Begin with one human detail
A profession is useful, but a profession plus a habit, relationship, object or reputation starts to feel like a person.
Ordinary lives matter
The Book of Names
The Book of Names remembers people because they lived, not because they were powerful or central to the main plot.
Connect names to the world
An entry can point toward an Echo, recovered object, family relationship, room, workplace, line of dialogue or tiny piece of local history.
Small entries are valuable
Not every name needs a quest. A single sentence can make an abandoned workshop, kitchen or classroom feel like it belonged to somebody.
IDEA STARTERS
Small ideas can carry a whole life.
A child's name discovered inside the band of a lost ring.
The owner of a stool that an Echo still complains was moved from its proper place.
A mason whose mark appears on repairs across the Broken Gate.
Two siblings listed beside the same bakery, one as baker and one as ‘the one who always burned the first tray.’
A teacher remembered not for scholarship but for feeding stray animals behind the lesson hall.
A clerk whose careful handwriting appears on dozens of mundane petitions before one unfinished final page.
FROM SPARK TO CONTRIBUTION
Worked example: Dawit the Cup-Mender
A Book of Names contribution can begin with an ordinary craft and grow outward only if the idea wants to.
Name
Dawit
Occupation
Repairer of cracked cups and serving vessels
Known for
Insisting that a repaired cup carried more stories than an untouched one.
Possible trace in the world
Several household objects carry the same neat repair pattern.
Possible Echo connection
An Echo refuses to throw away a broken cup because ‘Dawit can still save it.’
Possible entry
Dawit — mender of cups. Said a good repair should be visible, so nobody forgot the object had survived something.
ONLY IF INSPIRED
Contribute a memory
You can also keep exploring. Contribution is an invitation, not the destination of every page.