Jaycee Woods

When I worked on doing a second pass edit for the first time, the draft still pretty incomplete. At that point, the dialogue, action, and narration is completed. In addition to general editing, the purpose of this pass is to add the immersive detail and world building to draw the reader into the story

I realize that I need to write out a character profile as an early step to nail down things that I have treated as unimportant like appearance and name. I am trying to use World Anvil as a template so I don’t have to invent a repeatable process.

I selected the first chapter of Boudica and The Butcher as my playground as it is relatively simple with one scene and 3 characters. Even easier as one of the characters is unconscious the whole time.

I had to come up with an actual name for The Butcher. Not so simple when I have already used hundreds of male names while wanting each to be unique across all my stories.

Asked Copilot for a list of male names other than Hamlet associated with vengeance. From that list I selected Gideon, meaning mighty warrior or destroyer. As alternatives with similar meanings I considered Gerhard and Andronikos.

I asked Copilot for a list of last names of Union brigadier generals. From that list I selected Sheridan as Phil Sheridan put the Valley to the torch and pacified the Indians.

Thus while the rebels call him The Butcher, his momma named him Gideon Sheridan.

Within the draft novel, The Butcher’s name isn’t disclosed until many chapters later. Olga, who is pregnant, tells Boudica that Olga’s son will be named Gideon as Cyrus wishes for his son to be named after his commander.