Characters names. How did you come up with them?

[Michael]

In my book, my characters are magically forbidden to share the same name so it's always fun thinking of new names. I try to think of fun names or a play on famous characters from films. For example, so I don't get sued by George Lucas, I changed Hansolo to Han-so-slow and Chewbacca to Chewbacco (he chews a lot of tobacco in the book).

[Alison]

In Whispers on the Wind: Ari's Story, the character names were in flux a lot of the time I was writing, I was pretty set on calling the main character Arianna, but as I wrote a conversation between her and Ben (her love interest) I just typed Ari unthinkingly and it sounded right with what he might call her and was a neater name to use than the many syllables in Arianna.

In another project I'm writing at the moment I simply wrote a list of names and repeated them aloud while looking at a moodboard for the book. Some names sounded right others sounded wrong. Because the project is based on elements I needed to pick names that weren't too earthy or sounded too exotic or sharp.

I think the project definitely dictates to method of naming!

[Dale]

I don't know how I pick names. Sometimes I've changed the names several times until it just *feels* right. though I have to admit I wrote my first book, Fire in the Blood, when my son was young...and his favorite food was chicken nuggets...so my I kind of just wrote it backwards and came up with Tuggin (though had to massage that a little to make it work). Little bit of trivia!

[Fauuzzie]

Whenever I'm writing something, I just go with whatever name I like best:D

[Dale]

I do that, too. If there's a name I really like, I try to work it in for one of my characters.

[Audra]

In my fantasy book, I did a lot of research on the meanings of names & tried to mix up unusual names & regular ones. In my stories set in modern day, I just use names I like that suit the characters.