characters

Let me be more specific–creating character names. In an earlier post, Contemplating Scrivener-software which I had only recently discovered-I wrote about my find. So far it seems like Scrivener and I could work out (albeit, I’m still only halfway through the tutorial). In part of the aforementioned post, I listed name generator as one of Scrivener’s features. To each his own, but making up character names has always been a chore for me. I am very finicky and quite often over think the whole situation. On the particular project I am working on now, many of the characters are Germans or of German extraction. So of course they need over the top yet authentic names! I contemplate: should the names mean something, should they foreshadow the plot? Get it together! Be like Kafka; he was an expert at character names.

I was curious to try the name generator feature of Scrivener even though I have yet to come across it in the tutorial. You are able to put various restrictions on your generated list but I just put in female | both First and Last name of German origin | 10 names. There are other options like whether the name should start or end with a certain letter, but I kept it simple. Here’s my generated list:

Rillie Eberhard
Etta Schwarzauer
Idetta Schola
Didrika Regensperger
Sente Wüthrich
Amelia Saloman
Engelbertina Trostdorff
Adelina Köbner
Halifrid Rosemann
Idaia Halinburg

Fantastic, right!? However, I know many others find pleasure in creating names the old fashion way. Any tricks of the trade?

Also, below I have listed some related websites (not specific to name creation but they lean more towards creating characters in general).