Tag: techniques

World Building Series: Language Construction—Part 1

Joshua A. Mercier
***Originally posted on The Bearded Scribe on March 30, 2012; post has been edited and updated.

World Building Series: Language Construction—Part 1

HELLO, Beardies!

I decided to do yet another post within my World Building Series, this time focusing on language construction. Being a lover of language, especially in Fantasy, I believe this is one of the many elements that sets the genre apart from the rest.

I mean… How exciting is it to open up a new book and find a glossary?!? I love the challenge and the ‘secret’ invitation to get inside the head of the author. How the author forms the language, how it is used by the characters, and how the author incorporates it into the book are all things that make for a stimulating read. At least for me.

I spent years trying to perfect my first language. At first I got in my own way. I was just creating words—with truly no fluidity or method of organization. I even complicated things by trying to incorporate too much complexity into the language. I was my own worse enemy.

I finally had a breakthrough when I realized I needed to simplify. A lot. It was overhaul time, but where to begin? Sure, the words I created were wicked neat (as we say in New England) and evocative of their true meanings, but there was no cohesiveness to their styles or potential etymology. I almost scrapped it completely, but I ran across something that changed my outlook on Tolkien’s genius and fantasy languages altogether.

One chilly winter’s afternoon, I took a sojourn to Lansing, Michigan and my path led me to a newly-finished, outdoor mall. I can’t recall if I went there specifically or happened to stumble upon it, but at any rate, they had one of the largest bookstores I had ever seen (I’ve seen much larger ones since, but this was a great find for us at the time). While browsing the shelves, my eyes were drawn to the bright red binding and the title of the book pictured below: The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth by Ruth S. Noel.

THE image is perhaps too small to read the block of text under the title, so I will oblige all of you with a transcription: A complete guide to all fourteen of the languages Tolkien invented.

Yes. You read it correctly. Fourteen! I figured if it gives me even the slightest inclination as to how he did it with fourteen, then surely I should be able to create at least one!

I read that thing from cover to cover. Twice.

And then I re-read it with a journal and pen to take notes on all the helpful information it contained. It is in no way a reference guide to how Tolkien did it, but it contained enough clues for me to discern a pattern and methodology. And with my journal now full of notes, hints, and questions for me to ask myself about my own language, I decided to jump in head first.

I also discovered something important. Tolkien didn’t create his languages from scratch, he had a little help. I am not saying that Tolkien wasn’t a genius because he didn’t create his language from scratch—because he absolutely was one; I am saying that perhaps the fact that he decided to use an existing language for guidance proved his very genius. Why not borrow parts of a language that already has all of the ‘kinks’ worked out? It made perfect sense to me, so that’s what I decided to do.

As Tolkien based his language upon Finnish (whether it was just one—or perhaps all fourteen—I am not certain), I, too, decided to structure [at least parts of] my language on an existing one…. well, many, actually. Parts of my language are derived from Gaelic, parts from French, parts from Latin, parts from Finnish, parts from Hebrew (the list actually goes on, but I will spare you from its entirety).

Also, like Tolkien, I decided to use combination forms of words so that I could create better-formed proper nouns—names of characters and places and important things.

This post is getting rather long, so I will end it and continue where I left off in a future post. Keep your eye out for it! 🙂

Since this post was first published in 2012, I've actually dissected my languages and have decided to simplify even more, so I removed the section of this post that contained the older language references.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series,

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Joshua A. Mercier

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World Building Series: Overbuilding

Joshua A. Mercier
***Originally posted on The Bearded Scribe on March 20, 2012.

World Building Series: Overbuilding

WELCOME BACK, Beardies!

Here is the second installment of my World Building Series of blog posts, as promised, which has to do with the dreaded dilemma of OVERBUILDING.

Overbuilding can cause serious procrastination for a writer, and I can attest that I am perhaps the worst culprit of this—or at least I used to be. Attempting to perfect my languages was the biggest distraction for me, and in doing so, I never actually got much writing done.

I had created three separate languages for my first series (a separate languages for two of my races, and an Ancient dialect used for majick), and I was never completely happy with the first two of them. I kept going back to ‘tweak’ the languages, at first trying to make what I already had work, and then trying to reconstruct them altogether. But it was when I finally decided to simplify that I chose to scrap the weaker parts of both, combining the stronger parts of each and forming a universal language for the world instead of separate ones for the two races. Honestly, a lot of this was decided when I realized that I needed more than two races in my series, which meant possibly creating a separate language for each; and just like that I realized how daunting the task at hand would be and opted to create a unifying language for all the races. It seems like an easy way out–but I had to ask myself the important question: how much of each language would honestly go into the various books in the series? Which meant also asking: shouldn’t I be spending more time on the actual plot?

I can tell you from experience: just as there are flaws in the world we live in, the world you create for your story will never be perfect or to your liking until you actually write the plot. Writing the plot irons out the flaws and answers the questions that are left unanswered while you are in the initial building stages.

Or maybe there are not flaws, per se, but minor issues that arise while writing. For instance: whereas I was happy with my Ancient dialect used for the majickal system in the series, I realized while writing one of the chapters (where the majick system is the most prevalent), that I actually need to ‘tweak’ and define the language a little further to fit the rules and limitations of the majick. This type of building where you build it once it’s needed—as opposed to overbuilding and never using some of the material in the actual writing—is highly encouraged. I feel the choice made my majick system more believable and understandable (not only to my readers, but to me as well).

Stay tuned for the next post in this series,

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Joshua A. Mercier

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World Building Series: Introduction and Fundamentals

Joshua A. Mercier
***Originally posted on The Bearded Scribe on February 29, 2012.

World Building Series: Introduction and Fundamentals

GREETINGS Beardies!

While writing on my current project, Valkyrie, the other day, an idea for a post started to formulate in my mind.

World Building.

FANTASY and Speculative Fiction or not, every book (and movie/screenplay) has it. Even non-fiction has a bit of world building involved. An author must know the limits and facts about the world in which he/she is writing before he/she can construct a believable, fully-formed story. If an author’s facts have inconsistencies or flaws, he/she can discredit his/her knowledge of the craft, and by doing so, quickly lose readership. Simply put: if you don’t know the world in which your story takes place, how are you supposed to describe it to your readers in its fullest capacity?

I have been pondering at how to go about writing on such an extensive topic–or even how to begin doing so, for that matter. After much deliberation, I decided that breaking it down into several posts would be the most practical option, not only for my personal choice to put constraints on post lengths, but also to get more detailed and concise, content-related posts for you, my readers.

This first post will focus on the initial steps to world building, intertwined with my own anecdotes of trial & error with my own writing, and will also introduce the next post in this specific series.

BEFORE I ever knew what world building was, I was unknowingly creating my own worlds. After reading books like The Egypt Game, The Bridge to Terabithia, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, I became obsessed with creating worlds of my very own. I sketched maps galore, created languages (minor undertakings back then), secret codices with which I could write notes to my friends, and planned out entire cities in which to create my stories.

Of course, those worlds failed me; more correctly, I failed them because I didn’t know enough about my creations. Sometimes I would sketch pages and pages of maps with great detail, but I neglected to populate it with creatures and characters that were believable for the setting. Sometimes, vice versa. Other times, I forgot to ask myself important questions whose answers would have provided me with a connection between the different aspects of my worlds. I constantly wrote myself into corners—or worse, circles. My writing was all jumbled—mismatched additions, not all too dissimilar from the Winchester House—without any coherence whatsoever. I neglected to make the full blueprint before building the house; but fortunately, with training and practice, I realized the errors and remedied them.

The Winchester House - Santa Clara Valley, California

MOST ideas for stories usually develop long before a writer even thinks about world building. Unfortunately, I feel that this leads to weaker stories in the end. I am saying this from experience because the first few starts at my now-finished manuscript were torturous. My characters and my world felt disconnected and, to be honest, a bit contrived. In my opinion, it is much easier to build believable characters inside of a defined world than to a build a foreign world around a cluster of characters.

Asking yourself fundamental questions will help guide you in creating the blueprint; and creating a basic blueprint for your world before you go any further will save you a lot of headache.

THE first set of questions we will discuss have to do with Earth settings and their variations/possibilities:

  • If this story takes place on Earth, does it occur in the Past?
  • Present?
  • Future?
  • Some alternate version/history of Earth? [for instance, an Earth that has been decimated by a nuclear war or asteroid? A post WWII Earth in which Hitler had won?]

EACH answer should and will produce more questions for you to consider, and each answer will also narrow down the genre/category of your manuscript. Let’s take our two examples from above, starting first with a post-asteroid collision.

  • When, where, and how did the collision happen?
  • How did it change the landscape/structure/rotation/orbit/population/technology of the Earth?
  • Were there any alien life forms or microbes on the asteroid?Or maybe some advanced technology?
  • If yes, how did that change the landscape, environment, or population? Did it change the genetic makeup of humans/animals/plants? On the negative side, did it bring disease or famine? On the positive side, did the asteroid’s introduction create a superior human/animal/plant?

AS you can see, each answer spawns a whole set of additional questions, which then defines the conflicts and plots. Placing characters within this constructed world is now a breeze.

The questions for our second example might look a little like this…

  • How had Hitler and the Axis forces defeated the Allied?
  • Did Hitler continue his mass genocide? And if so, how has this affected the population of Earth? Did Hitler succeed in creating an Aryan race? Does everyone speak German?
  • How long after the defeat does the story take place? Within Hitler’s lifetime? Twenty years later?
  • Are there secret Allied forces still hiding out from the Nazi Regime? Are they physically hiding out (in, say, underground caves) or pretending to blend in with society while maintaining their Allied lifestyles in secret? Are there plans to overthrow the government?

LITERALLY dozens of scenarios with an exponential amount of questions can arise from the first 4 questions above, and that is only dealing with Earth or Alternate Earth settings and plots. The second part of this post will deal with all other settings.

    • If the story does not take place on Earth [or any variation], is the setting a known one (i.e., Mars, the Moon, or the Andromeda Galaxy) or some distant or unknown planet/moon/galaxy? Is it even part of our known universe?
    • If unknown setting, how was the setting formed? Evolutionary (like the Big Bang Theory)? Or Mythologically (created by omnipotent beings)? Or a combination of the two?
    • How does the setting differ from Earth? How is it similar? Landscape/flora/fauna differences and similarities? Does it still have earthly forces (like gravity)? Does it have unearthly forces, i.e., majick (more on this later)?
    • Is it populated by more than one race/species? Are they humanoid? Are all of them intelligent?
    • Are there areas with concentrations of certain races, or do all the races live together?
    • If there is majick, where is it derived from (sun, moon, water, earth, air, blood, artifacts, etc)? Are all the races majickal? Only a few? One?
    • Are the majickal races exalted or suppressed? Is a majickal race the ruling race? Does it view the other races as unequal because of its lack of majick? Or vice versa?

The questions are endless, and so are the answers. And each answer lends itself to a different aspect of your world–from character races, history, politics (power struggles, classes), mythology (creation myths, deity current involvement and interaction), languages (spoken, written, ancient), majick (source, limitations, how it’s produced and used), et cetera.

The list is infinite, and I know I barely touched the surface when it comes to introducing World Building, which kind of brings me to introducing the topic of the next series in this post: Overdoing it!

Stay tuned for the next post in this series,

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Joshua A. Mercier

MEET JOSHUA
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