When I’m writing short stories (and other forms of fiction) one thing that I struggle with especially is thinking of names. What adds to this problem is that I can’t give my characters names which also happen to belong to my friends because then people may assume that the characters are either based on them or made in honour of them. While it isn’t really a problem is they think I named a character in honour of them, it is problematic if they believe that the character is somehow based on them. If people think a character is based on them I have to avoid making them bad because, obviously, I don’t want it to seem like I’m insulting them, but at the same time, I can’t make them too good either because then there’s the risk that my friends will think I’m secretly obsessed with them.
Here’s a list of all the normal every day names I can’t use anymore:
Ben
Chris
Davey
David
Elliott
George
Kristen
Laura
Mike
Naomi
Oscar
Rory
Sam
Samantha
Stacey
That’s, like, all of the most common ones! But then, take Dalfino, I’ve never known anybody with that name before and, most probably, I never will again either. So why can’t all of you have really unique names like Dalfino? Then it would be somewhat easier for me to think of names for fictional characters.
Here’s a list of all the normal every day names I can’t use anymore:
Ben
Chris
Davey
David
Elliott
George
Kristen
Laura
Mike
Naomi
Oscar
Rory
Sam
Samantha
Stacey
That’s, like, all of the most common ones! But then, take Dalfino, I’ve never known anybody with that name before and, most probably, I never will again either. So why can’t all of you have really unique names like Dalfino? Then it would be somewhat easier for me to think of names for fictional characters.
