Naming characters

@toddjones Do you have a certain way to go about it when you then pick out the final name?

@patricia-a Recently, I've been using names that are easier to pronounce, but representative of the country they are from. Nothing worse than a reader stumbling over a name all the time. My writing of awkward sentences makes them stumble enough.

I use (name) if I haven't decided on a name. I'm working on a science-fiction story and I started out with Rose as the main character's name. After a few pages into my writing, Rose didn't seem to fit in the story- every supporting character had a unique and sounded more fitting for space travel. I changed to the name. Has anyone had a name not seem to fit what you are writing?  How did you make a decision on what to use?

@stephanie1980 Yes, I absolutely have. Sometimes the character changes, sometimes the name just doesn't fit with the setting or the plot. I'm not a big fan of complicated fantasy names, so I try to make sure my names are easy to read in one pass and follow common pronunciation options, even if I'm making up a new name.

I often change character names as the story evolves. Sometimes its aesthetic like their name doesn't fit the world, or their character but just as often its because I realize I have too similar sounding names. Other times I'm writing from different computers and simply don't remember the right name, or how the name is spelled (even for common names that have multiple spellings)

The key here before submission - and I ran into this literally yesterday - is catching ALL the times I've addressed said character and making sure the name is the same throughout. It seems not worth it to do a computer search on a flash but it is! Yesterday I had read the story a dozen times and not picked up on a character name change mid-story. The computer picks up on these things more reliably than our brains