You know you have them. If you’re a writer, no matter how much you love to write, there are just certain aspects of it that have you procrastinating until it’s 4 am. Don’t lie.
For me, one of them is naming my characters, namely surnames. I hate it. Absolutely despise is with the passion from the fiery pits of Hell. I never know how to work my MCs’ (or any characters’) full name into the story and not have it sound contrived. Even when it’s a viable means of saying it so the reader knows what it is it still sounds like I’m forcing it. I can’t stand it. Are last names necessary in fiction? Will it kill the readers to never know my characters’ last names?
The other one is titling. I hate giving anything a title even more than I hate giving my characters last names. I yearn for the day when titling is out of my hands and into those of the publishers. They know what they’re doing and can come up with some pretty good stuff. Me, I just gimp around usually with the first thing that pops into my head and hope for the best. But attachment, pretty much never. Up until my junior year of college I never titled anything until my creative writing professor said I had to. With hindsight I know I don’t have to but I didn’t know any better then. But it’s not like I can query a novel called Untitled. Agents like to see you can at least come up with something.
So what about you? What aspects of writing can you just not stand?
And OMG help me hatch my eggs! They’ll die if you don’t! You don’t want that to happen, do you? Caled needs family!
Yeah, names are a b!@#! to be sure. I always say that all names are conditional, after I struggle to come up with something and then they become fixed and unmovable which makes it worse.
I borrow freely from real life. Wikis, history books, that sort of thing. Of course when we are talking about fantasy, now there things get screwed up.
As for titles, I titled everything, in fact I can’t really start without one. Title really sets the tone of what I am writing. Of course I do go the cliche route. Why re-invent the wheel.
For me, it’s usually just getting started. Those first few words on the page to get on a roll have been so hard to get going lately.
Funnily, enough this used to be the easiest and it was finishing that was the problem – and sometimes still is but it’s now just as hard to get started.
The second chapter. It’s getting the plot moving after the first chapter that bothers me. I worry whether it’s slow and boring. And titles can be a nightmare sometimes. I can think of a title for one book and then five minutes I think it looks ridiculous.
What I like doing is taking from life and then distorting it. Those have a tendency of creating the best names!
Ben, I’m sure it’s just a phase. It seems like it.
Marie, I can understand that. You got a solid beginning and then, “where do I go from here?”