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ontologyAs of today, the second character in my epic superhero novel goes by the name Tuesday Aiken. I decided that I needed to stop mucking about and find some surnames for my characters, and immediately sought my favourite resource: BehindTheName.com. BehindTheName also happens to have a side-site, BehindTheSurname, which I'm scanning at the moment for Ian's possible last name, but if I fail to find anything useful, I'll trek back to the regular site--there are plenty of good surnames being used as first names these days (I got my Harry Potter OC's name, Morcant Ellis, merely from looking over the Welsh name list that I'd saved to my computer, because I often use Welsh for names in fantasy chain stories and the very occasional RP).
Something I'm finding very amusing at the moment: the names Black and Blake. According to the site, either name "means either "black" (from Old English blœc) or "pale" (from Old English blac). It could refer to a person with a pale or a dark comlexion, or a person who worked with black dye". Words with contradictory meanings amuse me, such as "cleave", which means both "to split or seperate" and "to adhere or stick fast"--also from two very similar Anglo Saxon words--cleofan and cleofian. Only in English...
In other, related, news (I try to keep LiveJournal entries on some sort of topic), I'm beginning to be worried that I might not be able to pull this thing off--at least not for several years. Firstly, Ian is a high school English teacher at a slightly above-average (meaning: not really abysmal) school in Boston. Right, so I'm fifteen and have been to public school once in my life: I have no idea how that sort of thing goes. Neither do I know anything about the inner workings of the indie music world essential for Tuesday's part of the story. (I do, however, have a lovely, if vague, little scene in my head involving Tuesday, lots of pudding, and Jane Austen as comfort reading.) I suppose for now I should mainly concentrate on forming the plot, writing random character vignettes from time to time, and work on The Song Will Remain and Still the Autumn until I finally have a concrete writing style and the stories sound, from beginning to end, as if they were written by the same person, instead of more than one or someone with too many personalities (well, with me, the latter isn't entirely impossible).
Off topic side note: Arbitrary nausea is horrid.
Off topic side note II: The Random Name Generator is intensely fun and somewhat addictive. I've got the box checked for "goth" at the moment, and am coming up with some really laughable stuff, such as "DecemberIllusion Tanith" and "Xander Albion Draco OnyxSmoke". (Those would make a excellent goth!Sue/Stu names.) This might, however, be a pretty decent way to come up with names for inconsequential background characters in Potterfic. (Not with the goth button on, though--"Dante GraeViper Mordred MauveBlaze" just isn't...right, you know? Although I do rather like the name "Mordred".)
Something I'm finding very amusing at the moment: the names Black and Blake. According to the site, either name "means either "black" (from Old English blœc) or "pale" (from Old English blac). It could refer to a person with a pale or a dark comlexion, or a person who worked with black dye". Words with contradictory meanings amuse me, such as "cleave", which means both "to split or seperate" and "to adhere or stick fast"--also from two very similar Anglo Saxon words--cleofan and cleofian. Only in English...
In other, related, news (I try to keep LiveJournal entries on some sort of topic), I'm beginning to be worried that I might not be able to pull this thing off--at least not for several years. Firstly, Ian is a high school English teacher at a slightly above-average (meaning: not really abysmal) school in Boston. Right, so I'm fifteen and have been to public school once in my life: I have no idea how that sort of thing goes. Neither do I know anything about the inner workings of the indie music world essential for Tuesday's part of the story. (I do, however, have a lovely, if vague, little scene in my head involving Tuesday, lots of pudding, and Jane Austen as comfort reading.) I suppose for now I should mainly concentrate on forming the plot, writing random character vignettes from time to time, and work on The Song Will Remain and Still the Autumn until I finally have a concrete writing style and the stories sound, from beginning to end, as if they were written by the same person, instead of more than one or someone with too many personalities (well, with me, the latter isn't entirely impossible).
Off topic side note: Arbitrary nausea is horrid.
Off topic side note II: The Random Name Generator is intensely fun and somewhat addictive. I've got the box checked for "goth" at the moment, and am coming up with some really laughable stuff, such as "DecemberIllusion Tanith" and "Xander Albion Draco OnyxSmoke". (Those would make a excellent goth!Sue/Stu names.) This might, however, be a pretty decent way to come up with names for inconsequential background characters in Potterfic. (Not with the goth button on, though--"Dante GraeViper Mordred MauveBlaze" just isn't...right, you know? Although I do rather like the name "Mordred".)
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Date: 2006-01-06 07:52 pm (UTC)I'm beginning to be worried that I might not be able to pull this thing off--at least not for several years.
Yeah, but consider--you've been working on SWR, in its different permutations, for...what...well, more than five years probably, because I think you were working on it in some form or another when I first met you. Things like this take a lot of time naturally, so it's not like you'll probably need to put it off deliberately.
Besides, I can help you a little with the high school part--not that I've ever been a teacher, of course, and I have no intention of ever becoming such, but I have a couple years' experience on the student side of things.
Arbitrary nausea is horrid.
Yes it is. *sends you a toilet seat to cheer you up, a la Messrs. Fred and George Weasley*
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Date: 2006-01-06 09:50 pm (UTC)you've been working on SWR, in its different permutations, for...what...well, more than five years probably
Blimey! Has it been that long? Wow, I feel old all of a sudden. I think it's more like four and a half years, though; I was ten or eleven when I finished the travesty known as For True Love's Sake (though, to be honest, if SWR had stayed the same way I began writing it, it would be almost as bad), and I moved straight onto what was then Queen of Oran.
I remember this very distinctly, because the second Star Wars prequel had just come out (and I think either the first or second Harry Potter movie had come out pretty recently as well, or was going to come out soon), I was staying at the house of some family friends while my paretns were at an interview in Arizona (I believe), and I wrote a great deal of the first draft in blue gel pen in their living room. I remember the movies being out because I kept seeing trailers for them on television. I wish I could actually find this first draft; some of it was really, really funny and sporking it would be a great way to exorcise the demons of past bad writing. "Ilana" had this stupid servant / BFF / minion / conscience by the name of Amara who tagged along and made her feel guilty all the time, Aldon had precocious little sisters with honey blonde hair, some twerp of a noble knocked things down and Ilana yelled at him which put her in OMG DANGER, so she had to stay with Aldon and Co., until she had a conversation and found out that she was evil and her country was totally screwed and Aldon didn't like her, so she left, and she and Amara had some trunks buried somewhere so that they could put on their shiny royal clothing, and then "Roland de Alor's" evil henchmen wouldn't let them into the castle anymore and they panicked. This all took place in the space of a month, if I remember correctly. Thank goodness, you came along at this point and straightened out my plot. ^-^
...One of these days, I'm going to learn the elusive secret of Writing A Good Novel In A Year (even In Two Years would be a vast improvement).
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Date: 2006-01-06 09:53 pm (UTC)