Ciarán

I forgot to follow up on my previous post on character naming woe (a minor woe in comparison to the ‘crap, I have writer’s block’ woe or the ‘crap, my laptop died and my novel is gone’ woe). Ciarán finally has a surname: McDonagh.

So why did I get so excited about a surname anyway? Finding a surname meant localizing Ciarán, which is very important for determining his speech pattern. Ciarán hails from the West of Ireland (still deciding on where exactly). The farther west you go in Ireland, the more likely it is that you will cross into the Gaeltacht, areas of Ireland were the primary language spoken is Gaelic. Now that I know what general area Ciarán is from, I can begin looking into dialects hailing from Connacht. I’ll be much happier when Ciarán has a voice. I won’t know him until he does.

I’m enjoying going through the photos, maps and travel journals from my trips to Ireland. Research can be just as fun as the actual writing.