What’s in a name?
Coming up with a good title–heck, even just a working title–can be one of the hardest parts of writing. Not to mention character names! And, just imagine flipping back and forth through a notebook 20 times to find that perfect character you had an idea for a month ago and now want to include in your novel. No thanks!
If you feel like this when you’re trying to come up with names and titles, keep reading. I’m going to give you some great free writing tools to help you avoid this type of frustration.
Get inspired!
If you’re like me, sometimes you just need a tiny kick in the right direction to get you totally inspired and coming up with fabulous names and titles. This morning, as I was trying to come up with a working title for my new novel, I found a few fun, free writing tools online. These tools include title generators and a great online writing application that even generates random character names.
Now, some people might call this cheating, and prefer the old, pen-and-paper method for their writing.
Others might clutch their beloved, Hemingway-esque typewriters closer to their chests in horror at the thought.
Those people should turn back, or risk an embolism.
But for the adventurous among you–those who just want to avoid the helpless, hog-tied feeling that comes with the inability to brainstorm that perfect character name or title–please continue reading.
Title Generators
This one seems to be geared towards Children’s or YA titles:
These are for Fantasy books:
- http://www.fantasyliterature.com/library/fantasytitlegenerator.html
- http://www.core.binghamton.edu/~jandrews/random/randomtitles.html
This one has both a title generator and a character name generator for Fantasy:
This one says it’s for Short Fiction, but could also be appropriate for novels:
This one is for general Fiction, leaning towards Mystery and Suspense:
This one is for SciFi, and has very fun graphics:
Character Name Generators
This simple random name generator from Behind the Name is possibly my favorite. It has options to select names from different nationalities, mythologies, ancient names, names from literature, and names from various fantasy realms. You can even select a type of character you’d like to generate a name for, e.g. hillbilly, rapper, wrestler, goth, etc.
This name generator from Wizards of the Coast is for generating character names for the fantasy role playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. You can select for sex, race, background, character class, social class, and fame/infamy. You can either generate one name or twenty.
The Random Name Generator is a simple name generator. It gives you realistic-sounding first names and last names. That’s it.
Finally, Seventh Sanctum’s generators go beyond description! They have generators for absolutely everything! Check them out here:
LitLift
And, last but not least, have you heard of LitLift yet? It’s a “free online novel-writing application built to help you research, store and organize the information you’ll need to write your novel.” I’m not so sure about the “research” part–maybe that’s a feature they’re planning on adding down the road–but it’s definitely a good app for building and tracking your books, characters, settings, chapters, and even items. It also has a really fun random character name generator. Check it out!
If you found this information helpful in your quest for titles, character names, and writing tools, leave me a comment, below. If you know of other useful tools like these, please share them.
Annisa Tangreen