BRANDON KELLER.NET

I have always struggled coming up with names for my protagonist and supporting characters. I tend to overthink them because I thought the names should be iconic or legendary. The kind of name that, when you first read it, you know precisely the type of person they are. It’s a problem I have become acutely aware of over the past few days as I’m working on names for my short story.

I’m a big fan of what I call “the Stan Lee Method,” where alliteration is the key. Names like Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, and my personal favorite – Matt Murdock. I love the way those names just seem to roll off the tongue. It makes them memorable and impactful. But it’s something that would be ridiculous to do for all characters in a story and should be saved for the special ones. The heroes.

Yesterday, as I was flogging myself trying to come up with names for characters, I said to myself in anger – Just pick a damn name! It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is how you write them.

Though I gave up and haven’t completed the list of names yet, I can’t shake the thought I had. Does it really matter what I call them if, at the end of the day, I write a strong character? Shakespeare said, “A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.” I’m pretty sure that applies here, right?

Perhaps it’s not in the name at all, but rather who they are and what they do that makes a character iconic. Achilles wasn’t a great warrior because he had the best name of the Myrmidons. He was a great warrior because he was a demigod, the son of Thetis, daughter of the sea god Nereus.

I will be honest here and admit it’s a bit embarrassing that I didn’t realize this sooner, but here’s the thing I also realized.

Studying the thing you love will only get you so far. You have to actually do the thing to truly learn it and eventually, if you’re lucky, master it. I’ve spent decades studying how to write, but less than a month doing it in earnest now. There are some things that will never be revealed to you until you start doing the work required to achieve what you are passionate about.