Tuesday, April 30, 2013

May to Z Challenge Begins Tomorrow

Because starting a new job and finishing the semester ate my April, I couldn't participate in the April A to Z Challenge.

Sporkchop from ROFL Initiative is the one who clued me into it...and did a helluva job with his own, I might add! It was his perseverance that inspired me to start my own, albeit a month late. Thus I am proposing for myself and any adventurous others to join me in a May to Z challenge . My wife told me it seems like quite an undertaking, but that's the whole idea. I feel like I've neglected my blog with only once-a-week posts and this is a good way to get back into the swing of things. I don't know if I'll be able to post each day, so I might do a series of letters together.

My idea is this: create a character a day for each letter of the alphabet (but you are granted 5 days off. Use them wisely) It can be just their name and a brief description of who they are, what they do, or why you chose that name in particular. I'm thinking mine will focus mainly on a D&D type structure: gender, race, class, home, profession, weapons and armor, etc. For something like that you can easily "cheat" and use the D&D character name generator because it lets you put in a variety of criteria. Yours doesn't have to be any specific level of detail, that's just how my mind works.

Maybe you've had a character in mind for a while, but couldn't decide what to call them. Does your story have a hero without a villain to contend with, or vice versa? Perhaps, like me, you create whole family trees for your characters and you have a blank spot begging for a portrait and a name.

As I have posted before, I like Behind the Name a lot! If you're not sure what you're after, use the random generator and just keep hitting refresh/F5 until you find one you like. Or you can select a nationality, such as English, German, Japanese, etc. It will give you lots of options and it can be pretty overwhelming, but if you just take it a letter at a time you'll soon find something that sounds good to your ears. 

As always, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email with what you're coming up with, or just comment - it's easier.

2 comments:

  1. sounds like fun. ill try take part, posting on my own blog what craziness i come up with.

    also, nice to see someone mention behindthename. i love that site, and many characters and regions in my own world were named through inspiration gleaned form that site (so many names that mean lion...)

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    1. I think it ought to be no sweat for the guy who nanowrimo-ed upwards of 130,000 words :)

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