Sunday, December 4, 2011

Sunday, December 4th

With Nano finished, I've taken somewhat of a break from writing constantly. It felt good to write every day and create a story that grew and grew and to finally come to an end. It is nice to have a couple days off from it though, a break in the creative outflow, regenerate my imaginary well, and generally not care if I write 1667 words today or not. That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about my novel, though, which still needs alot of work. I've written a timeline, some scenes I believe I need to add in, and there's definitely some pacing issues as well. You need some slow casual scenes in between the violent brutal action, which I think I need more of.

Now, I know some folks want to read it, and I will definitely let you do so, if you wish, in the near future. I would like to do some more work on it before that happens though. I know you may perhaps be groaning, be saying 'what if you simply never feel it's finished or it's good enough or simply forget about it, then we will never read it!' Which is why I promise to give it to anyone who wants to read it by January 1st, 2012. There, less than a month to go, I think you can wait that long. This way, I have a deadline to work towards and you have the satisfaction of knowing you'll be able to read it no matter what. In the meantime I can hopefully finish it up. Now, don't get your hopes up about it. It will be rough and likely need more editting and rewriting. It may also feel short. I know I said it is a fantasy epic, but to be honest, it's more the very beginning of an epic. Lord of The Rings and the Wheel of Time both have books that are much longer than 50k. Consider this novel the very beginning. 50k is only around 175 pages or so, which is very short for any fantasy novel.

There's one thing about fantasy writing that is interesting and irritating at the same time, and that is the language. Tolkien created his own actual languages, others seem to just make up their own strange words in 'ancient languages' made up in their world. In my novel, there is this sort of ancient language, from which some words and names come from. The problem for me is whether the names feel realistic and cool, or are they just kind of lame and uninspiring. Do I have everyone speak the Common language, (english) like other books or does each race have their own language and on and on. It is a very difficult thing to create. In mine, Elves, Dwarves and Humans all speak the same language, but then, they are considered more of a single race and species, (they call eachother 'Cousins') so having a common language is perhaps plausible. I guess that's just one of those difficult things about creating your own world, you have to create entire cultures, including languages and essentially how they came to be.

Another thing about language is the swearing. How do fantasy folk swear? By their Gods, often, but what else? I use 'blood' and 'ashes' because of a famous battle, as well as 'hell' and 'damn'. I would like to use 'fuck' but would that feel modern? Unrealistic in a fantasy world? And why, I mean, why wouldn't a culture come up with Fuck as a swear word just as we did? I'd like to go the route of Deadwood, fuck the actual logic of how fantasy people would swear and just use the swears we do, so that it actually feels visceral, like swearing in real life, to the reader.

Anyways, such is what a fantasy writer must deal with. It's a great deal of fun as well as a great deal of work. Such is life.

This is a short post because I've got other shit to do, so there.

2 comments:

  1. Song of Ice and Fire uses "fuck" a lot (especially Tyrion) and it works pretty well. I think it should come as no surprise that Shit, Piss, Ass, and Fuck would end up being swear words no matter what time period you're in or where you are, especially if there's any puritanical/guilt-based culture or religion floating around.

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  2. You know, you're right. I hadn't thought of Game of Thrones. Thanks alot for pointing that out to me. I think I will redo most of the swearing my characters have done, as they haven't really felt right.

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