Writing Advice: Need Character Names?

~ If you can’t think of a name for a character, use placeholders such as AAA and BBB and so on, moving down the alphabet for each character who lacks a name. When you finally think of a name for that character, you can use Find-and-Replace to switch out the placeholder with the name.

This is one of the best pieces of advice I ever received since I started this career. It is a MAJOR life and time saver for me. A lot of times I can’t think of names for my characters. I have several manuscripts where the heroine is named AAA and the hero is named BBB. To me AAA and BBB signify main characters now. Once I come up with a name that fits, I trade them out. Until then, I don’t let a lack of names slow me down.

Another thing I do, when dealing with last names is to use the same technique but change one letter so I know at a glance which character it is and that I’m dealing with their last name — AAA AAB and BBB BBC and so on.

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