Titles and Names
I hate the titling and naming process.
Okay scratch that: I DO like naming characters. Only certain characters. Most notably the non-Human characters.
Humans. Ugh. Back in the day (years, years, years) ago, I gave all the Humans super-generic names. Like Bob. Mary. Sue. John. Terrible, terrible names (no offense to anyone with said names, but when the two main characters are named Bob and Jill, well it seems like a children's book.) I have zero creativity with those types of names. None. I basically picked out two random names to rename the characters of Marcus and Jessica from HTSW. They sound 'nice' and they stuck. When the names stick they STICK. Thankfully I don't have many Human characters or else I would definitely be naming them with simple names to save myself from the painstaking process of naming.
The Empirian/Alien characters used to be similar. Like, Fla'neiel was not always Fla'neiel to me. I used to just call him 'King' because he was...a King. Yea. The reason why Fla'neiel's nickname is King is because he used to be just King. I made up Fla'neiel when I first started writing HTSW because having a character named King is kind of...weird. Since then I have fully accepted Fla'neiel into how I perceive King, but he is still King to me.
After I started getting into the Tyra Tarkush rhythm did the naming get easier. Making Empirian-style names became actually a little bit fun.
But with chapter titles and book titles...that is still painful. I almost considered doing a 'Chapter 1' and 'Chapter 2' format because I wanted to avoid having to reduce a chapter to less than a sentence. But I persisted. I gave the chapters names. Crazy, I know. Most of them just came about because it was how I perceived the chapter. Like this is an introduction, this is a crash landing, etc. But some of the slightly weirder ones were interesting to put together. The Cyclone chapters all have a little bit of continuity to them and the Human ones are tongue-in-cheek. I'm having trouble doing that with book 2 (The Trade...or something) but mostly because I don't have the entire vision written out and I am adding more content to it.
As for book names. GODS. Was it tough. How to Stop Wildfire used to be Requiem for the Fallen which used to be The Creation. HTSW was a spur-of-the moment idea from a family-member and it stuck. Yea, it makes it WAY harder to search for the book and sounds like a guide or something but it makes sense if you read it. Well it does to me and that is what matters.
I'm struggling to name the second book in the series. I don't know if I want to continue the 'How to' format or stray. It is going to set a precedent and it is kind of scary.
Naming comes last. Writing it comes first. That is my procrastination motto.
Related/Recent Posts
Spellbinder Character Development Spotlight
This is less going to be a character development post for Spellbinder but an analysis into her character, both meta and not. Personality, physical form, how she fits into the team, and so on. I don’t have much else to introduce with so let’s get started diving into her being.
King Character Development Spotlight
King must follow Cyclone, even though King was the original. As in, King was fundamentally formed any other character. That’s how I remember it, anyway. But any way you cut it, King’s been with me a long, long time. Before there was my world, there were stories with King, or this King of Yore if you will.