Monday, November 6, 2017

Actually a Lot of Alliteration

NaNoWriMo stuff. The outline I'm working off of for my book, section 6 is like crazy long and has so much stuff that happens in it (and that would need to happen in it, due to changes from the outline I made during writing) while section 7 is comprised entirely of one fight scene and its aftermath. Which fight might not even need to take place, now that I made further changes from the outline. But which, actually does still need to take place, because important character motivation later on? So, huh... 

But, section 6 being so long and section 7 being so short, I'm just, not breaking them cleanly, like I've done so far. I've tackled a great deal of section 6 in today's writing, and will tackle the last chunk of section 6 as well as section 7 somehow, tomorrow.

Also. I'm really starting to freak out, because there's something that I'd noticed, and today found out it goes deeper than I'd realized: in my book, like, everyone's name begins with the letter M.

Moone, the main ch-- protagonist. His first name is Finnegan, but I've only referred to him by his last name so far. And his middle name also starts with an M.

MacBeth. The psychic of the team. Starts with an M.

Cloud. The sorceress of the team. I refer to her by her last name mostly, but I do mention her first name a few times, Mushroom. 

All M's, right? And I'd realized all this before. But it goes deeper.

Gef. I call him Gef. But do you know his full name? Gef the talking Mongoose. Mongoose! It's even got a double-o like Moone! (Also, nice, I apparently inadvertently built a stealth pun into the main character's name.) Mushroom, Mushroom also has two o's in it...

And now in this chapter, our main man Moone is meeting... the Mothman.

I'm way paranoid now. There are a few characters who have no M's in their name... but I can only think of exactly two. Two is a few. But two is too few.

It's best to make character names distinctive, so that the audience can tell without having to think, who's who. Have your characters named similar things, it gets super confusing. Sometimes people do that deliberately, I can't think of any examples off the top of my head but I think they did that in a movie once, but either way yes it doesn't have to be a bad thing.

But in my case I don't think it is, even, confusing, I think I get away with it, for another reason: most of these people's names, they're already words as it is. Nobody's about to confuse a mushroom for the moon, or at least get those words mixed up, even if they are somewhat similar on the surface, because they are both words already. I reckon.

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