Choosing Names for Fiction, part 2
By RazzaTazz 9 Comments
For some reason today, I keep on referencing other blogs that I have written in the past, and this blog will be no different. I picked up an obscure romance comic today, and one that I couldn't resist based on the cover, but it made me think of another romance comic which had a similar problem of choosing names for characters. This was not really similar though in case of the other problem (which was just the result of choosing a too common name for multiple characters in the same issue.) This was a different problem, but I can show you why first better than to explain it:
Norma Bates? Like Norman Bates the infamous fictional serial killer, who while fictional was based on a real life serial killer? The character that was voted the 2nd greatest villain on AFI's list of movie villains. I get this problem myself sometimes when writing that I have a first name or last name in mind and then when my mind tries to fill in the blank other half it goes to something which I know without me recognizing it. This goes beyond that though. In this case I would have to assume that the writer either doesn't know who Norman Bates is (though I know and I am not writing a comic within a decade that the movie was released); didn't recognize the name through a slip; or recognized the name but didn't care. In any case for me this pretty much sealed the entire story for me, as the connection though potentially unintended was still really creepy.
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