{"id":458,"date":"2012-05-29T19:36:28","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T00:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/?p=458"},"modified":"2012-05-29T19:40:42","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T00:40:42","slug":"damn-you-axminster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/?p=458","title":{"rendered":"We’re Ready to Roll, Axminster"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always sort of favored interesting names for fictional characters.\u00a0 Much as I don’t want characters in fiction I read to talk like real people (seriously, have you ever tried to read a word-for-word transcript of something someone says?\u00a0 Painful), I \"\"<\/a>think it is perfectly okay for character names to skew toward the unusual and mellifluous.\u00a0 I think it is good to aim for\u00a0 a sort of “tuned up reality” in both dialogue and names – highlight what is going on by brightening it up and so on.\u00a0 This may be, of course, because I have a crummy memory for names, and get confused when there are a bunch of important characters running around with the same names as people I run into at work.<\/p>\n

However, as a lad in the mid-80’s and fan of McGyver<\/em>, I learned a valuable lesson about character names, one I’ve carried with me ever since.\u00a0 Don’t fall in love with a character’s name, no matter how awesome it is.\u00a0 Even if you secretly think it is just the most badass name ever, use a light touch.\u00a0 This is all basically explained in a post and accompanying video<\/a> at CGHM<\/a>, so I’ll link there for an explanation<\/a>.\u00a0 Oh, it also taught me not to cast primary villains in a TV show with people who would need all their dialogue dubbed over, but I suspect that lesson will have less direct impact on my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always sort of favored interesting names for fictional characters.\u00a0 Much as I don’t want characters in fiction I read to talk like real people (seriously, have you ever tried to read a word-for-word transcript of something someone says?\u00a0 Painful), I think it is perfectly okay for character names to skew toward the unusual and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-writing-things"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}