Welcome to our stop on the Falstaff"s Big Gamble book blog tour!
Please read this excerpt then come back tomorrow for another except and a BIG giveaway from the author!!!
Book Synopsis: Falstaff’s Big Gamble is Shakespeare's Worst Nightmare.
It takes two of the Bard's most famous plays, Hamlet and Othello, and recasts them in
Gundarland. There, Hamlet becomes a dwarf and Othello a dark elf and Iago and his wife,
Emilia, are trolls.
If that isn't bad enough, these two tragedies are now comedies with Falstaff, Shakespeare's most popular rogue, thrown in as a bonus. Both Hamlet and Othello are plagued by the scheming Falstaff, who embezzles money from Othello. After Hamlet becomes king (with help from Falstaff) the rogue becomes the dark
nemesis behind throne.
I think all fiction writers struggle with character names at some time in their careers. It's such a basic requirement of character building, yet it can turn into a struggle. I wrestled with this problem for a while, but as my stories became centered on two different worlds, I solved the problem.
My first world (I think of these as my Strange Worlds) is a fantasy land called Gundarland and it's populated with humans, dwarfs, elves, half-pints (these last have hairy toes and resemble a race from LOTR that cannot be named by mere mortal authors). I began to write a lot of stories in this land and realized I needed a system for consistently naming the characters.
I found the solution in a book I already owned, Building Believable Characters by Marc McCutcheon. One section of it has names for a number of nationalities and that was my answer. So, human characters, I decided, would have English sounding names. What I'd do is find an appropriate name in the book and then twist a few letters around or make some substitutions.
My dwarfs, have Scottish-sounding names (MacDrakin), elves have Italian-like names (Albuno) half-pints have French-sounding names or French words (Poulet; that's chicken in French). Yuks, an Orc-like race, use modified Russian names (Grogori). A problem arouse when I created an alien world called Zaftan 31B. I didn't think these modified national names would suit my squid-like aliens, Fortunately, I have a program on my laptop called Word Menu that has a section on Yiddish words. So, I took a Yiddish word and modified it to name my aliens, (Yunta, Gongeblazn) Writing this post reminds me. The program no longer works with the new Mac OS so I need a new source of Yiddish words for my alien stories.
A number of characters were developed and named prior to my naming solution. These were grandfathered in. Unfortunately, I don't remember how I came about with those names such as Vatsik, my knight-accountant or Burga, a warrior-cook and Brodwin a wizard.
I can't recommend this solution for all writers, but the point is that each of us has to
come up with our way of establishing our character's names.
About Hank Quense
Award-winning author Hank Quense lives in Bergenfield, NJ with his wife Pat. They have two daughters and five grandchildren. He writes humorous fantasy and scifi stories. On occasion, he also writes an article on fiction writing or book marketing but says that writing nonfiction is like work while writing fiction is fun. He refuses to write serious genre fiction saying there is enough of that on the front page of any daily newspaper and on the evening TV news.
Hank’s previous works include Zaftan Enterprises, Zaftan Miscreants and Tales From
Gundarland, a collection of fantasy stories. Readers Favorite awarded the book a medal and EPIC designated it a finalist in its 2011 competition. His Fool’s Gold is a retelling of the ancient Rhinegold myth and Tunnel Vision is a collection of twenty previously published short stories. Build a Better Story is a book of advice for fiction writers.
He has a number of links where you can follow his work and his occasional rants:
Hank’s Blog: http://hank-quense.com/wp
Strange Worlds website: http://strangeworldsonline.com
Follow him on twitter: http://twitter.com/hanque99
Facebook fan pages: https://www.facebook.com/StrangeWorldsOnline
Purchase Falstaff’s Big Gamble in paperback or kindle format at Amazon
Disclosure / Disclaimer: I was sent this excerpt, free of charge, for posting purposes, from the author, via Pump Up Your Book. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it.
Does anyone have a different method of naming characters? If so, I'd like to hear about it.
ReplyDeleteI think most authors pick names from their lives- people they meet, family members, friends, even business associates! If the name strikes the literary brain as intriguing, it remembers it for later use!
Delete