With NaNoWriMo only a month away, many of the writers in the crowd are working up their outlines — and their stamina — to prepare for the marathon task of writing at least 1667 words per day in November. Most of them will have to name their characters. And if there’s one thing that turns me off when I’m looking at a book and deciding whether or not to read it, it’s crazypants character names in the description.

Go with names people can pronounce. People give Twilight a lot of well-deserved shit, but one place where it’s not problematic is in its character names (except Renesmee). Most of the main characters have pretty simple names — Edward, Jacob, Bella — and their last names are normal too — Cullen, Black, and Swan. I don’t know a single American reader who can’t pronounce those in their head.

Back off on the unique spellings. There are many, many ways to spell some names. Let’s take Kathryn, or Katherine, or Catherine — which could become Kathi, Kate, Cathy, Kathy, Cate, Katie, Catie, Katy, Kat, or Kat. That’s plenty right there. You don’t have to add extra, unnecessary letters. Want to see some great examples of what not to do? Check out the Tragedeigh subreddit.

Put down the punctuation shaker. According to TVTropes, the “punctuation shaker” is what happens when writers drop apostrophes into names willy-nilly. It looks silly. Give people multiple names instead.

Shorter is better. Star Wars has a lot of short, simple names: Luke, Leia, Han, Lando, Darth, Owen, Beru, Ben, Yoda, Boba, Jabba. So does Star Trek: Jim, Spock, Leonard, Christine, Scotty, Pavel. Just, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t give your character a name like Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way.

Now, to be fair, there are always exceptions to the rule — one of my favorite books of all time, Souls in the Great Machine, has names like Zarvora, Lemorel, Theresla, Ilyire, and Dolorian. Of course, there’s also a John, so, y’know, there’s something to be said for simplicity.