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Kind person · 6mo

do you have any tips for naming a character?

Try to think of the character as a real being! They were conceived and born—who named them? Their parents? Did someone find them and adopt them? Do they have a nickname that they go by as opposed to the name they were given at birth? Do they even like their name, or do they go by something else? If a character gets superpowers later in life—they probably wouldn’t be named after those powers, as they didn’t manifest at birth—right? Bruce Wayne didn’t know he was Batman until he was already a child, so he wouldn’t “be” Batman from birth. Try to contextualize your characters within the stories you write for them, otherwise they’re just puppets with a face. For the same reason that character design differs from just “design” for the sake of it—characters are shaped by their stories! For example, my character Wade was nicknamed “Skipper” meaning “captain” by his father and “fishbait” by his sister—he chooses to go by “Skipper” because it’s less insulting than “fishbait” and it makes sense from his narrative because he doesn’t want to be associated with who he used to be. Hope that helps!

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