Questions Authors Ask: How often would Lizard People Lay Eggs?

Or, "The Ovulation of Fictional Beings!"

Another fairly unscientific look at something only an author would bother thinking about

You know what most people don't ask themselves every day?  "What would it be like to be a sexually mature female lizardfolk?"  You know why?  Because... well... why would you?  "Because you're an author writing about anthropomorphized lizard/dragon people and when and how they ovulate is something that you want to know!"  Now why would you want- "Stop asking me questions and read the blog!"

My novel features lizardfolk, if you haven't noticed, so one thing I recently started wondering was how they reproduce.  It may not come up explicitly in my novel, but it affects the language you use when discuss their culture and life cycle.  Do you call an infant a baby or a hatchling?  Do you say," When you were born," or "When you hatched?"  Do they build a sort of nest?  Do they incubate?  These questions need to be answered as they impact how the characters go through life.

My answer was for them to come from eggs, and that was enough for me to answer what I needed to know.  Later on, however, I began researching how eggs are fertilized in order to understand what would be involved for harvesting eggs from a different chicken-like creature without them becoming fertilized.  That sent me down the mental rabbit hole of egg laying frequency in chickens, which made me realize that my lizard people might have a situation on their hands.  If you're an egg eating, child-rearing, sentient species, what would your people do if mature sexually-inactive females laid an infertile egg at semi regular intervals?

If you think about it, humans do this, if in a very different way.  Female menstruation is quite literally the human body passing an unused egg out of its system.  Now granted, humans don't lay eggs covered in a shell filled with nutrients for the potential fetus inside.  They pass a microscopic cell and an internal lining along with some blood.  Messy, inconvenient, and often painful due to cramps.  Birds and reptiles, however, can lay unfertilized eggs complete with shell and yolk, and a humanoid bird/lizard person might do the same.

Now, these creatures I'm thinking about are completely fictional, and the answers to these questions of how, why, when, and what are entirely up to me, their creator.  It could be said that there is no need for me to decide or go into detail about any of this especially when it may not come up directly in the story.  But knowing how this might work will proactively answer questions I would need to ask if my characters have children.  In my book's case, the answer to "what came first: the chicken or the egg?" is the chicken, but that just means I have to figure out the eggs before they show up in my story.

World Building, Part 6: The Sword!

Because Heroes Prefer Swords

My own sketches, pre-Graey Erb

This is not news.  A trope older than Beowulf and Iliad, literature both ancient and modern is full of examples that prove the trope.  Some ask why, and the simple answer is that a blade has been present in warfare for almost as long as war has been waged (considering someone had to figure out how to make them, first).  Even today soldiers bring a knife to their gunfights, and while there are no longer epic sword fights outside of Medieval Times and Renaissance Fairs, swords remain strongly embedded in how we think of war.  Therefore, it is natural that in fantasy settings, swords seems to always find their way into the hands of a hero.  The above link goes into some detail regarding examples in literature, and literary trends related to it, so instead I will tell you about The Sword of my book, and why I found it necessary to design this particular aspect of the book and bring it to life through art so early in my writing process.

My pommel design sketch.

Before I hired Graey Erb to create artwork, I tried my hand at drawing things myself.  Above I was toying with the shape of the blade.  I was inspired by the design of Orcrist from "The Hobbit" movies (shown on the right).  Big surprise, I'm sure.  Truth is at the beginning, I imagined The Sword for my protagonist would be like Anduril, considering my unrefined excitement for "The Lord of the Rings."  Further thought and time eventually told me that a European long sword seemed out of place among lizard folk.  It is much more common to find lizard folk or any of the other 'evil minion' labeled races having some manner of cruelly shaped curved swords.  This comes from history as much as literature, as European Christians demonized the pagan tribal peoples of Eastern Europe and the Muslims of the Near East, both of whom of battled various European kingdoms either across land or the Mediterranean Sea (Crusades, anyone?).  These cultures used curved blades that fit their tendency to attack from horse back, where a curved blade would be more practical than the straight edged blades that dominated Western Europe's armories.  This allowed me to tackle and subvert another common trope, referred to as the Sinister Scimitar.  In essence, my desire to subvert the "Reptiles are Abhorrent," which claims that lizard-beings are almost always evil, gives me the chance to subvert the trope claiming bad guys use curved swords.

Curved swords!

The first draft of Graey Erb sword concepts.

In order to create a fitting visualization of the sword I wanted, I emailed Graey (after discovering his art on Pinterest of all places) with a 20+ page project proposal that included my own sketches for designing the sword.  The first draft of concepts were very different from each other, as I did not have a clear idea of what the sword would look like.  The initial idea was that the sword was created during a Golden Age of the World.  Since the Deities of this world have (or can choose to have) a draconic form, the weapons are made to evoke that.  The pommel is shaped as the head of a dragon, the hilt is the neck/body, the crossguard the wings, and the blade has a tail either engraved or embossed upon it in some fashion.  After seeing the first draft, I pointed out what I liked and disliked, and Graey went back to work, creating a second set of concepts.  The one I liked the most, and that Graey iterated upon, was a combination of features from #1 (The pommel, crossguard and blade shape) and from #3 (the hilt texture and the style of detail on the blade).  I also asked him to work on the proportions of sword, such as making the blade longer and thinner.  The other designs, despite not being quite what I had in mind, actually gave me some ideas.  Numbers 5,6 and 10, with the angular design elements reminded me of the dwarven architecture in "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" movies, so it gave me the idea that these designs could be reused when I get around to developing the other cultures that will be in my book.

Concept Pass 2

The second set of concepts nailed down the size and shape of the sword, leaving the details on the blade itself to be choose.  I again went with #1, as the sunburst at the top seemed appropriate. It seemed too plain, still, so Graey and I came up with a stylized sun to replace the plain circle.  It ended up being two pointed starbursts overlapping each other  Next, something needed to go on between the lines radiating from the half circle.  We narrowed it down to either a diamond or a four pointed star, and settled on the four pointed star.  From there the sword was more or less complete.  With some color, the sword came to life.  There is one feature that I found unique which came from the original concepts: a medallion hanging off the pommel.  It is common among the practitioners of Wushu, a style of the 'kung fu' martial arts in China, to have a tassel hanging from the pommel of their dao, a type of broad bladed sword.  I like it as a way that my character, upon getting the sword, to personalize it without changing the sword itself.  A common trope in fantasy is the named weapon, which either comes from the blade being historical/legendary or from the character being sentimentally attached to the weapon.  I have not decided yet if I will name it or how it would be named, so the medallion seemed a good alternative.

Final Concept Pass

The Sword of the Hero!

The Legacy of Beowulf

Hail, Beowulf!  King of the Danes!

So I'm sitting on the couch watching Star Trek: Voyager with my fiance, and an episode comes on called "Heroes and Demons."  It's about a crew member who vanishes while experiencing a "holo-novel," a holographic recreation that's interactive, of the Epic of Beowulf.  In the episode, two senior crew members vanish seeking the third, and it takes a fourth crew member, a holographic medical officer, to figure out how to 'defeat' Grendel, an monster from the Beowulf legend.

I find it amazing how much popular culture is inspired by that ancient tale.  A legend ancient even when it was written down by monks almost a millennium ago, the tale has inspired books, movies, and television either with direct adaptations, or using the material to tell other stories.  You've read how Tolkien looked to how the character of Beowulf acted and proved himself when writing his character Aragorn.  Michael Crichton's* The Eaters of the Dead and the movie adaptation The 13th Warrior take the tale of Beowulf and tell it through the eyes of a historical figure, a Persian historian who is said to have visited Scandinavia, where he meets Danish warriors as he left his homeland.

I find it amazing.  It might not even be a terribly complex feeling but I just couldn't help myself.  I had to talk about it.  So much of what we think is modern is influenced by the ancient.  I see it all the time on TV (when I watch it).  Marvel Comics love to take from the Norse Mythology for their Thor titles.  The show Stargate SG-1 used all manner of Egyptian and Norse mythology as inspiration for the Aliens that humanity once thought were gods.  In fact a Neil Gaiman novel that recently received major rewards for writing is called "American Gods," and it features versions of ancient Gods competing against the 'new' gods of wealth, fashion, and money.  It's just fascinating to me, and I love discovering these influences, especially in things that I love.

Did you know that the original Halo games (1-3) have a heavy Biblical influence?  I may have to write about that some time!

NaNoWriMo update!  536 words over the past 3 days.  Not the best but at least I've been writing.  Chapter 7 has been coming quicker than I expected but some of the details I'm anxious about putting on too strongly.  A certain character is quite negative toward the protagonist, but I don't want to make the character into a caricature. However, at the same time, I want to just write it, and iron out the hiccups later.  Thanks for reading!

*Corrected a mistake I made.

A Few of my favorite things: Role Playing Games

Yesterday's Post Today!

Despite all the kinds of games out there, Role Playing Games (RPGs) are my favorite.  They allow a player to take on the role of a character or cast of characters as they pursue a goal.  Those goals can be noble, such as saving the world/kingdom/town/self from something, or something sinister, like stealing cars and kill people (or taking over/destroying the world).  Different games offer this range of moralities with their own justifications.  The Grand Theft Auto series has always been about being a criminal, and while they sometimes offer some kind of justification for the murders and thefts and destruction you will no doubt cause over the course of the game, most people who play them do so to experience that thrill of being 'evil' without the real life consequences.  On the same token, games like Dragon Age: Inquisition offers the player a spectrum of options to choose from in pursuing the goal of stopping monsters from overrunning the world, and some are more noble than others.  And then you have Zelda, where you're always the good guy, and the worst thing you can do is murder a chicken and smash peoples pots.

The games I just mentioned are video games, but RPGs also come as table top games.  By table top I mean a game you play similarly to a board game, on a table with other people, and usually involves dice and a set of rules for how to use those dice to play the game.  The game is also usually one by a player whose job it is to tell the story and take the role as the antagonists. These players are generally called Game Masters (GM), since they also enforce the rules.  Because of the nature of the game players have virtually unlimited choice of how they want to proceed, tempered by the consequences and results determined by the GM.  So unlike a video game, which has a goal in mind and certain limits as to how you can accomplish them, a table top game's only limit is the imagination, with the GM and the results of dice rolls the only thing that holds you back.  A good GM will generally take what you come up with in mind, but if you're trying to kill 100 orcs with one arrow by bouncing it off rocks, you are asking to fail.  There are still levels of success based on game rules, and some times things are just too ridiculous to work.

For instance, Dungeons & Dragons, one of the most popular table top RPGs in the world, uses a system of tiers call Levels (something many games both digital and physical use) to determine a characters abilities, powers, skills, and more.  At level one, killing a single orc with an arrow can be hard,but not impossible.  A lucky shot can take an orc out in one hit, or just make it angry and come after you.  By level ten, however, one-shotting an orc should be easy, and you begin to be able to do feats such as making an arrow go through one orc and hit another standing behind him.  By level twenty, you might even shoot four arrows at once, have them all punch through the orcs, hit the ones behind them, and maybe make the arrows explode for even more carnage.  But the trickier the shot, the better your skills and dice rolls need to be.  And by level twenty the orcs may just run at the sight of you.  The dragon on the other hand...

The thing I like most about table top games, though, is the story.  I've played noble paladins fighting for the honor of their deity while slaying the undead that plague the world.  I've played warriors who seek to amend a disgraceful past and die gloriously in battle in the name of their ancestors.  I've played a selfish, short sighted rogue who thought her (yes, I play female characters sometimes) way was the only way, and hurt both friends and enemies on her personal quest for justice.  Table top games allow you to make your own history and goals for your characters, instead of having to follow the script of a video game.  I enjoy Skyrim and Dragon Age as much as the next gamer, but even they limit your choices, and your goals.  In the table top realms that come either ready to go from the publisher, or you make one up with your friends from scratch, you can do anything in them (GM and dice permitting).  Want to be a sorcerer who comes from a cursed family seeking to enslave the very demon lord that cursed your ancestors?  Go for it!  Want to be a barbarian chieftain set on claiming the civilized world for your people so they no longer need to fear the night?  Go for it!  Want to help resurrect the God of Murder and watch the world bathe in blood for his glory?  Umm, okay, sure.

Your goals don't even need to fit the fantasy genre, which D&D and many other games inspired by Tolkien focus on.  There are games that take place in a world of Gothic Horror inspired by authors like H.P. Lovecraft.  There are games based on Star Wars, Star Trek, even video game franchises like Warcraft and Dragon Age.  You can be a Werewolf, a Vampyre, a Mummy, in the White Wolf "World of Darkness" setting.  You can be a super hero, a super villain, a pirate, the options are as endless as the imaginations of players.  You can even take a rule set you like and make your own setting where dragons with lasers fight pirates in flying space ships and people drink potions to gain super powers if you wanted.

In every way, an RPG is like getting to actively engage in writing a book in a manner that's unique.  You don't have to think about how a battle will turn out, you roll the dice, and fate decides it.  And that's what makes it so thrilling.  I remember a game where I played a Half-orc samurai-esque warrior just beginning to uncover a plot to turn a peaceful valley into a gateway to Hell.  Facing long odds and enemies several steps ahead of he and his allies, he remained determined to stop the evil plot, even at the cost of his life.  Though the story ended up left unfinished due to the unfairness of real life not allowing people's schedules to mesh, I always imagined his end to be found stemming the tide of the demons, alone with no hope of victory, as his allies raced to close the bridge between realms, giving them as much time as possible before joining his God, Kord, on the battlefields of eternity.

Some day...

In a time where writing my novel was a chore, table tops gave me a creative outlet that I could use to try out tropes and ideas in unrelated settings, and seeing how a character might develop in a more natural way (as opposed to an author forcing things to happen, which might be described as artificial).  That is why I write, and that is why I game.

Things that Inspire, Part 1: Long Live the King!

Large and In Charge

Many things inspire my writing. Chief among those is "The Lord of the Rings," which I've mentioned many times, but even more so, specific things in "The Lord of the Rings" inspired specific things in my novel. For instance, my main character. In my earliest drafts, my Protagonist was inspired by my favorite character in TLotR:  Strider, aka Aragorn, son of Arathorn, heir to the throne of Gondor

Aragorn II Elessar, son of Arathorn, King of the Reunited Kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor, and all around bad ass. Early on, my main character was almost a rip off of the movie adaptions' version of Aragorn: ratty clothes, soiled leathers, elven hunting knife, born of some special legacy, gets "The Sword" and becomes "The Hero." I won't use that 'C' word but, yeah. I was a teenager and that was what I liked. Not much has changed but my character has, for the most part.

Apart from the tropes I liked, the character also appealed to me because of how the actor, Viggo Mortensen, portrayed Aragorn. In the novel, Aragorn is a character who knows that he is the heir to a kingdom and a mighty legacy, but he tends to make sure everyone knows it, too. He leaves Rivendell with the Sword of the King (unlike in the movie) and basically lets anyone who doubts him because of his vagabond appearance just who he is and why that sword he's carrying shines with the light of the sun and moon. Some quick literary analysis: Tolkien based Aragorn on the heroes of myth and legend from Northern Europe, such as Beowulf. Beowulf, if you read the translations of the surviving manuscript, is pretty much that guy who knows he's the best there is and decides, "Yeah, I can kill that beast Grendel unarmed and naked." And then does it. Then takes the next step and kills Grendel's mother. And then a Dragon. Solo. While no one-on-one monster slaying is done by Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings books, he does have some suitably heroic encounters. He faces off with all nine Ringwraiths, some of the most deadly fiends in Middle Earth, with nothing more than a mundane sword and a torch in the Fellowship of the Ring.

In the movies, however, Aragorn is portrayed as a reluctant hero. He still knows that he is the heir to a great legacy and the elves can't wait to remake that awesome sword so he can go save the world with it, but chooses a humble and honorable life as a ranger to protect those in need, fearful of the corrupting influence of power. It was that version of Aragorn, the hero that's heroic only because duty calls and would rather just be left in peace, that inspired my character. In my story, the protagonist just wanted to be a respected hunter in his village, but an encounter with an ancient plague and a need for someone to do something about it (and a dash of certain people not liking him) ends up propelling him along the heroic story arc. I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't go on any further about the plot. The other part of the character of Aragorn that inspired my own character wasn't so much something specific to Aragorn, but it's something common to the archetype Aragorn represents: The Hero. And in myths and legends, the Hero almost always has The Sword. I mentioned a few times already that Aragorn gets "The Sword" for his particular book. That sword is Anduril, the Flame of the West, forged from the shards of Narsil! Basically it's the weapon that the Bad Guy even fears because it can hurt him. Common trope. And teenage-me loved it. Get the awesome sword, be the awesome hero. Simple formula. Works just about every time. From Luke Skywalker to Eragon to Bilbo to Arthur. Getting "The Sword" means you're "The Hero," and so it shall remain for my book. Nothing new, I know, but hopefully the context within the book itself will make it better. That tends to be how these tropes work. It's not the trope itself but how it's used which makes a book unique. Again, won't divulge much, but you will see "The Sword" of my book soon. It's pretty cool.

NaNoWriMo update: Another busy day as you can tell by the late posting, but productive. Chapter 7 is under way with another 261 words typed, totaling 1277 words so far. I'm pretty sure I will get this one done this month. I have it planned out almost from start to finish, so just need to add the details. But you know what they say: The devil is in the details. Wish me luck!

Quick note:  This had pictures in it but Blogger must have messed up the html somehow, so I removed them until I can fix them.

A Change of Plans

The Struggle is real...

Seems my initial plan that I could get something meaningful written every day before 3pm was a gross overstatement.  That first week was easy.  But it has gotten exponentially harder to select a topic every day that would not sound like I'm rambling just to have something written.  That said, I still hope to post each day but the posts will likely be much later in the day.

As for NaNoWriMo, I have a total of 759 words typed as of this post.  At this rate I will definitely not get close to 50,000 words for the month, but we'll see what happens.  My main difficulty so far has been deciding which way to write things.  I am currently working on a segment where my main character is entering a new place, and he encounters the residents, who initially are hostile to the newcomer.  So I've been struggling deciding how they react and what those reactions would lead to.  The next part that becomes a struggle is when I get to that new area and have to describe it.  While I always have an idea of the generalities of a locations features and landmarks, translating it into words so a reader can appreciate the vision in my mind.  I stumble a great deal, often because I worry about missing details, or because I feel my initial description is suddenly inadequate.

If you would like to help, leave a comment mentioning a feature of a forest/mountain lake that would be interesting.  I happen to be a writer that loves input, because I can refine it into something that works for my novel, regardless of what it is.

That's all for today.  Since today is Election Day in the United Stated (and since I promised, "No politics") I could not think of anything substantive to discuss today.  I am also not ready to delve too deeply into novel specifics yet.  Thanks for reading!  Feel free to suggest topics for me to discuss, books I should read, games I should play, or even YouTube channels to watch.  Best wishes!

National Novel Writing Month

NaNoWriMo

AKA "Write.  Your.  Book!"

Hello readers!  Happy NaNoWriMo!  November is the time of the year where both veteran and novice writers can set a goal for themselves:  Write their d@mn book!  Or more accurately, write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.  On top of that, there is an organization dedicated to this endeavor that offers a place for writers to post their work as well as offering tools, advice, and even encouragement to keep writing.  In order to write 50,000 words in 30 days, you have to write an average of 1667 words a day.  That's a lot, to be honest, however, it is a lot to think about.  On a good day, I could blast that out and be happy with it.  But for 30 consecutive days?  Without getting caught in Revision Hell?  Without writers block or an idea not developing properly?  Hence the support structure.

Perosnally, I know I can't write a 50,000 word novel in a month because I haven't even written 50,000 words in 12 years!  I am however, keeping track this month.  So far I have written 308, all of which come from today.  We will see how far I get by November 30, but my goals are as follows:

1. Write as much as possible.  Not a specific goal but still something I need to have as a goal because "Write as little has possible" as been my goal for a while and its not helping me write!
2. Finish chapter 6 for Tolkien's Sake!  I've had my sixth chapter staring at me for over a month or two and it's driving me crazy!  It's also a terrible reminder that I write too slow, so, "Finish It!"
3. Start chapter 7 and  also finish it!  Fingers crossed!
4. Start chapter 8, bonus points for finishing.
5. Write as much as possible.  Just so it sinks in.

I will probably compell myself to write more after posting this, but I will keep the total words typed count running all month.  I hope it gets close to 50,000!

For more about National Novel Writing Month, click the links below, and Happy Reading and Writing!

Link to the NaNoWriMo Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/nanowrimo/

Link to the NaNoWriMo Home Page:  https://www.nanowrimo.org/

World Building, Part 5: History

World Building

Artificial Historical Artifacts

Ever heard of Excalibur?  Durandal?  Patton's Ivory-handled Pistols?  What about the Rosetta Stone?  The Liberty Bell?  The Magna Carta?  These are examples historical artifacts and ancient wonders that give backstory to our world.  History both tangible and lost that shaped culture and events; a few the stuff of legends.  Now while works of fiction are planned and constructed, as opposed to seemingly random chance, these things all influenced the world at some point, and the fact that some of these things are still present in modern culture shows how much wonder and awe they inspired.  

The same principle applies to fictional worlds.  Without backstory, without history, we are left without context for the events of the story.  What would "Harry Potter" be if Hogwarts was a brand new wizard school without the secrets and mysteries that fill the halls?  What if the Deathly Hallows didn't exist?  If the fear that still existed after Voldemort's defeat (the first time) was absent?  It would be a very meaningless story about a wizard whose parents never died, who never had to outsmart the most terrible wizard ever to exist, and the books would be about mundane concerns that really don't seem that compelling.  Imagine "The Lord of the Rings" without the Rings.  Why would Frodo leave the Shire?  To buy groceries?  Gandalf would be pretty bored, that's for sure.  And if Morgoth and Angmar and all the other things that gave the novel its scope were absent, why would we care about these diminutive hobbits?  My point is: everything I discussed this week relates to a world's history.  The races, the cultures, the language, the mythology, all make the history and are made by the history.  

The Symbol of the Deathly Hallows

In fantasy, artifacts tend to usually be the goal of a quest, or needed to defeat an evil power.  Sometimes they do things that no one can explain, and others do things no one has a use for.  For my book, artifacts were one of the first things I thought about when first creating the world, and considering my age at the time most of them were weapons.  This has a lot to do with the numerous 'artifact weapons,' such as Glamdring, Orcrist, and Narsil, that have histories going as far back as the first great wars of the worlds history (many thousands of years old in most cases).  The only other artifact I came up with in my original drafts was something I called "the Omnicron," a stone that had undetermined power.  It was the goal of both the Hero and the Big Bad to get it before the other in order to accomplish their respective goals (killing each other, basically).  But I found that initial idea too simple (and way too over used in the genre).  However, the idea was morphed into something else, and is still the focus of the plot, but its origins and its purpose changed.  So maybe only changed superficially, but my beta readers have enjoyed "the orbs" in my work.  From there, other artifacts begin to take shape.

The next most important artifacts for my story are a collection of "Hero Weapons" for my protagonists.  A common trope in video games, Hero Weapons are usually something special that a hero uses in battle, and one of the most famous in literature is Excalibur.  Not to be confused with the king-maker Sword in the Stone, Excalibur was a sword wielded by Arthur and made him unbeatable in battle (until someone inevitably betrays him).  For my heroes, we have a sword, staff, a special arrow (not a bow), and a pair of daggers.  Who gets them, you'll have to read the story.  But I will let you all know about the Sword next week.  You've seen it already, and I look forward to explaining the process of how Graey Erb and I worked together to design it.  

Have a great weekend and a safe Halloween!  Look forward to a review of Halo 5 over the weekend.  Best wishes!

World Building, Part 2: Creating Language

World Building

Creating a language when you have terrible grammar

In my quest to emulate my chief inspiration, the late great Professor Tolkien, I aspire to create a language for use in my book.  That said, I know I will not be able to do even close to as good a job as the Professor, primarily due to the fact that he wrote his great works as a linguistic exercise.  Tolkien was fascinated with languages his entire life, teaching himself Finnish and Welsh and going on to study old Norse and Latin and Ancient Greek as he studied works such as The Kalevala and Beowulf.  He studied the old Welsh Arthurian legends and most of his scholarly work was based on this, while his creative works were a way for him to come to terms with a fantasy he held of what Britain might have been like if the Frankish Normans did not invade and conquer Britain in 1066.  So Quenya, and Sindarin, Black Speech, and a few others from the LotR related works he created, and he created the world of Arda (the planet Middle-Earth is on) around these exercises.  So, while I do not have the linguistic skill or desire to do quite the same as Tolkien, I wanted to at least create one language for my own use.

The Bible
(Of made up languages)

Now this practice of creating fictional languages is not limited to Tolkien's genius. In fact, I possess a book called "The Dictionary of Made-Up Languages: From Adunaic to Elvish, Zaum to Klingon -- The Anwa (Real) Origins of Invented Lexicons."  And yes, that says Klingon.  Qu'pla!  Authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy have been creating languages for decades, and even some were meant to be used in everyday speech (such as Esperanto).  Why not try my own hand at it?  So I tried.  And failed.  Because I had no idea where to start, at first.  This book is actually what got me started.  In the back of the book is a section about creating a language with some very generic advice.  Nothing world shaking, and definitely less impressive than a linguistic textbook, but part of this section is a list of about one hundred words that a common across most languages.

Having a list of words to make, I had to decide what the language would sound like.  Deciding that the longer snouts and the more limited motion of lips, there were certain phonemes I decided probably wouldn't be common, or exist at all.  Sounds like bah, mah, puh, fuh, poo, boo, moo, foo, etc., considering those sounds require the pursing of lips.  "But Shane, you characters speak Engl-" Suspension of disbelief, darn it!  To be fair, Tolkien thought of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" as being part of a fictional historical text called the Red Book of Westmarch, originally written in the language of "Mannish" and translated 'by' Tolkien in the modern era, making his works a pseudo-history of England.  (I may write another blog on this concept and what Tolkien was trying to do some time.)  Tangent over, moving on.  So my language would lack certain sounds, but I still had no idea what the words themselves would be.  While I studied Latin in high school and Italian at Rutgers University (Go R U!), those who took the class with me could tell you how terrible my understanding of grammar is, and therefore aside from vocabulary, anything besides English makes me sound incoherent.  So instead of using a real language and bastardizing it to fit my needs, I decided a more noble course.  I bastardized a fictional language instead.  My choice, quite fittingly, was dovahzul (literally Dragon Voice), also know as The Dragon Language.  And if that name sounds familiar, it should, if you've played as the Dovahkiin in "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim."

Learn more about the Dovahkiin at
the Elder Scrolls Wikia Page

Using the website www.Thuum.org as a starting place, I read through their lexicon of words both from the game and invented by the fans to see what words might sound like in a draconic language.  And then I began to either mutate an existing word from dovahzul or made up my own, basically by making noise until something sounded good.  Not the most elegant strategy, but I also used their website to understand the supposed grammar of dovahzul, giving me a template of sorts to work from.

At the moment, I have less then 20 words.  Most I came up with myself, but a few are mutated dovahzul words.  Everything else has some place holders taken right from the dovahzul dictionary that I just haven't gotten around to creating proper words for.

So that's it for this part of world building.  I've seen other fantasy worlds steal straight from old norse or other dead languages, which makes me feel less bad about co opting some words for the time being, but make no mistake about my intentions.  Linguistics is not my strong suit by any means, so working from an existing language is some what my only option.  Besides, imitation is the finest form of flattery, right?

Leave a comment!  I would love to hear from my readers!  What do you think of my strategy?  Stay tuned for more world building!