Thanks Jeanne. My names generally come to me too, but I think if I put more thought into them at the beginning it would avoid me changing them later on. I like how you came up with the name of your next bad guy. Good luck with your list, I’m not sure I can face going back through my previous books to add to this so it might be something I only do going forward.

Today, a funny thing happened. My hubs reads the local paper and it has a celebrity birthday thing. He says the names and I guess their ages. He gave me one while I was making lunch and I didn’t know the person. But the first name stuck with me. Then he immediately told me of a school they are renaming because of the person’s racist past. His last name stuck with me. My brain combined them and voila, I have the name of the bad guy in my new thriller.

As for keeping track of them, it’s never occurred to me. I will start now.

Why would they do that to readers? Unless it’s necessary for the story I guess.

Been doing some painting have we 🙂

Yes, I think she’s going to make an appearance actually.

I don’t use Scrivener, even though I have it on my computer but that will be useful for those who do. Enjoy it, Wendy!

I’ve just discovered that there’s a name generator on Scrivener! Never knew that before. I think my writing life might have changed forever!

All really interesting, Wendy. Clearly researching popular names from when our characters were born is the thing to do, but the thing I’ve never done! You’ve listed two names in your comment there that I’ve never heard of so it shows just how many are out there. I noticed recently that rarely does a day go past when I don’t hear a new surname. I completely understand what you’re saying about the process of getting to know the character all over again if you change their name. When I wrote Parallel Lies, that didn’t start coming together until I renamed my main character, once that happened it all fell into place. Weird.

I think it was something you posted that made me start the list, Linda. So thank you! You’re quite right that I should choose the lists beforehand but I think this is a problem with writing like I do – as I start to get to know the character and they develop I then decide they are not a Daisy after all. 😀