The Perfect Name

Finally came up with the perfect name for a goth/geek in my short story - Emerson. Tonight I'll begin fleshing out his character. I still need to get middle and last names for all of my characters, but the people are only vague ideas until I get the first names.

With all the work I'm putting into the characters and finding them the exact right name, it seems like I'm preparing for a novel, not a 4000-6000 word story. But I think names are more important in short stories. In novels you have to really like the name since you'll be using it so long, but you have oodles of words you can use to describe the character. In stories word count is limited, and every syllable needs to do double duty. The perfect name goes a long way toward creating a clear image in the readers' mind.