I'm honored. *bows* and amused *snickers*.

You are welcome to come play with us on the dresdenverse if you'd like. We have a whole section for non Dresden characters where you can have your characters interact with other people's characters for development's sake.

www.dresdenverse.com

*raises eyebrow*  ... I feel like I've been offered one of thirty certain pieces of silver... I love playing with other people's characters to work out things... *eyes link*   *schemes* 

*click*

I just hope you don't regret inviting me. >.<  I will try my best to prevent that, but my characters can be... interesting at times.  Twist archangels with their human counterparts and odd things often result, especially when my version of magic seems to center around playing with elements and molecules.

I think  graves meant actually doing the "murder" of your Plot in real life against real people...

Personally I wouldn't feel responsible, but I would be REALLY weirded out by it.

Ahh, see, that's why I shouldn't post on here, I'm an idiot. 

But I concur with M.S.D.  It's not your fault, just bizarre...

I have a question.  Maybe I'm too much of a bloody n00b to post this, or haven't made enough posts for a while, or maybe this is just a strange mood talking. 

I just finished reading Small Favor (no, I'm not going to spoil anything) and talking to a local published author.  I have a pretty decent friend editing team, and a great english prof.  I have encouragement on all fronts.   

I have no idea what the hell right I have to write.

Okay, that makes no sense, so maybe I should clarify how I think about writing...  When I write, I don't think of it as creating, really, I think about it as... I'm a scribe for the loonatics residing in my skull.  But after reading Jim and a number of other books, some ameteur fanfiction that is just amazing when the writer doesn't even have english as a first language, I feel like a bumbling fool.  I'm utterly inarticulate.  It's like I have the same paints as the good authors do, but I'm trying to freaking fingerpaint when I need a millimeter fine brush.  I have no idea how the heck to improve.  I give myself assignments, I try to work out characters, and none of it seems to do much.  I'm an English/Psych major.  I already had to let go of one of my favorite sciences, chemistry, because the kind I like is outdated, all done by computer now.  I'm just wondering if in writing I'm going to have the same problem.

If I try to write romance, all people seem to want is smut, and a certain amount of jaded-ness seems to have killed my ability to construct gossamer webs of romance.  I fail utterly at constructing other worlds, sci-fi and fantasy is out.  Urban fantasy is my niche, and yet I can't come up with decent characters. 

I'm not going to ramble anymore, I don't even know what the hell I'm saying... Just looking for anyone in similar positions, or if anyone knows what on earth I'm rambling about.  *head/desk*

Maybe I overthink things, but I feel that the name should reflect the character's personality.  For one thing, I wouldn't have named that character Robert Frost anyway if I'd thought about it for another five seconds or so because his main magic is based on fire.  Plus, I like having something that ties the character's name to the character's personality to make it easier for readers to remember.  If I name a minor character "Aiden", then you'll think of fire (Aiden means "Flame-bringer" or something like that).  If he is a very passionate person with his feelings always at the surface, this ties the name to the character and makes it easier to remember.  However, if he was a very cool and collected person, then it would be the wrong name for him.  I mean I could randomly look up the cast and grew for Day of the Dead and start matching up names, but then it'd lose a lot of meaning.

And I can't change names.  I've tried, but it doesn't work.  In one project I was working on, there was man and a woman who were originally siblings both from Houston, TX.  I then changed the male character to being from Ireland and having moved to the US a few years previous to the story.  However, I could not bring myself to think of the character as anything other than the name I had originally chosen for him.  So now I'm forced to figure out a believable way to have her still be from Houston and him from Ireland yet still keep them siblings.

The Abstruse One
Darryl Mott Jr.

I don't think you over think things, but maybe that's because I'm the same way.  *Sweatdrop*  I have to stick with the name I gave them, and even if I don't, the character radically changes to suit what I think of when I hear that name. 

What I do is go to sites with histories or meanings of names and looking for one that suits my characters.  I wander around the various baby name sites for first names and middle names, and then I go to a place called House Of Names (http://www.houseofnames.com)which has family crests and gives rough insight to what a last name's history and meaning is through the symbols on the crests.  You have to do quite a bit of work to find what a symbol means sometimes, but I think it's worth it.  I hope this helps.

Eeee!!! You rock for doing this for us, Mickey.  Many virtual chocolate chip cookies for you. *Gives Mickey a plate of said cookies* 

I have a problem of introducing too many characters at once, but my major problem is that I want to know everything about every character with a decent sized part, and you just can't freaking do that when you're writing from first person POV.  I have real problems focusing on my one main character, not because he doesn't interest me, but because I try to make all my characters interesting and I keep going "Hey, wait!  YOU!  Get back here!  Why'd you do that?!" and trying to figure out every detail of their minds while my main character is neglected and sitting forelorn, asking "But... What about me?" Because of this little habit, I know less about my main character and how he thinks than anyone else, a slight problem when you're writing from his perspective...

Same here.  Don't push yourself too hard and make yourself sicker.  *gives Mickey virtual chicken soup*