: Re: What should I do when I am stuck on names during freewriting? If I get hung up choosing a name for a character, should I come back to it later? Or should I try to figure one out? I feel

@Jessie137

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I believe there are two ways to deal with the problem you describe:

1) use a temporary name to be replaced later

If it doesn't bother you to give the character a random name, whether it's Alice or blonde girl, go with this option.

If you prefer a descriptive name (eg. blonde girl), great.

If you prefer a more normal name, I suggest creating a list of names, similar to the list for naming storms, and then just use the first name of the list and so on. Although, obviously, you may want to have two lists, for male and female names. You don't even have to spend much time on it. Just google something like 'filetype:pdf 100 popular names USA' (obviously, you may want to change the country to fit your setting) and then print out the result.

You can even have a third list for unisex names, in case you're naming a character you haven't yet decided if it will be male or female.

Of course this approach has the problem of how to replace the temp name with a definitive one in as efficiently and quickly as possible. @Secespitus answer, though, has the only solution I know of.

2) use a definitive name

This approach is more problematic, but I cannot write on if a character I've just created does not have their own name. It's one of those 'writing blocks' I have to deal with. If this is not a problem for you, ignore this approach. If you must have the right name... here is how I go about it.

Do you know the lists I advised above? I added such a list into an excel file. I have first names and surnames, and I added information about whether their female, male or unisex. I also added information about their meaning and origin/language. Then I further specified whether their modern, traditional or dated. Then I put together some formulas to choose random names.

Now, when I need to name a character, I simply choose gender, origin/language and whether it's modern/traditional/dated (or leave those categories blank) and click a button. If I need to have a character whose name is related to a specific meaning, I can write, say, 'white', and get a relatively short list that can go from Blanche to Alvina. These categories are separate for first name and surname, so that I can choose whether the specific theme I want is present in both or in only one of the names. I can also choose to have two first names or two surnames (handy for other cultures where people have more names) and I can freeze one name I like while keeping on searching for a surname. I know, it's a rather complex name generator.

I spent a lot of time on this generator but I cut down from spending one hour or more searching for the right sounding name to five minutes (in the worst case scenario; it's usually a matter of seconds). I had to name a team of ten background characters, and they were all 'perfectly' named in less than ten minutes.

If you are less picky, you can just copy&paste a list of names, identify the gender, and add a number for each name. Then just use a RANDOM function to create a basic generator.

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