Dellie
asked
Michael J. Sullivan:
Hi Michael! I recently finished Riyria Revelations and Riyria chronicles on recommendation from my mom, who also loves your books! They hooked me from beginning to end, and kept me entertained for many nights during quarantine! I was just wondering if you had any advice on how to come up with fantasy based names for places, characters and/or groups of people? Thank you and I hope you and your family are doing well!
Michael J. Sullivan
Hey Dellie,
Thanks for asking! I'm so glad your mom recommended the books to you, thank her for me, will you? Sure I have lots of advice for names (and I have a long list of several thousand that I "pluck" from I need them. That way I don't waste time trying to figure out what a particular person should be called.
1. Road names are great inspiration. I always have a notebook handy when traveling (with Robin driving, of course), and I'll jot down various names inspired from that. For instance, Bald Ridge becomes Baldridge, and picture him as an old partially balding man.
2. Just play around with letters. That's how Arista got her name. I new that I wanted her to start with an "A" to mirror her brother. And I also wanted it to end in an "A" (for symmetry, so then I just started filling in various letters until I got something that "looked" and "sounded" good.
3. I use a program called Scrivner for my writing, and the mac version has a name generator, where you can plug in various criteria and it'll come up with names. It may be that Windows version has this feature by now -- the mac version of that software has always been released first with features added to the non-mac later.
I hope some of that helps! And yes, we are all doing well. Robin and I live like hermits so that makes social distancing easy. One of my children came out "to the land" in March and she does a lot of the errand and grocery shopping to keep us from going out in public. My other two children live about 90 minutes away, and unfortunately, we've not seen them since this all started.
Thanks for asking! I'm so glad your mom recommended the books to you, thank her for me, will you? Sure I have lots of advice for names (and I have a long list of several thousand that I "pluck" from I need them. That way I don't waste time trying to figure out what a particular person should be called.
1. Road names are great inspiration. I always have a notebook handy when traveling (with Robin driving, of course), and I'll jot down various names inspired from that. For instance, Bald Ridge becomes Baldridge, and picture him as an old partially balding man.
2. Just play around with letters. That's how Arista got her name. I new that I wanted her to start with an "A" to mirror her brother. And I also wanted it to end in an "A" (for symmetry, so then I just started filling in various letters until I got something that "looked" and "sounded" good.
3. I use a program called Scrivner for my writing, and the mac version has a name generator, where you can plug in various criteria and it'll come up with names. It may be that Windows version has this feature by now -- the mac version of that software has always been released first with features added to the non-mac later.
I hope some of that helps! And yes, we are all doing well. Robin and I live like hermits so that makes social distancing easy. One of my children came out "to the land" in March and she does a lot of the errand and grocery shopping to keep us from going out in public. My other two children live about 90 minutes away, and unfortunately, we've not seen them since this all started.
More Answered Questions
Robert Natuk
asked
Michael J. Sullivan:
I have really enjoyed listening to your Legends of the First Empire and look forward to the 6th book coming soon! I wanted to start listening to your Riyria books and I was wondering if you could recommend which books to start with and the chronological order to follow with? You have become one of my favorite authors along with Robert Jordan, Michael Wisehart, Terry Mancour, Brandon Sanderson and R.A. Salvadore!
Jack
asked
Michael J. Sullivan:
Have you ever read any of Michael Moorcock's works? If so, what did you think of them?
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more