𝐰𝐞𝐢𝐫𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 - 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐦

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬

i don't know if any of you guys feel the same way but coming up with characters is a real struggle for me sometimes.

no, let me reword that.

i always know what i want my characters to be like in terms of personality but face claims and names can be hard sometimes.

for my book 'wasabi', i think i went through at least five different people before i landed on molly neville. it took a lot of thought and effort because i hate using over used face claims (that sounds so rich when i used sydney crouch for francesca and sabrina carpenter isn't exactly rare either).

when i find a face claim that fits my characters so well, it's a feeling of accomplishment.

the same goes for character names. the struggle with that is literally so frustrating. the name has to fit just right otherwise i won't use it. i have so many drafts (i think i have 100? yeah, it's bad) where i used names for characters and they simply didn't work so i scrapped the whole thing.

ailsa mclaren and maggie montez took me days to come up with. joelle jarrett took me a few minutes. it all depends.

i spent days looking for a name that would represent ailsa's scottish heritage but wasn't something that nobody knew how to pronounce (i later found out that it's more scottish than i originally thought and nobody knew how to pronounce it) and i felt like it was perfect when i found it.

i spent minutes trying to think of a name for joelle but they were some of the most frustrating minutes of my life. i literally looked at my wall where there was a picture of me hanging with joe newell (one of my favourite footballers) and joelle murray (one of my favourite women's footballers) so i picked joelle because it was a pretty name and i felt like it fit her perfectly.

i also don't know if anyone feels this way but when i use a name that someone else has used or i use a similar name to someone, i feel so guilty. i get so scared that they'll accuse me of copying, even though i didn't copy them, it's just a coincidence. because of this guilt, i always always always check with the author that it's okay. it's probably a bit ridiculous but i go by the saying, 'better safe than sorry'.

this rant was all about how difficult i find trying to come up with character names and face claims so yeah, that's pretty much it.

if you read all that, i have one question for you: why?!