Building a Language Part 1: Sounds

Post by Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley, co-founder

     Recently I've begun making a language for one of my worlds, and I can say, it's a pretty interesting process. I started by deciding on the sounds, so that's what I'll be talking about today. If you're going to make a completely new language starting from scratch, it's important to figure out which sounds your language will and will not use. One of the most helpful things for this is the IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet. It has all of the sounds used in any language. I had some trouble finding something that actually showed me how to pronounce the IPA symbols, but I did eventually find this, which showed how to pronounce all of the ones used in English.
     You can choose to use sounds that don't exist in English, like how New Orcish (my language) uses the Spanish rolled R, or you can cut out sounds that are actually used in English, just like how New Orcish doesn't use the W sound. One of the cool effects of this, is that you begin to automatically create an accent, which you can continue to develop later. Another example from my language, would be that an orc wouldn't be able to tell the difference between "was" and "oo-uh-z".
     New is also a nice time to decide how different sounds are pronounced, exactly, and also which sounds are more common. Does your language have the curled-tongue vowels used in India? Is it tonal? Which vowels are most common? Do they use more burst-like sounds, (B, P, D, T) or more continuing sounds (M, L, S, R)? Do they tend for sharp sounds, (S, T, H, K) or warm sounds (M, N, R)? Are there any dialects? Which sounds would be dropped in sloppy speech? These all work to make your language unique and give it the depth of a real language, and you haven't even translated anything yet! Many of these things will help to make the accent more pronounced (pun unintended) so that even if the people who speak this language could speak English, it would be very obvious that they are not native speakers. Cool right?
     Though this may seem like one of the more boring parts of making a language (If you think this is boring, though, just wait until you're paging through the dictionary trying to find new words to translate.) it is the most basic and fundamental part. This allows you to make your language, at its foundation, unique from your own, or any other one on the planet. Also, even in the process itself is not all that exciting (really, no part of making a language is) the results certainly are. Starting to hear the accent, creating a particular sound to the language through use of more common sounds, and other similar mini-epiphany moments make it a really cool process. Just like writing a novel, it takes time and dedication.
     Once you have decided on which sounds to use for your language, you can make your own alphabet, or go straight to translating if you want.


Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley is an aspiring author and poet. To learn more about her, see our About Us page. You can follow her on Twitter here: @ElisabethGTK.

We have a poetry contest open, which you can find here.



For the next post in this series, click here.

Some of the Most Annoying Mistakes in Romantic Subplots

Post by Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley, co-founder

     In honor of Valentine's Day, I decided to compile a list of things that people find most annoying in a romantic subplot. I've gathered these responses from the One Year Adventure Novel forum, so that would be why there are such odd names attached to them.


Chaellabird:

     The girl who doesn't think she's pretty, but in reality she's smoking hot.

     The guy who says, "You're not like the other girls."

     Love triangles. But a love octagon would be interesting.

     One person always needs to be rescued by the other.


King_Elessar

     When they don't belong.

     I hate it when a romantic sub-plot is not relevant to the characters outside of the actual sub-plot...like...it's existing for itself. Plenty of character dev. results from it...but only in relation to romance. In other words...it does nothing to actually do anything to the story...so there's no reason for it. Why should I care?

     Or, when it's the flip. When it becomes all you're supposed to care about. Like...I don't care about if you get the girl or not dude, go stop the Dark Lord...seriously.


Théoden:

     A disregard for what people would actually have time for in the story. Romance will probably not work when you're on a massive all-consuming mission to save humanity and the whole galaxy from a near-unstoppable force. If you have the time and energy to engage in romance, why on earth are you not focusing more on the mission instead?


Musicalfruitninja:

     Love triangles are demons kill it with fire please.

     I hate when a guy/girl chases someone who doesn't feel the same way for a long time and then suddenly they're like madly in love. That annoys me so much i can't even express it properly.

     Also it annoys me when people fall in love basically at first sight. a week, maybe even a month goes by and suddenly they will do anything for each other and can't keep their eyes off each other.


Cnemi:

     Physical expression always being portrayed as the epitome of a romantic relationship, no matter the situation.  This is perhaps more of a moral issue with me, but is that REALLY the only way you can show the recently-widowed Ally's relationship to Ally II (for a random example)? 

     The guy and girl who hate each other and can't stand each other, only to come to love each other desperately by the end of the story.  This annoys me so much, and I've developed a pretty good ability to call it, occasionally even at the INTRODUCTION of Character II.  It can be a good plotline, I suppose, but I've seen far too much of it.

     Turning the Ally into the Love in the second book because the opposite-gender friends are older now, so, of course, that's just how it must work.

     Romantic relationships = best possible kind between any two characters.  Even when they've been firmly established otherwise/ it's forced/ etc.

     Characters in a relationship who nonetheless communicate as well as if they spoke totally different languages, leading to all the conflict.


Parsleymusic:

     Characters that claim they 'need' the other person, and when they would literally let the entire world end just to save that person, and then they do it and it becomes an actual thing that happens in the plot. 

 SyllverGuardian:

     Number one problem: They're all about The Kiss. Okay, I'm a hopeless romantic and a sucker for cuteness, but love is about more than your first kiss. It's commitment and sacrifice, something that a lot of romance plots and subplots completely disregard. Tangled vs Cinderella, anyone? If you can convince me (by showing me) that these people will stick together through whatever is thrown at them, support and protect each other no matter what, than yes, sure, I'll believe that they're meant to be together. If all you can show me is them making googly eyes and mooning over each other, you can forget it.



     So, there you have it. What a variety of readers/authors think about common mistakes in romantic subplots. Hopefully your readers will be shipping your fictional Valentine's like crazy.
Stormy:

When either person in the romance has no definition outside the other. I.e., they're only there for the other one. They have no thoughts, ambitions, hopes, behaviors, dreams, etc. Ex: Girl is there so the guy has someone to save, but has no purpose. (Not that having to have the guy save her is bad, but it's a negative thing when that's literally all the girl is there for.) Basically the love interest doesn't even have a character outside "the love interest".



Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley is an aspiring author and poet. To learn more about her, see our About Us page. You can follow her on Twitter here: @ElisabethGTK.

We have an art contest open for submissions, see the guidelines here. We also have a poetry contest open, which you can find here. 

Practice Writing

Post by Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley, co-founder

     Authors don't like the idea of doing a work specifically for practice, especially a long one. I mean, if you're like me, and a rough draft takes you about a year, do you really want that to just be practice? Well, whether I wanted it to or not, that "novel", really a novella, was practice. After looking at it a year later, I no longer hate it, but I know that it was still practice. Everything we write is practice, really.
     This process is particularly important for beginning writers, because, let's face it, how do we know that anything we write is publishable? I'm sure mine isn't. And so, I plan to write several books for practice, focusing mostly on my weak points, and once I am writing at a publishable skill level, I will then turn my practice novels into "real" novels. So don't feel like you're doing an injustice to your brilliant idea by making it a practice novel. All that means is that you're going into it with a mindset to learn, and without the intention of publishing it immediately.
     Just because it was written for practice doesn't mean that you can't publish it later. For example, I'm currently trying to find a good idea for a practice novel meant to improve my plotting abilities because that is my weakest trait. But trust me, a few books from now, I'll come back to it and make it publishable.

     Why Practice?

     My three favorite authors are Tolkien, Christopher Paolini, and J. K. Rowling. Yeah, I know, going with the mainstream. Anyway, Tolkien is the only one of those three whose books don't have obvious jumps in quality. Eldest is a better book than Eragon. Brisingr is a far better book than Eldest. And Inheritance manages to be a better book yet. Similarly, Rowling made many rookie mistakes in her first books that made problems for the later ones. On the other hand, The Lord of the Rings as a series is fantastic. There's no real change in quality between the three, though some might argue that The Two Towers has the traditional mid-series slump.
     Why is this? Well, look at the way they published them. Rowling finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone and published it. She finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, published that. And so on. Paolini did the same thing, but Tolkien worked on his series for years, writing and re-writing them as a series. He didn't publish The Fellowship of the Ring until the rest of the series was pretty much, or possibly completely, finished. In fact, Return of the King was published less than a year and a half after The Fellowship of the Ring, which may have been to give people a chance to read the earlier books.
     How did this help him? Well, putting aside the fact that he spent twelve years on the series, he also had the practice of writing all three, when he was re-writing the first one. He was able to learn from each book, and apply it, because the books were still in his hands, and changeable. For the same reason, I recommend that writers not publish a single book until they have completed at least three, and by completed, I don't mean the rough draft. That way, you can do the learning, become a good writer, and then fix up your early books so that they don't hurt your name and/or series.

     How to Practice?

     When writing a practice novel, what do you do? How can you maximize your learning? Well, first, remember that every book you write is a learning experience, but, when you are writing a novel specifically to learn, you should change things a little.

1. Decide what you are trying to learn. It is very important to know what, specifically, you are trying to improve. For example, I am trying to improve my plotting skills, so I should choose something plot-heavy. This could mean a mystery or thriller, which are naturally plot-based, or simply doing my usual genre, but outlining and thinking of plot more. It could even mean writing a serial story with both episode-sized plots and overarching plots. If you're trying to improve character interaction and emotion, try a romance, or a book focusing on the main character learning a lesson.
2. Choose something you care about. You may be here to learn, but you aren't going to learn much if you lose all motivation because you didn't like the story in the first place. It can be hard to find the balance between something that will help you and something you will enjoy writing, but it is usually better to err on the side of liking it. If in doubt, ask a fellow writer and see if they think it will challenge you enough.
3. Research. "What?" you say, "Why do I have to research? What if I'm doing something completely speculative?" Well, you should still research. Not for your book, necessarily, but on what you are trying to improve. Find some tips about plot/characterization/description/whatever, and put them into action.
4. Be willing to compromise. This is probably the hardest for me. Even if it might feel like you are breaking or crushing your idea a little, you need to focus on learning. This may mean lots of different things, such as following a very strict outline, or perhaps putting in things that feel like they don't belong. This is okay. It's a practice novel, and you will change it later. It may not feel right, but this is not your finished product anyway. Go through the process, learn what you came to learn, and fix it when you decide you are ready to write publishable material, and then you will give it its true form.
5. WRITE! This is the most important part. Go and WRITE it! Don't stop part way through, don't put it off, write it. This is a practice novel, and you will learn from what you do, even if only subconsciously. That means that if you don't finish it, or never even start, you are building a habit, and that habit is extremely hard to break, trust me, I know from experience. So go and write your novel.

Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley is an aspiring author and poet. To learn more about her, see our About Us page. You can follow her on Twitter here: @ElisabethGTK.


We have an art contest open for submissions, see the guidelines here.

Rules and Kites

Post by Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley, co-founder

     I very recently moved from Mexico to the state of Washington. Being who I am, I hated it. I hate change, it's simply who I am. But, with the change came new things, new experiences, and the new experiences brought new views, understanding, and inspiration. This week I went kite flying with my grandma, and I realized how writing is very much like flying, and then I realized that all the arts are like it. Heck, maybe every skill is.

     When flying a kite, you have to wait for a good wind. You can, of course, run to make your own wind, but once you run out of room to run, your kite will fall down again. Running can make a poor winds enough to get up to the higher winds, but in and of itself is not enough. To me, the wind represents luck. But to fly a kite well, you need to understand when to let out string, and when not to. If you let out too much string, your kite will fall, but if you don't let out any, it will stay close to the ground, subject to the fickle near-ground winds that constantly die, pick up, and die again.
     Your hand, your holding of the string, is rules. All the different writing/drawing/painting/poetry rules that exist are represented by your hand. When you hold it down, the kite catches the wind and soars higher. Once it has enough height, you let out more string, the equivalent of trying some things that aren't in the rulebook, and your potential increases.  As you get higher (more skilled), you can let out more string (ignore the rules more).
     The greatest writers ignore the rules, because the important things are natural, and the things that can be bent or broken, they can have the skill to do without. Everyone needs to follow the rules at the beginning, to learn, and as they progress, they can do their own thing more. They are at the point where they would fly highest if they just let go of the kite and let it soar on its own. Of course, in real life we never do that because we like to keep our kites.

     I am an amateur artist when it comes to drawing. I make some pretty good stick figures, and a single, unpaired eye (I can never make them match) but that's really all. Remember when Josie posted that awesome art tutorial? It made me feel empowered, like I could finally draw something well, but instead I left the instructions and ended up failing, because I'm not at that point in my drawing skills. My kite is crashing into the trees because I give it too much string.

     What about you? Are you giving yourself too much string? Too little?

Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley is an aspiring author and poet. To learn more about her, see our About Us page. You can follow her on Twitter here: @ElisabethGTK.

 We have a synopsis contest currently open, which you can find here. Our haiku contest is past the deadline, and we will announce the winner on the first of May both here and in our newsletter, which you can sign up to here.

Dialogue, part two

Post by Catsi Eceer, co-founder

Last time around, I talked about the actual words your characters say. Here's the link to that post. This time, we're going to discuss another important part of writing dialogue--Grammar and dialogue tags.

The grammar of dialogue is fairly simple--Start a new paragraph every time someone starts talking, and use quotation marks to indicate when someone is speaking. For example:

I chewed the inside of my lip, working up the courage to ask the question I’d wanted to for a week. “Um... Where were you two at?”

“Does it matter?” Ferry snapped.

“Uh, no,” I said. “Just curious.”

Ferry narrowed his eyes at me. “What do you know?”

 (Just a little excerpt from the novella I'm working on right now.)

Easy enough. There's another bit of dialogue grammar I'd like to mention, though. While you should use good grammar, avoid passive voice and weasel words, etc., in your prose, in dialogue those rules are exempt. Which in English means that your characters can use "was" and "tried" and "ain't" as much as they wants, so long as it goes with their personality. 

Enough English-teacher-Catsi, now. Dialogue tags.

The word "said" is used so often in writing that it's become something of an invisible word. Read through the example at the beginning of this post again. Which dialogue tag stuck out to you: when Ferry spoke, or the narrator? Ferry's, right? Because the narrator just said his line. Ferry snapped. While I've been told to avoid using any other word than said, told, asked, whispered, shouted, and yelled, I often am a naughty little girl and use words like threatened, snapped, and demanded. I agree that said is an invisible word, and I agree that when you use a different word it pulls the attention away from the dialogue and to the tag itself. You probably don't want to be using "expostulated" and  "reiterated," but I don't think that "threatened" is too distracting. But that's just me, so if you're happy with your said's, then use them.

But there's an alternative to dialogue tags. There are four lines of dialogue in the example, and only two of them have a dialogue tag attached. The other two have action beats. Instead of sticking "said Bob" on the end, you could put "Bob wiped the sweat from his forehead." It tells us who's talking, and what they're doing. We can see what Bob is doing, rather than just hearing him talk.

Okay, one more little bit of grammar. When you end a line of dialogue and put a dialogue tag on the end, you end the line with a comma. If you're using an action beat, end it with a period. If you want to end your line of dialogue with a question mark or exclamation mark, then it doesn't matter whether you're using a dialogue tag or action beat. It'll end the same either way.

Hope you guys find this helpful! If you have any questions, comments, or just want to chat about grammar, post in the comments. I'd love to hear from you. :)

To learn more about Catsi, see the About Us page.

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Dialogue, part one

Post by Catsi Eceer, co-founder

Dialogue is a funny thing. If you get it right, your writing flows better and is more realistic. If you get it wrong, all of your characters will seem stiff and about as real as a flannel graph.
So what makes good dialogue? And, more importantly, how do you write it?
The first thing about realistic dialogue is that it needs to be realistic. (Bet you didn't see that one coming!) Different people talk differently. Your characters should too.

We'll take a look at a few of the characters from my novel, Worlds Apart. (I'm working on editing it right now, so hopefully this will help me with their dialogue as well as you with your characters.)
First of all, there's my main character, Bree. Jonaver is from Mreda, another world that Bree is transported to. (Think Middle Earth.) Then we have Quarl, a random guard who is awesome fun. And last but not least, Kauvin, the villain.

They all speak differently. Bree is your typical teenage girl, so it's fairly easy to tell that she's talking--she's the only one who says, "Yeah," and "Whatever."
Jonaver, since he's from Mreda, talks a bit different from Bree. He mixes Mredaic words in with English, and sounds slightly more formal than Bree.
Quarl is one of two guards in a scene from the beginning of the story. I needed a way to tell them apart, since Bree doesn't know their names, and "first guard" and "second guard" were starting to get old. So, the answer was to give one of them an accent.
Kauvin is Mredan, like Jonaver, but more refined. He doesn't use contractions, which makes him sound very stuck-up. He's also a good speaker, so his words need to be smooth and convincing.

Now you can probably figure out who of the above characters are talking in each of these dialogue snatches:

"Hope you two know where you're going, 'cause I'll be lost in, like, thirty seconds." (Bree)

"Oi! It's the queen!" (Quarl)
"Oi! No, it ain't!" (Bree being snarky)

"Welcome to Arwole, Bree." (Jonaver)

"It cannot be McKinley. Surely you meant something else." (Kauvin)

Aside from the line where Bree copies Quarl's accent, it's fairly obvious who's talking. Even if they don't have an obvious accent or dialect, even just their personality can come through their dialogue:

Bree: Well, that worked. On to plan B.
Lana: We have a plan B?
Bree: Nope. But we're going to make one up.

Sometimes a character will have a favorite word or phrase that they use whenever given half the chance. Bree will say "Go away" when someone is bugging her. She doesn't really mean it, it's just her version of "Shut up."
You have to be careful with this, though. If they use a certain word too much, it will start to get on your reader's nerves.

Now, before I go, I've got an exercise for you. Gather up your characters, and start asking them the names for several different things. (Eg, a purse, Coke, the bathroom, etc.) Different characters will call them different things.



Me: *drops handbag on table* What is this?
Bree: *boredly* A purse.
Jonaver: A bag.
Aster: *grabs handbag* *tears it open* What? It's empty!

Me: *sets bottle of Coke on table* How about this?
Bree: *tries to get knife to balance on tip* Soda.
Jonaver: ...I have no idea.
Aster: Can I drink it?

Me: What would you say if you were surprised?
Bree: Do you really need to use us for examples?
Me: ..That is not what you would say.
Bree: ... *pushes back chair* *stomps out of room*
Jonaver: *watches her leave*
Me: You two still haven't answered me.
Jonaver: What?!
Me: I said, you two still haven't-
Jonaver: No, that's what I'd say if I were surprised.
Me: Oh. And you, Aster?
Aster: Interesting.
Me: Try again.
Aster: Wonder where Bree went... *walks out after Bree*

(Well, now you all know about the legendary cooperation of my characters.)

So how about you? What are some ways you use dialogue to show your characters as individual people?


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