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).
