100% K.J Chapman, Writing and Me, Writing Exercises

A Quirky Writing Exercise Because I can…

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As I aforementioned in a post about my My Most Important Tool As A Writer, I treasure my naming book. Dictionary of First Names by Geddes & Grosset is my go to reference for names and their meanings/ origins. I have had the book for many years, even before I ever contemplated having children of my own. It is tatty and adorned with Frozen stickers courtesy of my daughter, but I still love it.

I was perusing the book and a fun blog post idea popped into my head. What if I pick a name featured on the first page of each letter of the alphabet and create a short story for a character inspired by that name? Wham! Bam! I now have a Saturday blog post for the next 26 weeks.

I shall title the post ‘What’s Your Name? A-Z‘, so keep your eyes peeled. The first story shall be posted tomorrow.

Published by Kjchapman

Avid tea drinker. Writer. Book addict. Author of the EVO Nation Series, Thrown to The Blue, and Zombie Playlist.

11 thoughts on “A Quirky Writing Exercise Because I can…”

  2. That’s a great idea! I too have an old, treasured and incredibly battered name dictionary (called “Name you baby” or something similar!). I always choose my character names carefully. Can’t be having the name’s meaning not matching their personality… Unless I want them to turn out to be the opposite of what they seem at some point! (I haven’t been that sneaky yet).

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    1. They also come in useful for naming real life humans, who’d have thought? Haha. It was weird using it to name my daughter after using it to name my imaginary friends 😉

      It is surprising how the names that I think would fit villains actually have similar meanings haha. There are some strange names in there too…

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    1. No colour coding, just a multitude of different post-it note pads used over the years. Although, the yellow ones have names and meanings written on them for a fantasy world I was creating 10 years ago. The less said about that story the better- haha 😉

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      1. Haha, I know the feeling, it’s the same one I get each time I think about my last book I tried to write *ahem* 😉
        Are you sure there’s no colour coding? There are so many different ones, how do you know what’s what? It looks like there’s one on every page! 😛

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      2. I just post-it pages with names I like. Some have the specific name written on them, but most of the time I leave it blank because my theory is- if I turn back to that page and I’m not instantly struck with a name, then it couldn’t have been the right choice

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  4. This is such a brilliant idea! I love choosing names for my characters. One of my hobbies is etymology – I love learning the origin of words 🙂 I also love how your book bears the marks of a treasured item! I can’t wait to see the short stories that come from this experiment 🙂

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