Hyperfocus of the Week: Naming things

Making up languages is hard!

In my current project, several characters travel back and forth between two worlds. One of these worlds is kind of like the central lobby to a lot of other different worlds and gets a lot of tourist traffic. In That World, my characters run into all sorts of things that are This World adjacent, but are tweaked one way or another—including names. 

Coming up with a taxonomy that doesn’t sound overly childish or complex is a weird balance. Half the time I throw words in I don’t actually know what I’m talking about. In one scene a character is taking a test about portal law and I use three random words in one sentence. Later I had to go back and jot them down in the dictionary I am creating for myself (because you know I’m not going to remember them five minutes later). 

My helper in all of this is Violet, who is endlessly creative. Whenever I need a list of clues for a mystery, or strange challenges, or descriptions of new animals, Violet is my go-to. This week she has spend quite a bit of time deciding what the random words I throw into my made up world mean. 

The tricky part of naming things is that words elicit images. If I change a letter on something, Cabbage to crabbage for instance, someone is going to likely picture a crab with a cabbage body, not a rutabaga cabbage hybrid. Random words like Floog (an aquatic chinchilla, Violet decided) can come across sounding like a five year old made it up and should be used sparingly. 

There are other questions to consider: Why would folks in the made up world be speaking English? Is it the policy that this central world only opens portals to places that speak the same language they do? Or is it magic and they could be speaking a thousand different languages but they cast a universal language spell and keep it pumping through the magic filament in the streets?Either one could make for fun plot beats around miscommunication.

I do enjoy coming up with a new slang system. I never really got into the habit of swearing but I think it can be important for characterization. By creating my own system of profanity, and other casual language I get to imply things about my characters without writing things I wouldn’t want my youngest kids reading. “Mudder hen!” Is my current favorite. 

This week I also took the middle boys on a college visit which was a three and a half day adventure across Washington state, down to Oregon, then back home again. Then the usual weekly activities, and working the dog show today as a CERT volunteer. Still I managed to get a couple chapters written and another book read and reviewed.

 I have 13 books to go on my summer challenge with 2 of those currently in the house. That puts me at 12 books completed (plus 8 rabbit trail books) and one that I put down with the intent of getting a different one from the author. While I plan on jumping back into craft talks in September, I will post any book reviews I have left over on weeks when I need some time off. 

Anyway Happy writing this week folks! See you on Wednesday.