I haven’t had much time to write for fun lately, but I do have a few projects on the backburner that I want to get back to eventually. Character development is an important part of any story, and one seemingly minor detail that is especially difficult for me is name selection.

When I think of the antagonist role in my tales, several names pop into my mind almost immediately. Is the “bad guy” a jock who acts like he is all that and a bag of chips? Perhaps I should call him Kenny and add a scene where he pops rubber bands across the classroom at the protagonist. Or, is it a pretentious female who makes everyone around her feel miserable and inferior? Ooh, Erica would be a good name, especially if she walks with a bounce and flips her ponytail! These are just two examples of real-life antagonists in my own experience that would be so tempting to incorporate into my works of fiction. (I would say that the names were changed to protect the innocent, but they aren’t exactly innocent, and I doubt there’s a snowball’s chance in Hades that either of them will ever stumble across my humble blog.)

Fiction, while often sparked by true stories, has to be different enough that the plot takes on a life of its own. The same holds true the other way around: the protagonist, the hunk, the hero(ine) … can’t be too closely related to any real person. Perhaps one of my tales will have a character similar to people I have encountered in my own life, but I shouldn’t be writing a memoir; it’s supposed to be a make-believe story.

I thought about this today when I wrote a haiku based on the first line prompt: “My message to X:” (I’ve mentioned before about one of my favorite bloggers who hosts Haiku Fridays; today’s prompt was a message to someone.) I chose to write about the inspirations behind the characters in my stories:

My message to X:
Pen to paper; dreams in ink –
Yes, you are my muse.