First Drafts — How to Start Writing a Novel

[Alexa]

Hello fellow authors.

I'm a fiction editor with over 5 years of experience and recently decided to start a blog that could help beginning writers improve their craft and learn more about the industry.

I just published the first post and thought I'd share it here.
https://www.abg-books.com/wrep-blog/f...

Happy writing everyone.

[P.N.]

Editor and writer here, 30+ years in the trenches.

Regarding the listing of character names, perhaps you could put in a note that the names should start with different letters. I run across that far too often, did that myself in an early novel. I had a Louise and a Laura and could NOT keep them straight. Changed one to Emily and that sorted things. :)

Best, P.N. Elrod

[Alexa]

P.N. wrote: "Editor and writer here, 30+ years in the trenches.

Regarding the listing of character names, perhaps you could put in a note that the names should start with different letters. I run across that f..."

Thanks, I have a post on character names and how to come up with them planned in the future and that's already on the list. Do you think I should still add that to this post in particular? When I was working on it, I started getting nervous about the post getting a bit too long and widespread. So I decided to keep it focused on actual preparation points.

Now I'm conflicted 😅

[P.N.]

It's just one more short line.

It is one of my bugaboos as an editor and seasoned writers do it all the time. Just the other week a bestseller friend realized the 3 protags of his novel had variations of the same name--which was a variation of his OWN name. He'd been utterly unaware of it, poor guy!

I can add in the importance of googling names to avoid using a celebrity name by accident. Some writer gave his protag the same name as a VERY famous bestselling writer he'd never heard of--oi vey, did HE pitch a fit, and then he blamed ME! ;-)

[Alexa]

Kerry wrote: "I've had a couple of books where the names start with the same letter. I think it's fine. It's one of those things editors pitch a fit about but honestly, as a reader, I can figure out the differen..."

I agree to a certain extent. It's realistic to have some names start with the same letter, but once the number gets a bit too high, it's going start to looking weird even for readers.