I’m Sorry What’s your name??

One of the difficulties, or not, of writing fantasy in particular, is coming up with names. It's not a problem when writing in a current reality. Fred, Bob, Sue, Buffy...there are plenty of names to choose from. But when you change time periods and then throw fantasy into the mix with dragons, and wizards, rock trolls and faieries, relying on current names doesn't really work, ie,
Bob, the blue dragon, screamed at Lois the faiery queen, "Watch out," as he sent forth a burst of fire to deter the evil wizard, Willy.
Pretty dramatic...uh-huh. I'm not sure how other writers of fantasy and sci/fi handle the situation. In many cases, I have been very lucky as the names seem to come to me as the character develops. In The Prophecy, the first two characters were Leandro and Anaterri. Others that come into play are Maji Marconius, Grand Maji Alamaris, King Galen and Queen Serianni (Leandro's mom and dad) Stragor Strayarth ( Head of the High Council of Dragons - Anaterri's pop) and a host of others. Interestingly enough, as I would conjure the image of the character the name would start rolling around on my lips. It was sort of like taking a small snowball and rolling it around until it became the first stage of the snowman. It was then big enough to see, clearly. Sometimes it would take a little tweaking but typically it wasn't anything I lost sleep about. (I can't say that much about story line). I would encourage new and potential authors to not worry about that aspect of your story too much. As your story unfolds, the characters and their names step forth to take the stage. If you get into a bind, I read a really good passage in a fairly well known book onetime. It said, "Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall open." Try it...it really works.