Choosing character names is something that I love to do. Names have a power and a strength behind them. Sometimes, the people who have the same name as one of my characters, often have those same strengths.
Am I admitting to writing about people I know?
No. I’m saying that they had a character trait that I associated with their name.
Sometimes, though, I just hear a name and I think, “Oooo, that’s a cool name,” and I jot it down in my writer’s notebook.
My writer’s notebook has everything from names to snippets of conversations that I thought were interesting. At one time, I even asked others to give me their cheesiest pick up lines (look for that to enter a story in the next few years!).
Although, if I’m to be honest, I do go online and do some research. In my book, The Legacy Awakens, the name Layla was chosen because it refers to a dark haired beauty, and she was supposed to be the dark one. The one who matched her father. His was a dark energy, just like hers.
When choosing the names of characters, you want to utilize the same thing that you would for picking out baby names. Names give us power. They speak our existence. They give us our qualities that we grow into. You want to do the same thing for your characters.
