Not related to character development, but do you have any tips for naming stories and places within a story??
My best advice would be to look at how other authors name places and stories.
Look at the books you have on your shelf. Taking a gander at my own, the average amount of words in a book title is one-three. Very few have more than that. That’s not to say you can’t have more than that (The Forest of Hands & Teeth, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Days of Blood and Starlight, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Return of the King, The Fault in Our Stars, Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment) but look at the structure of the titles in those cases. The extra words tend to be ‘the’, ‘of’, ‘and’, in’. Those that have character names in the title don’t emphasise the character called Joe Smith; the names grab attention, are different.
What is the theme of your story? What do you want people to think when they see the title? If you could put a maximum of three words to your story, what would they be?
Sticking with one of my previous examples, Harry Potter is a big one for quirky, interesting place names, but when you strip them down, they can look a little… obvious. Given the world in the series, it makes sense that a lot of the place names use words and phrases that one might associate with witchcraft. Then in the case of Azkaban - sounds a lot like Alcatraz, doesn’t it? Hogwarts is said to be named after the hogwort plant, too.
There’s nothing wrong with ‘obvious’, not in the slightest! In fact, an obvious name is much better than an obscure one, in my opinion.
Here are some other things to consider with naming places:
How would people in your world name things based on their environment and their understanding of it? For example, some place names come about because of what the land looks like. Think about the world you’ve created and the major places within it:
What is the weather like there?
What can be cultivated, grown or harvested there? What are the main exports, if any?
What kind of stereotypes exist?
Who/what ‘founded’ the land, or developed it?
What are the major landmarks?
What kind of animals/other species share the land with the main one?
Does the main species there have an affinity with anything in particular?
What kind of religions exist?
All of these things could give you place names. Even if you don’t stick with the first ideas you come up with, at least you’ll have something to work with.
I’m not condoning that you take a word from somebody else’s language and throw it in as a place name to make your fictional city look ‘cooler’ but studying other languages can be very inspirational. If anything, it can give you a better understanding of how people all over the world name places and things with their own wording and concepts.
Ancient languages such as Latin are great if you’re writing a piece that would justify using it, too.
Or if you can, make up your own languages and words for your work and name things based on the rules of the language you’ve created.
Of course it goes without saying… do your research for this. Don’t just grab words willy-nilly from places and think it’s okay to use them if you have no real understanding of what the word means and what it is used for by those who speak the actual language.
Look at how things and places are named in your own country, town, city or village. What inspired the name? The etymology of real place names is always a good place to start.
So yeah, sorry that this is super long uhm… I do hope it has helped you somewhat though…
(Resources: Naming Places and Things, Geographically Speaking: Tips on Naming Places, Fantasy Names, List of name generators).
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