I'm almost afraid to write this post, but I think my hero finally has a name. I don't like it that much either, but like I said on Tuesday, I'll take anything and smile at this point. The final choice? Mason.
My poor Twitter followers have been trying to help me for at least a week, probably longer, by tweeting me links to naming sites. I swear I have them all bookmarked. Actually, I must have 50 naming sites bookmarked by now, but so many of them have the same names. I also have a pretty extensive collection of reference books on names. Nothing helped.
The frustrating thing is that the name isn't uncommon. I ran across it pretty early on and kept running across it, but my darn hero remained mute. Since I don't like the name and he didn't speak up to claim it, I continued to look. And look. And look.
I need names before I can get story/plot because what they're called affects their actions. A Mason is going to behave differently from a hero named Jack or one named Scott, so it was critically important to me to get the correct name before I moved forward. It did get frustrating because he's the third hero in a trilogy and I don't need more than a couple of paragraphs on his story, but the third book wraps up the series arc and that could impact the earlier books, too.
Now that I have this vital piece of information, I can move forward with the next problems. I need pictures of my characters--it also helps me connect to their personalities--and I need to work out the three book arc. After that is in place, then I can think about the individual stories.
I do have some information already, but it's the barest of frameworks, a patchwork of pieces that need to be sewn together to form the whole fabric of the trilogy. All I can do is hope this goes more smoothly than the name game.
