Mar 2, 2022
Let's talk about made up langauges and SPELLS!
“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:
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The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.
[00:00:00] last week, we talked about the beauty of including open empty space of not using too many words in your manuscript. And today we are going to be talking about languages about fantasy made up languages today on writing in the tiny house. Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am Devin Davis.
I am the guy living in a tiny house who writes things and tells you all about them. The whole point of this podcast is to give the tips and tricks and a little bit of guidance so that you can produce a short story in three [00:01:00] months. And you can produce a novel in about 18 months or even shorter.
And you will have the wherewithal to adjust that timeline if you need to. If we remember back in October, I released Brigitte, which was Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, and it went from drafting to publishing in eight weeks. And if you read the short story, it's a great short story.
It is something that can be done. And a lot of people don't know how long different things take. And this is why a lot of people don't write, is just because they don't know how long it could take for them to get started and finished. And so. The whole point of this podcast is to shed light on that entire process.
Today, we are talking about fantasy languages. I have been giving some different insights from George Saunders. I have been reading his book very closely, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, and I have been sharing some of the things that I [00:02:00] have gleaned from that.
Today we're not going to do that. Next time we will, though. Today we're going to be talking about made up languages. With this, we think of things like Klingon and we think of things like the Elvin or Elvish. I don't remember languages from the Lord of the rings and a Tolkien making up an entire language That's really cool and super admirable that somebody did that. At the same time, though, when I approach my writing, it is hard for me to just make up things that people are going to say and pretend that those things are going to be meaningful. Also, when I include what would be a foreign language in my book,
I know that I talked about this in a previous episode, but I want to mention it again. I really like to include another language from this world to be representative of another [00:03:00] language of the world that I'm creaing. So that means that I fully understand that my people and the people in my world don't speak English and that English is already kind of representing whatever language they would be speaking otherwise.
Therefore, if they meet people who are out of town and those people are speaking something else, I think it is perfectly acceptable for that out of town language to be French. If you have red Bridgette, you totally understand that's what I did with the people who live in the city of Brianne.
They speak a different language that is represented by French. And I have another short story stewing in my brain that is going to be from another region of the world that I'm creating that will be represented by Spanish. And so I think it's kind of fun [00:04:00] if the reader already has some background in French or Spanish or whatever other language that they'll be able to kind of pick out what this foreign language is and kind of know things before the main characters know them. It's a real language and it's something that the reader might already know. And I like that. I like the idea of that.
If you want to make up your own entire language, you absolutely can. There is certainly nothing wrong with inventing a language, however, with including it in your manuscript, a lot of people tend to not focus very hard on things that they don't know how to say. And in an adult book to have a grown up reader, to expect them to slow down and sound out whatever you are trying to create as far as a new and a unique [00:05:00] language,
it is something that a lot of your readers may not do. And it affects the flow of the story. Most people read fiction for entertainment, and that means that when they sit down, they want the reading experience to be pretty straight forward. And so to pick apart and to sound out a bunch of words that they don't know, and a bunch of words that are likely not real anyway, it can come across as a pretty big ask.
so if you are working on an entirely new language, good for you. I recommend though limiting how much you're going to have in your manuscript, just because your reader is not really going to pay close attention to it anyway. Also what about spells? Because spells in many books, Their own language.
And a lot of [00:06:00] people like, well, spells are kind of their own unique thing. I guess a lot of people like to have spells be a form of poetry that rhymes, or a bunch of like really powerful statements of truth or commands that could be in English or whatever. and then a spell happens because that's how the magic is working, or it can be a bunch of chanting and nobody ever actually spells out the words that are chanting.
It is just like incoherent noise, like other worldly mysterious, strange syllables and sounds and different things that the magician is producing. A lot of other people like to spell out the command words, they like to spell out the spells. They like to have key phrases that actually represent something.
And so, I mean, if you pay attention to Harry Potter, there are a certain number of commands that come up all the time. And so [00:07:00] even though a lot of them are derived from a Latin word, they at least sort of They come up over and over again, and they are short it is a fun way to world build with something like that, because it's something that we can pay attention.
And it's something that we can learn. And it's something that adds consistency and a certain feeling of familiarity as future books come as additional things happen later on in the story or in the books, especially if you're writing a series. And that can be super fun. If you choose to spell out your spells, I recommend keeping them to maybe one word or as specific phrase and bringing those phrases up more than once or finding ways to include them. Throughout the book or throughout your story so that the reader can come to recognize them [00:08:00] and come.
understand them and really like that type of familiarity that comes with it. So that is very much in a nutshell, my 2 cents about languages today. Like I said, in my short story, Bridgette, which was installment, one of tales from Vlaydor the local yokels of Brianne, which is the city that it takes place in speak.
Or there is a very heavy French influence on their language, even though France doesn't exist in my world. And in a future short story that I will likely be composing later this year, it is going to be focusing on a different area of the world with a different culture a different language that I am likely going to represent with Spanish.
So do what you want. Let me know what you do and what works for you. And yeah. Thank you for joining me today with today's episode on languages. [00:09:00] Next week, we are going to dive back in to George Saunders, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain and dive into more ways to do development. It's on Writing in the Tiny House.
Devin Davis: And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.[00:10:00]