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RE: A Diary of All My Failures :: [Epic Love Story]
DARNIT NEG. ugh. I’m emotionally compromised. This was a really good story. You managed to wrap up a whole little world in a (somewhat) short piece and had a fantastic but world destroying love story to boot. That ending killed me. It was so worth it though. Awesome work man, for real.
Question: How do you come up with fantasy character names? Or how does anyone? I’m curious. Sometimes they seem ridiculous. (Not here, but in general)
Thanks so much @caleblailmusik. I always appreciate your reads.
For character names and city/etc names, it's remarkably uninteresting. Whatever my 'world flavor' is (in this case, somewhat Scandinavian) I just do a google for 'baby names norway' (or whatever) and scroll through that for something reasonably unique.
The city name (Kolvereid) itself is a real Norwegian city. For that, I just look at a map and imagine where it might be realistic for the story to take place, and use that city name. Real city names feel more ... real ... than manufactured names, which sometimes feel corny. Maybe it's just in my head.
I'm glad you go to that much work! Sometimes I think fantasy writers just come up with names that look cool and 'not-real' but are aesthetically unpleasant. Like, sometimes it ends up being four consonants in a row and I'm like "How do you pronounce that though??"