Glad you were able to make some use of the contribution of those innocent bystanders, hee! I'm a terribly unmurderous writer for the most part, I've noticed.
Well, a lot of the time my character surnames are something I just slap on so I can get ahead with writing. One of the problems of writing historical fiction, at least in the time periods I mostly move in, is that everyone tends to get called Miss Such-and-Such, Mrs This, Captain That, so you need to have surnames. I've noticed that if I use a name in the draft for a long time, I tend to get so used to it that it's hard to change. So that's why I'd like to have them settled before I start writing. But I do sometimes write with just initials or some such. Also, I remember reading somewhere that the main character of the Lord of the Rings was called Bingo quite far into Tolkien's drafts, until he decided maybe Frodo would sound more heroic and fit for an epic. So you're not alone.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2019-06-13 07:32 pm (UTC)Well, a lot of the time my character surnames are something I just slap on so I can get ahead with writing. One of the problems of writing historical fiction, at least in the time periods I mostly move in, is that everyone tends to get called Miss Such-and-Such, Mrs This, Captain That, so you need to have surnames. I've noticed that if I use a name in the draft for a long time, I tend to get so used to it that it's hard to change. So that's why I'd like to have them settled before I start writing. But I do sometimes write with just initials or some such. Also, I remember reading somewhere that the main character of the Lord of the Rings was called Bingo quite far into Tolkien's drafts, until he decided maybe Frodo would sound more heroic and fit for an epic. So you're not alone.