 00:22:04,920 bifer, booper, bomber, uh, it's also kind of like, I don't know, it feels a little unsophisticated 257 00:22:04,920 --> 00:22:13,480 and I don't need to be pretentious in everything I do, but, uh, I don't know that names work 258 00:22:13,480 --> 00:22:17,160 like that in a culture. Uh, Star Wars has a little bit of a problem like that too, where 259 00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:21,960 a character will get an official name from a movie and then people will have names that sound like 260 00:22:21,960 --> 00:22:27,960 that with one letter changed or something. So I don't know if that's going to be a good 261 00:22:27,960 --> 00:22:32,840 thing or not. But I do know that there are names that sound like that. I don't know if 262 00:22:32,840 --> 00:22:38,520 that's going to be a good thing or not. But I do know that there are names that sound like that 263 00:22:38,520 --> 00:22:45,720 with one letter changed or something like that. Like, you know, Han and Dan, like, you know, 264 00:22:45,720 --> 00:22:55,960 oh, uh, this is Han Solo's cousin from Karelia, Ban Solo or Ran Solo or like I said, Dan Solo. 265 00:22:55,960 --> 00:23:02,520 People can have names that don't sound immediately similar to other names. I mean, there should be 266 00:23:02,520 --> 00:23:08,280 common things in a foreign language, but, uh, I think not like that. I think not like that. 267 00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:13,000 So yeah, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up here. Let me know in the comment section, 268 00:23:13,960 --> 00:23:17,320 however you want to comment. There's a variety of ways to do it. You can do it on the website. You 269 00:23:17,320 --> 00:23:21,720 can do it on the app that you're listening to this through. And you should definitely have that 270 00:23:21,720 --> 00:23:25,480 option pretty soon. I'm going to make sure that I'm going to do my best to make sure it's turned on 271 00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:31,160 as quickly as possible. And I'd love to hear how you go about titling your characters and what you 272 00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:36,360 think of my approach to titling my characters, at least in these grow books. So anyway, until next 273 00:23:36,360 --> 00:23:41,480 time, uh, take care of folks and be well. If you enjoyed me talking about the writing process, 274 00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:48,120 then hopefully you'll enjoy reading or listening to my writing instead. So go over to MJMunoz.com 275 00:23:48,120 --> 00:23:54,440 or MJMunoz.com slash books and check out what I have there. My plan is to keep that updated 276 00:23:54,440 --> 00:24:00,280 all the time with the latest and greatest of my writing, whether that be books, audiobooks, 277 00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:06,760 you should be able to buy direct from me there. And yes, so please go ahead over there to MJMunoz 278 00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:24,680 or MJMunoz.com slash books and check out all the good stuff I have to offer there.