{"id":31376,"date":"2016-02-08T06:34:49","date_gmt":"2016-02-07T17:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=31376"},"modified":"2016-02-08T00:35:14","modified_gmt":"2016-02-07T11:35:14","slug":"names-matter-yes-they-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2016\/02\/08\/names-matter-yes-they-do\/","title":{"rendered":"“Names Matter”: Yes, They Do"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"UK\/AU\/NZ\"<\/a>

UK\/AU\/NZ<\/p><\/div>\n

My fellow SFF author, Canadian Julie Czerneda<\/a>, is proofing right now and yesterday I saw her tweet: “Names matter!”<\/p>\n

Yes, I thought, they do…<\/p>\n

Asantir, one of the leading secondary characters in The Wall of Night <\/a>series, is a great example of why.<\/p>\n

Although she’s now the Commander of Night, readers may recall when Asantir was\u00a0 the Honour Captain in The Heir of Night<\/em>. Originally, the Honour Captain wasn’t intended to be a major character. Yet in trying to give Derai names a commonality for (within the story) “cultural”\u00a0 purposes, I ended up with too many names that just looked and sounded the same.<\/p>\n

“That’s OK,” I thought, “I’ll just change a few of them and resolve the problem.” I started with the (then) Honour Captain character, eventually deciding on “Asantir” as the new name. But as soon as I started using it, the “Honour Captain” transformed into a completely “other” character.<\/p>\n

\"USA\"<\/a>

USA<\/p><\/div>\n

Asantir not only looked different, she also had a completely different personality and she certainly wasn’t going to be a bit player anymore. On the contrary, she took a metaphorical step forward, put her hands on her hips and said: “I’m here, I’m important to this story, and you’d better pay attention.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Needless to say, I’ve been paying attention ever since. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Che’Ryl-g-Raham, the Tuckerization character in<\/a> Daughter Of Blood<\/em><\/strong> is very similar in that as soon as I came up with the name (a fantasization of “Cheryl Graham”) the character took on a life of her own — an awesome life I may add, imho.<\/p>\n

So you see, Julie Czerneda is quite right: names do matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My fellow SFF author, Canadian Julie Czerneda, is proofing right now and yesterday I saw her tweet: “Names matter!” Yes, I thought, they do… Asantir, one of the leading secondary characters in The Wall of Night series, is a great example of why. Although she’s now the Commander of Night, readers may recall when Asantir […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-funstuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31376"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31378,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31376\/revisions\/31378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}