I'm trying to write, no promises

So, you’re writing a thing, and you need to name a character. And, as we all know, naming a character is a giant pain in the ass. I offer this list of shit I use pretty regularly, for this purpose.

Behind the Name (The etymologies are weird as fuck, in a few places, but it’s great if you’ve got a name and need to find other names that are from or derived from the same culture/language)

Behind the Surname (BTN for family names)

Academy of Saint Gabriel Medieval Names Archive (This is the go-to for medieval names in Europe and the Near East. Hardcore scholarship and a distinct lack of fucking around.)

Kate Monk’s Onomastikon (The original internet name resource.)

The Soldier in Later Medieval England (Actual names from English military rolls around the Battle of Agincourt)

England’s Immigrants (Non-native residents of England, 1330-1550)

Celtic Personal Names of Roman Britain

Mapping the Medieval Countryside - People (People appearing in English inquisitions post mortem, 1418-1447)

Wiktionary’s Index of Biblical Names

Ancient Names Galleria (The weird shit is here. If you need Akkadian or Phoenecian names, those are totally covered.)

Trismegistos People (Names extracted from the Trismegistos Texts – mostly names from Graeco-Roman Egypt.)

Wikipedia Category: Surnames of African Origin (which is helpfully divided into sections by language)

Wikipedia Category: Amharic Language Names (I believe this list is primarily, if not entirely, given names.)

 YorubaName (“an online intervention to preserve and document all Yorùbá names in a multimedia format.”)

Writing Adolescent Fiction: Character names: Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan (a list of given names and surnames with notes on how full names are constructed in each culture listed)

So You Want to Name a Sino (a fairly detailed guide on how to name a Chinese character without sounding like too much of a moron)

Most Popular Baby Names for Girls Since 1960 (most popular American girls’ names, by state, from 1960-2012, as a gif)

Popular Baby Names (the US Social Security database of naming trends in the US, with search options for date, gender, location, and trend)

A Guide to Names and Naming Practises (a UK government guide to common names and structure of names from around the world, split first by continent and then by culture. PDF.)

Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature (an entire book on trends in English naming and name structure and the Puritan influence, from 1880. PDF.)

This piece came into existence thanks to the 1789 Fandom, when @margridarnauds shared an AU headcanon that my beloved girl Charlotte was Lazare's half sister, and the idea grew from there.

I could talk for hours about how much I already love this AU-

What I said was, "Only write the thing that's fun, and don't write the rest."

Write one shots. Write drabbles. Write ficlets. If you have 5 interesting scenes but you can't figure out how to tie them together into a fic, then write 5 separate ficlets, post them in a series, and when you get another idea for that series just plop it right in there and rearrange the works into the right order.

I would like to reintroduce you to ye olde fanfic classic “Five times [whatever]” with bonus variant “Five Times [whatever] and One Time [whatever adjacent]”

let’s say we want to write Destiel pining. Great “Five Times Dean Didn’t Say I Love You (and One Time Cas Died Did)”

As a lot of people aren’t familiar with plot creatures, I thought I’d shed some light on the members of the mental menagerie…

The Plot Bunny - Story ideas that come bounding in and start multiplying.

The Plot Chicken - They squawk, flap around, and shit everywhere, but when you actually need to do something with them, they scatter.

The Plot Sloth - Takes its sweet goddamned time turning into something useful.

The Plot Mule - When you mash two plots together and get something cool, but you can’t get a sequel out of it to save your life.

The Plot Cat - Lazy little bastards who take up your headspace, scare away all the other plot bunnies, but won’t actually do anything except lay there.

The Plottweiler - Barks loudly and viciously so you can’t ignore it, distracts you from everything else you want to write, but leaves you too paralyzed with fear to actually put words down.

The Plot Squirrel - Cute, distracting, full of nuts, and just TRY to keep up with that train of thought.

The Plot Bedbug - Shows up during the night, chews on you so you can’t sleep, and disappears in the daylight.

The Plot Tick - Burrows in, bleeds you dry, and leaves you with the creepy-crawlies. Mostly preys on horror writers.

The Plotroach - Totally unappealing, but so tenacious they’ll survive anything until you finally give up and write them.

The Plot Fin Whale - It’s a longfic, but a surprisingly fast-moving one that just flows right out of you.

The Plot Dragon - A gigantic pile of your most treasured tropes that probably don’t go that well when mixed together haphazardly like that but so shiny

The Plot Gryphon - A crossover.

The Plot Chimera - An especially ambitious crossover.

The Plot Hydra - WHERE ARE ALL THESE SUBPLOTS COMING FROM

The Plot Salmon - A love story that ends tragically.

The Plot Peryton - That deathfic you don’t want to write because you like that character and don’t want them to die but its shadow will be cast upon you until you give up and write it.

So if anyone wants to send me a situation or something on there I'll do some short little prompts to help I guess

The three faces of eve (mother, maiden and seductress) represented by the three main female characters (Mag, Shilo and Amber)

Ignore the lack of process photos, I was very focused on getting this done