It isn't just one of your holiday games

[stillsostrange]

Thank you to everyone who weighed in on the name change question. I'm afraid some of you will be disappointed, though. I can't let Varis and Vargas appear multiple times on the same page (much as I couldn't handle Kieran and Kiril), but there will not be any cute in-text reasons for this. (Okay, I say that now, but I may think of one later.) I just have to change it. The first reader who actually notices will get a cookie.

The true lesson to be learned from this is: there's no such thing as a throwaway name. At least if one is writing a series, anyway. One never knows when Random Character Bob will show up again, and when he does, you may regret naming him Bob.

In other news, Agent F just passed out while watching Animal Planet an hour before her bedtime. This is an unlooked for windfall of writing time, if I can manage not to pass out.

Comments

[orcaarrow.livejournal.com]

But...but...I like being Bob!

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

This is why, in my Scrivener projects, I have a folder with tabs in it for all the names I've used in the book, sorted alphabetically. I think that so far I've managed to avoid duplicating first letters--mostly by only naming characters when I have to--though nicknames do complicate that. It can't last.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Cookie for you, then. But no one else in these particular scenes is on a first name basis with him. Also, naming a character Kristof in a Christless world was a moment of sheer dumb laziness on my part, and every time I type it I have to pause and poke myself with a sharp stick.

[tyches-echo.livejournal.com]

While running my first (and only) D&D game, my players cast charm person on my throwaway guard and asked his name. Flustered, I responded "Bob". I expected them to kill him (or at least knock him over the head and leave him in a closet while they searched for the bad guy in the tower) but instead they got into a long conversation with him, commiserated with him over his poor pay and benefits in the bad guy's employ, and offered him a job. *facepalm* So, Guard Bob ended up working for my players for the rest of their adventuring careers, sigh. At least he was at their citadel, and not out adventuring with them. But that was ten or twelve years ago, and they've never let me forget it!