Yay letters that make words.

Sometimes I try to avoid proper nouns, namely names, in my work. This most commonly happens in slush work, like the novella I'm currently plowing through. From the outside it seems a little contradictory due to my interest in identity and name magic, but sometimes I'm just playing with concepts and don't want to invest in fully clothing my characters. (That sounds way worse than I meant it.)

This can be solved by picking generic, nondescript names, like the Billy, Bobby, Evan, Jack and Frank who star in one line of this novella. Find-replace will be my friend when I evolve these characters, or maybe when I do a full rewrite they'll have different names.

Other solution: picking out random letters from something nearby, or playing with pleasing sounds in my head. Sometimes this doesn't work for the best, like the "Burbull Bolt" my character is exploring in a collaborative project. Occasionally, however, a name like "Echston" pulled from a bag of dehydrated veggies brings a degree of serendipity to a story.

This Echston bought up a lot of property in a city, beginning with an orphanage, then the surrounding buildings until he owned everything around a public square. He closed off the square and hired people to be part of his secret project. They all lived/worked in Echston's buildings around the square. Yes, it's a bit cult-like. Especially when you find out the people living in that area are calling themselves "Archstones" and the orphanage at the center of it is called "Keystone". It works so well, it amazes me that Echston was the first piece, not the last one, mutated to make the others fit.

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Well there's 300 words and 40 minutes I won't get back.