World-Building

World-Building - Iterative Development

2019-11-06T06:00:00Z

One of the first questions asked at world-building panels is "how to get started?". Starting is scary when trying to build a world intended to be used for decades as opposed to a (relatively) smaller world for only a short story or two.

During the panels this weekend that question came up a number of times and I had a chance to work out my thoughts.

One of the first things I notice is that many people create their worlds in the same manner they are taught in school. You have history, geology, physical sciences (e.g, magic for fantasy), and religion in neat little categories. You do one at a time, focusing on the topic to create something that is cool before moving to the next.

This works. However, I also feel that it create a disjointed components to the world. Let's use one of my favorite example: vampires. Now, I don't like vampires but they have a relatively rich genre and a fair amount of shared history so they work.

Authors have spent years working on the biology of vampires from how they are turned, to how they gain their powers, to even how they seduce people. We have loving details of the fangs and the blood and the scary eyes. There are lots of different variants, but it is a rich and detailed body of genre to work with.

Now, let's talk about religion. According to Wikipedia, there are about 4200 religions in the world. It is safe to say, we have reams and reams of knowledge detailing those. In world-building, religions seem to be one of the lesser topics in that many authors don't go into details into how they are formed, the social and political aspects of them and the like. However, in contemporary settings (urban fiction) we can safely say there are thousands of religions on the plate.

In fiction, very few worlds deal with the aspects of religion with vampires. We don't have a lot of games talking about atheist vampires, Jewish vampires, or even one of the less populated religions. Actually, I'd remember reading about a Baptist vampire written down. There are a few Wiccans over the years.

The gist is that isolation of topics. Vampires, when written in a silo, have a large amount of genre fiction. Religion also has a large amount. The two rarely interact except at a glossed level.

That is one danger of developing topics in isolation. There are other examples:

What are the evidence laws for dealing with mind reading? I loved that Empowered has at least a reference to Mindfuck's ability to read minds being incorrect in the Baron Womb case. When I was working for a former polygraph company, the same thing came up: polygraphs weren't reliable evidence.
In worlds with magical or scientific cloning, the laws of inheritance and marriage don't seem to always mesh together. Usually this in the plot, but looking at our own world, laws usually start to start getting into place relatively quickly.
Why don't dungeons have bathrooms? This is my favorite, but there are entire aspects of biology that don't show in fiction. Related to that: why haven't a ten thousand year-old culture not invented a way of dealing with shit.

Now, no one can know everything. It is impossible to cram the full scale human invention and observations into a single person, however those silos can be “blurred” a little by working in smaller pieces and letting them interact with each other. Do religions for a day, then history, then military, then language, biology, and then back to religion. The little iterations let you tie things together in a more cohesive manner.

Let's use a simple example from my world. When I was working on the world's mission statement (why have mages not taken over the world), I had to figure out things like the distance of the feedback. The mages of the world knew about it for centuries, which meant it had to be baked into the culture, language, and religions.

That meant, there had to be laws about feedback. So jumping from magic to legal, I started to develop the concept of Felony Feedback and how the legal system would handle that. How would the laws reflect that?

“Welcome back to the city, runners of Shimusògo. Have all of you been to our city before?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will just remind you of the more serious rules.” The armored warrior's face didn't crack from its seriousness. “No magic of your clan is allowed within these walls. Reasons are unimportant, and your purpose is irrelevant. If you use magic, we will respond harshly and violently. Start a fight and we will simply kill every single one of you.”

— Sand and Ash 8

Well, if you couldn't bring contrary resonance into a city, how would commerce work (legal to financial)? Well, that lead me into the idea of specialists that spent days/months/years adjusting the resonance of items to be in line with a specific city or location.

Then I was back to the magical system as I tried to figure out how to make magic safe. That was fun working out the ideas of shielding. Of course, that brought me also back to the legal system and they would handle this new “safer” approach, to mention how society would handle the new concept:

Viola smiled. “You hate those things.”

“I hate that everyone seems to think wrapping a rune in a ton of metal is going to prevent feedback. We have felony feedback laws for a reason.”

An itch crawled down Viola's left arm. She scratched but it burrowed deeper into her bones. With a squirm, she twisted her hand a little to ease the discomfort.

— Prospects of Love Among Mages 3

This is simplified from the actual process, but the main gist is not sticking with one silo such as “magic” but moving from topic to topic. This means I have notes on how religion developed around the concept of magic, the entire idea of the Tarsan Family Town, and even why couples are engaged for a year and a day to let the resonance even out before the wedding.

Obviously, that means documenting everything is difficult but… that's a different topic.

Sand and Bone 10 and hair styles

2016-12-21T06:00:00Z

There are certain blind spots when it comes to my world-building. I love dresses though I try not to describe them when the point-of-view characters aren't into them, but I actually notice a lot about sewing. On the other hand, things like hair style are completely over my head. It could be my general dislike for hair on my head or the fact that I can't get rid of it fast enough (I'm getting that “side fringe” instead of going properly bald). But, I don't really think about hair styles when I'm writing.

Sometimes it's forced on me. When Dan Howard did the original cover of Sand and Blood, he gave Chimípu reddish hair. The scene was sunset and everything would be red-tinged but I decided to make her hair reddish because of it. Also, she had straight hair so naturally she had straight hair to match.

Of course, you can't see that with the abstract covers, but the history remains.

Now, as I was going through Bone, I realized that I didn't talk about hair styles. So I started fleshing out hair for the eastern desert, which generics resulted in tight curls and kinks of the straighter hair of the western desert. They have the slight variance of colors also, but that is because I love anime hair.

There are so many lovely details in the world, eventually I'll give hints for all of them. It will take me time, it's hard to keep it all in my head.

Sand and Bone 10: Westerners

In Sand and Bone, Rutejìmo finally makes it back to Kosobyo City. In the many years up to this point, cities were small enough that he could find his way. But the sheer size of Kosobyo City is overwhelming and he quickly becomes lost.

Read the chapter at https://fedran.com/sand-and-bone/chapter-10/. All of my books are free downloads at https://fedran.com/. If you like what you read, please consider becoming a patrons. Even if you don't want to send me money, reviews and chatter on social networks would be highly appreciative and only cost your time.

Tarsan Famlies, Building Cultures, and Naming

2015-08-21T05:00:00Z

My current writing project is Second-Hand Dresses, a Regency romance inspired piece. I say inspired because it follows many of the more modern historical romances in terms of sexuality (e.g., there is sex, but the foreplay on page can get naughty). It is also based on my fantasy world, Fedran, but in a far different part than my previous two novels, Sand and Blood and Sand and Ash.

Writing Second-Hand Dresses challenges a much different part of my writing. There is very little violence, the magic is subtle, and the culture is far more ritualized than any of the Sand books or even Flight of the Scions.

Names

In the country of Tarsan^w, I wanted to create a more Victorian culture. A place where magic has been refined into almost uselessness but mechanical devices are still new and remarkable. This is also a world that fits more with what I think about when I read Gail Carriger's novels.

I've written a little about Tarsan^p before but this one is about the family names. Inspired by Spanish names, a Tarsan native includes both their mothers and father's name as part of their formal name. Unlike the clans of Kyōti, given names aren't last in the name but first.

This also makes the name more in line with what we expect from American or British names. It also was written in contrast to the desert culture, which is distinctively Japanese-inspired.

The basic name is:

GivenName PrimaryFamilyParent PrimaryFamily SecondaryFamilyParent SecondaryFamily.

This might sound confusing, but let's give the basic example, one of the antagonists of Second-Hand Dresses.

Marigold de Kasin na Maifir

One of the important parts is that Tarsan names start and end with consonants. This does differ from English names, but fits with the Lojban roots of the language. When a name is a translation to an English word, I usually use it which is the only case when a name ends in a vowel (Lily, the protagonist).

Marigold: This is the given name. In informal company, this is used when speaking among friends. Unlike the desert names, nicknames are typically the first to the second consonant of someone's name (“Mar” in this case). Women's names frequently include flowers, crystals, plants, and rivers.

de Kasin: Tarsan has the idea of a “primary” family. This is the family that officiated over the marriage (marriage is very important to these guys). The “de” means “husband's family”. So, this means that her husband was a Kasin and that family is the one that married her (or brought her into the family).

na Maifir: The “na” means “wife's family” which tells everyone that she was originally a member of the Maifir family. This is the secondary family because she married out of that family and into the Kasin.

For those who married into the same family, they use “dea”, such as dea Kasin which means both sides were in the same family. This is also used when there is no marriage, since there is only one family involved.

Marriageability

The other part of the name is the marriageability of an individual. As you might guess, a marriage is considered the cornerstone of society. Not being married means someone is a non-entity. They are nothing and this reflects in the name and language.

This originally was formed like the names, with a particle to indicate one part and a gender-specific element. For example, “be” means bachelor or bachelorette (i.e., debutante) with “sire” meaning a male and “dame” being female.

I figured over the years, and given the frequency, this got combined into one word. So, a bedame is a young woman ready to be married and a besire is a young man also ready for marriage. This is a patriarch, so the besire has become “unmarried man” more than “young”. I don't exactly agree with the idea, but it fits the culture and the larger picture.

There are other prefixes: mo- means child or youngester, ta- indicates a married couple,and ku- for widows, spinsters, and widowers. Second-Hand Dresses focuses on Lily becoming a kudame in this society.

There are some areas of the country that dropped the prefixes entirely (think using “Ms” instead of “Miss” or “Mrs”). In that case, it is just dame or sire as appropriate.

Formal Names

Putting everything together, we can get back to Marigold.

Tadame Marigold de Kasin na Maifir

(I decided to italicize the prefix, but not the “de” or “na” because there are English names that use those types of prefixes already).

For children (modames and mosires), they use “dea” with their parent's family. For example, Nirih is Marigold's daughter and Lily is an unmarried woman, both with parents in the Kasin family.

Modame Nirih dea Kasin

Bedame Lily dea Kasin (she becomes a kudame in the novel)

Like the desert culture, the longer the name, the more respectful. So, when someone is being very polite, they would call Marigold “Tadame Marigold de Kasin na Maifir”. When someone is just being “slightly” polite, they may reduce it down to “Tadame Marigold de Kasin” or even “Marigold de Kasin”. Finally, informal would use “Marigold” or “Mar” with “Mar” only being used behind closed doors and among good friends.

Other Classes

Outside of High Society, a lot of the rules break down. The middle class doesn't care as much about families as the upper classes do. Not to mention, almost every person in a given town is the same family as the town, so they skip the primary name. This means in a middle class conversation, Lily would still be “Lily dea Kasin” but Marigold would be “Marigold na Maifir” (which would offend her, of course).

Likewise, where the culture is dropping the be- and ta- prefixes, the family particles are being dropped. So, in the informal countryside, it is simply “Marigold Kasin”. And that leads into the naming conventions of the surrounding countries.

Other Names

The whole idea of families being the central part of the society continues even for cities and locations. Families, not individuals, own everything from the stores, carriages, and even the forests.

tca: Cities, towns, and thorpes. For example, “Soldir tca Kasin” is the city of Soldir which is claimed by the Kasin family.
zda: Homes, buildings, and stores. Lily's mother's manor is called the “Rosewood zda Kasin,” Lily's store is “Lily's Blossoms zda Kasin.”

Cultures

The Tarsan culture is very different from the one I grew up in. Philosophically, I don't agree with it. It objectifies women and treats young girls as basically a barter system to make deals between families. In high society, women are allowed to have jobs and run households, but don't have military careers or more technical jobs.

Why would I create a society like this? Well, there are two reasons.

The first is that I want a canvas to write stories against. If every society was egalitarian, there isn't much opportunity for having people stand out. I can't have someone bucking the trend to save the world or engineers trying to get around their own limitations when there is no reason. I can't have people trying to establish new traditions nor use the old ones as a point of tension. Also, I want to contrast this culture and society against others ones. And the best way to do that is to create a flawed one.

The other reason is romance. I loved reading Regency romances when I was younger. There is something exotic about it that was fun and I want to explore it. I love the idea of sinking into a society that doesn't agree with my world view simply because it doesn't agree with my world view.

Sand and Ash 03, Pacifism, and the Chosen One

2015-08-19T05:00:00Z

It is time for the third chapter of Sand and Ash.

Chapter 3: Nightmares

Looking back at this, this is the chapter that ties back into Sand and Blood. It is brushing against info dump territory, but I think it's okay.

The biggest indicator is that this isn't a young adult story. People are going to die in this book and at least a few of them are going to get laid. The problem is that many people seem to think that Sand and Blood is a young adult simply because they were teenagers in that novel, but it was just a starting point for this story (which is ten years later).

We also get a chance to see Chimípu, who I adore. She is also the “Chosen One” that I wanted Rutejìmo to stand next to; I don't like writing stories about the person with all the powers, I want the person struggling to do even a little. That said, she's pretty awesome.

The entire sterility aspect of warriors came out while I was writing this chapter. It tied back into some evolutionary theories. In specific, the desert warriors gain considerable power and talents to protect the clan, not a specific person. Warriors don't get married (at least in this part of the desert) and they don't focus on one or even a few people.

Most importantly, this chapter is the point where the reader finds out Rutejìmo's opinion toward violence. Someone once mentioned that the penultimate chapter of Sand and Blood was uncomfortable and brutal, but the events in this chapter are the direct response to that chapter. It was suppose to be painful to read, mainly because it was painful for Rutejìmo to experience.

I hope you enjoy. And remember, if you enjoy it, please consider throwing a dollar or so through Patreon.

Miwāfu Glyphs Redux - Redrawing

2014-08-17T05:00:00Z

My dad gave me a little bit of money for my birthday and, after many years of being reminded not to spend it on bills, I gladly went out and bought some DVDs and a set of calligraphy pens.

I've really been in the mood to create a font for my conlang lately. I'm pretty sure it was entirely because of this, which is a beautiful set of calligraphy for someone's constructed language by someone far more talented than me. Even knowing they have higher skills, more artistic talent, and a more developed conlang doesn't stop me from wanting to follow in their footsteps. I mean, the only way to get better at something like this is to actually do it.

Series

This is going to be broken into multiple posts about the steps of making a font.

2014-08-17 Miwāfu Glyphs Redux - Redrawing - Since I picked up a few new calligraphy pens for my birthday, I tried to write out Miwāfu and found that it was a bit more difficult than I thought. So I redrew them until they weren't difficult.
2014-08-18 Miwāfu Glyphs Redux - Scanning - After drawing out the Miwāfu glyphs by hand, I had to scan them in and get them ready for us.
2014-08-19 Miwāfu Glyphs Redux - Vectors - Once I got a clean raster version of the glyphs, I use Inkscape to create a vector format which is suitable for importing into FontForge. Part 3 of creating a Miwāfu font.
2014-08-20 Miwāfu Glyphs Redux - Basic Font - Continuing my series of making a conscript, this describes the steps of going from a cleaned up vector version of the script to a basic font.

Calligraphy

I haven't touched calligraphy in a very long time. My mother used to have some pens that I would occasionally play with. I didn't expect much coming back to it, I didn't have the muscle memory or the skill.

But, I do remember the joy of trying to get curved, balanced lines. And that part is what I was looking for (and got).

Starting with the old

Back in 2012, I came up with a set of glyphs that I was pretty happy with at the time. However, in the two years since, they felt off but I couldn't figure out why. Trying to draw them out by hand helped me figure out the flaws: they were created on a computer.

A calligraphy pen is kept at a steady angle for the entire character. The glyphs I created were just put together the way I thought looked good on the computer. More importantly, they had shapes that were easy to draw in Inkscape instead of written on the page.

When I actually tried to draw them, my hand refused to move in the ways needed to match the screen. Plus, it didn't feel “balanced” to me. So, I decided to draw the glyphs until I came up with a more natural version.

I started with a cheap fountain pen but later switched to a marker-style pen. I found that I like the marker version slightly better, mainly for coverage, but neither compare to my precious Pentel A55 pencil which is completely unsuited for this endeavor.

Below are the progression of the images starting with the old versions. You can probably guess that this was done over time (a week) with random bits of plain white paper.

Coming up with the new

As you might tell from the above images, I played around a lot with the feel but started with the old ones. Mostly, it was changing the shape and arrangement while keeping the shapes distinct enough that they couldn't easily be confused with the other. The reason there were so many different variants was because I kept drawing it to see if it was a weakness in my muscles or a difficulty in the shape. Frequently, it was a combination of both.

Eventually, I came up with a new set of glyphs that felt pretty good to actually draw by hand. Around page five of my tests, I started to organize my symbols instead of just randomly drawing on the page.

I even made a few attempts to write names in it (mostly character names). On the next image was my attempt, though there was some discussions with a friend at the writing group about different scripts in our world (he's a former military translator and a micro-polyglot).

One cool thing came out of here is a bit of world-building. There are two ways of putting in the vowels, diacritics or succeeding. Since I've always said that Miwāfu's script was created by researchers and missionaries from Tarsan, the original language used diacritics. And since the desert folk hate agreeing with anything, the eastern part of the desert rebuked the diacritics and went with their own way of writing vowels.

Practice sheets

Once I thought I was done with the glyphs, I banged up a quick practice sheet in Inkscape using blue lines and printed off a few copies. Then, with my trusty new calligraphy marker, I just spent a few days drawing in boxes, working each one until it felt good but also looked “mostly right.”

I say “thought” because I still ended up changing fonts after drawing them a few dozen times.

In the end, I figured I had a pretty good set of glyphs of various quality. I scanned them in and then promptly went to bed. Mainly because the next step requires a lot of thinking.

In the future

The biggest thing about these glyphs and my effort is simply practice. I haven't used calligraphy pens enough to be good at them, nor can I do the little swashes and flairs that I see others doing. This is obviously something I can improve, but it is a matter of time and desire.

Adding novel quotes

2014-07-05T05:00:00Z

When I was writing Flight of the Scions, I encountered a problem with world-building exposition. This comes in a lot of way, but when you create an entirely foreign world, you have to give some description of the rules. What are the measurements used? How do people view marriage? Death? Fighting?

It all came down to a chapter where Kanéko is worried about the consequences of waking up in a bed with a boy. As a baron's daughter, she has political ramifications beyond her own physical sense, but I couldn't find a smooth way of describing those without her sitting down in her own monologue going “as I've known my entire life, the perceptions of a virginal lady….”

After some fumbling, I came up with adding quotes to the beginning of every chapter. These little quotes either explain something that “everyone knows” or gives a little more background into the events of the chapter. They have been a lot of fun to write and I've had a number of people asked me if they are all fake (they are).

For example, in the first sample chapter of Sand and Blood, I have this quote:

When a child is waiting to become an adult, they are subtly encouraged to prove themselves ready for the rites of passage. In public, however, they are to remain patient and respectful. — Funikogo Ganósho, The Wait in the Valleys

Now that Sand and Blood is out, I have thirty of these quotes which come from plays, essays, and lectures by the fictional people of my world. But, like everything else, I feel the need to keep an internal consistency on those quotes because they contribute to the tapestry of the world I'm creating.

This weekend, I decided to add every quote I've written for Blood into my Fedran website. This is my sort-of wiki for the world which will eventually have all the characters of the novels, times and locations of the plots, and generally a corpus of the world I'm creating.

Naturally, I couldn't just add the quotes on a single page. I had to create a page for every reference (The Wait in the Valleys) and person (Funikogo Ganósho) referenced. There is a little back story on most of the entries, just a paragraph or two.

I actually have full plots for some of these, if I ever run out of novels to write.

What is in a name?

2014-07-03T05:00:00Z

The main character in Sand and Blood has a foreign name for most English speakers, Shimusogo Rutejìmo. There were a lot of reasons I picked that name and, I feel, in the long run it will fit well with my future plans for stories in Fedran, but out of context the name is… well, let's go with a review on Reddit from today:

Especially because the protag's name is kind of an eyesore.

The Miwāfu names started with my novel, Flight of the Scions. This is the novel I've been working on for years but never finished. There were a lot of things that never really meshed. Then, about four years ago, I went to the most unlikely of conventions for me, WisCon.

Despite the fact that convention makes me incredibly uncomfortable every time I go, it has also been a wonderful source of things that just “felt right” when I heard them. It's the only time a panel on writing has really inspired me to write instead of making me feel like I have failed everyone by not finishing things.

It was two panels. The first was on naming characters and how most authors have similiar names. I remember going through David Eddings' Belgaraid and struggling with the names blurring together. Same with Tolkien's books and a score of other authors. The names were all English-sounding names that were palatable to the ear. Naturally, the panel was also about how breaking from that could be important.

The other panel was on the silent racism of fantasy writers. Too many novels have purely white people in all of the key roles. In Earthsea miniseries, the non-white roles were given to white people. Tolkien? That movie was rather pale, you could say. Same with almost every other fantasy.

Well, when I listened to those panels, it pushed me to think beyond what I had written. I had done the same thing. People from different countries? Almost identical names. Skin color? Well, I didn't define one so most people assumed white. The main character, Welf, fit what I realized was wrong.

So Welf, a rather bland character, became Kanéko Lurkuklan, a half desert girl trying to bridge two cultures while struggling with her lack of magic in a fantasy world. Her story isn't really important, what became important is that I found something to fall in love with the character. Between the gender, racial, and name change, I found a combination that I could hang a story on and really get passionate about it.

Actually, there were a few iterations of the name, but the final version was Kanéko. I picked that name for a couple of reasons.

Contrast

Dylan says something about my heritage, but not everyone realizes it. The “Dy” is more common with Welsh and English names than say… French or German. The same with Sven. When you hear that name, you'll probably pick Norwegian or Sweden when you see it. Or Pierre or August. There is a subtle thing with names that places them.

However, I don't have the rich history of well-established names and languages. Readers aren't going to know that Ruben could be a name in two of the cultures in my world but Ronamar could only be in one. So, I needed something a bit more obvious to show the differences. Hence, using Japanese syllables (with some modifications) coupled with gender markers. It looks different, though I underestimated that people panicked when they saw even Japanese (which I think is logical).

I'll fully admit, I've been the last twenty years working with people from non-romance or Germanic languages. Today, I work with people from India, but I've also worked with people who came from China or Japan. Their names are utterly foreign to me and “not short.” When you see a name like Kobayashi, it's going to say a lot.

And that is where Kanéko came from. It was compatible with Lojban naming but the accent made it obvious that there was a different. When everyone else has names like Ronamar Lurkuklan or Meris Germudrir, Kanéko Lurkuklan not only shows a hint of the contrast in her life, but also gives an indication of her cultures when you know that Miwāfu names are always clan first and only the final name, the given name, is accented. For example, Kanéko's mother is Kosobyo Mioráshi.

If you are curious, the telepath's names are always a combination of five letters grouped together in a CVCVC pattern. So, Ruben is actually short for Ruben Habor Kalis which is short for a much longer name. But, Ronamar could never be that name since it didn't fit with the constructs of the language. Much like you don't find “mru” in English names.

Constructed Languages

Another reason for the name is I created a language for the desert. This came from my interest with Tolkien's creation of Elvish, which I both adore and hate, but also other authors. Language is one of the many ways of adding depth to the world and I have a thing about all elves speaking Elvish and all humans speaking Common. Blame D&D for that one, but I want regional languages.

And if someone is going to have a regional language, they are going to be named in that language. This year at WisCon, one of the panelist talked about using the Latino or the English version of his name. The difference, though spelled the same as far as I know, pointed out something that I never really thought about: pride in how your name is spelled.

I have a fair amount of effort in Miwāfu, the language that Rutejìmo and Mioráshi are named from. I think it represents their culture and their homeland, all the while showing they are different from the others. It also, I hope, will help to establish the stereotypes (brown skin, green eyes, probably a bit on the barbarian side, spirit animals and themed powers, etc).

Context

So, where does that leave Sand and Blood. Blood was written while Flight was sitting at a publisher. The novel that focused on the contrast was locked in decisions, so I decided to write a parallel novel to help refine Kanéko's desert side, the culture she doesn't really know about. It was suppose to just be a twenty thousand word story, not a three-part series of novels, but that just worked out that way. I fell in love with that culture as much as the others.

But, Blood doesn't have the contrast. Everyone speaks the same language and it isn't English. And, more importantly, it can't be English because Sand and Bone circles back to tie into the fourth book in Kanéko's series. And if I use English-friendly names there, I'll lose that precious contrast when those two series rejoin.

Difficulties

So where does that leave me? Sand and Blood was finished before Flight of the Scions, when it was suppose to be the other way around. By the time I got Flight back from the publisher as a rejection, I had already finished Blood and had a cover made. I couldn't sit on it for another year, mainly because I was terrified to publish it. Just so the books came out in the right order.

So, I sent Blood out into the wild, a novel that didn't have the context. I also, in effect, committed to having Sand and Ash and Sand and Bone released before Flight because authors should finish the series before they move to the next (personal peeve).

I'm sure that Rutejìmo's name is one of the reasons why the novel won't sell well. It doesn't have the supporting world around it to give it context. The problem is, if I didn't publish it, I probably never would have. This also means that the main character's name is always to be an eyesore for a long time.

My hope is that the novel will become less cumbersome once the other series gets written and I build out the world more. It's like a chess game, I have one piece in place but I can't get the other in the right position for a few more turns.

Swears, Epitaphs, and Insults

2014-02-19T06:00:00Z

Last Wednesday, I got the edited version of Sand and Blood back from my editor. I got a lovely high from that, being that it has been eight months since I first sent it out, but it also crashed when I realized that there were two things I needed to figure out before I published the book. Plus, working on those two items means I can stall with integrating said edits into the novel.

The smaller (and easier) task is figure out swearing in my fantasy world. And this can be a nasty little thing to figure out.

In the beginning

Originally, when I wrote Flight of the Scions, two of the characters swore frequently and loudly. One of them, Mioráshi, has her magic based around swearing and insults. The more she ties together swears, the more powerful she is. And her daughter, Kanéko (and the protagonist of the novel), suffered from having a mother who swore constantly. In that novel, I glossed over the swearing by showing the Miwāfu for the words since the chapter's POV didn't understand it.

The novel also shows Kanéko's gradual movement away from swearing as she got out from her parent's influence and began to stand on her own.

In Sand and Blood, I feel that I don't have this option. There is only one language being spoken in the novel and everyone knows every word. So, from the point of view of the main character, I don't want to gloss over the word if there is an English equivalent.

In Sand and Ash, I have two untranslated words because the English translation is too wordy to use, but overall, I don't like to use foreign words when I write.

Even with that justification, some of the readers of my writers group didn't like the occaisonal use of "fuck" or "shit." Swearing makes a lot of people uncomfortable and they seem to speak in "I would refuse to let my child read this." Of course, that bothers me in different ways, but not important here.

And since, years ago, I was told I was writing young adult, I thought I would not only reduce the swearing, but I would move it over to less offensive topics. However, my attempts at a milder swears appear to have fallen flat and the writing group actually thinks that they are bland and boring given the context.

Now, I realized that I'm really not that much of a young adult writer though my characters are in their late teens to start with. Flight of the Scions starts with Kanéko being seventeen and the series ends with her in her late twenties. Sand and Blood starts with Rutejìmo at eighteen and will end in his early thirties. A lot happens in twelve years, and I don't want to limit myself to purely young adult topics. (Plus, someone gets their throat cut in the first book.)

The aspects of reality

I consider swearing, curses, and insults to be part of creating a vibrant world. As much as some people are uncomfortable with it, the simple fact is that people do swear. And curse. And, in some cases, they do it almost constantly just as there are others who refuse to do more than an occasional profanity once every few years.

What swears and curses are used is based on the character. I try to not only identify how frequently they'll swear, but also their favorite terms. Why? Because it it one more aspect of a character, and I think that the combination of different aspects is what makes interesting characters.

Everyone swears

Actually, not everyone, but a lot of people swear. It is part of our language and our speech patterns. Now, not everyone uses the raw forms of swears (e.g., "fuck," "bitch," "shit") but uses minced oaths (e.g., "fudge", "heck"). I see it as a part of a character's development. Characters like Kanéko swear frequently whereas Mioráshi prefers insults. Rutejìmo, the protagonist, swears infrequently usually right before something nasty happens.

Now, whether you hit the truck or not, you're going to have soiled underwear! Because first you say it, then you do it! --- Bill Cosby

Frequency is an import aspect of a character's swearing. One of the ladies I worked with used to say "fudge" all the time. If you use it as the word it really meant (say "fuck"), she swore a lot more than me, but it was more acceptable despite the frequency. A family member says "god bless it" when he gets upset, but he does it so infrequently that it has a lot of impact when it happens.

I swear semi-frequently, but I have an interesting quirk that I rarely use "fuck" as anything over than a verb of a specific action. I also don't use many blasphemies (e.g., "god damn it", "god bless it") because it doesn't feel right. I've had to control my language around EDM, but the main thing SMWM is afraid of is that I will teach EDM to use "fuck" as a proper verb instead of a curse. I can just imagine that Parent/Teacher meeting.

Did he use "fuck" correctly in a sentence? --- Me, in the future

Overuse

There is always a danger of overusing swearing. I still remember the second edition ShadowRun where the fiction sections were filled with "drek" and "frag" all over the place.

There are people who swear a lot just as there are people who almost never swear. Also, as people grow in influence and age, they seem to swear less. So, when I write a novel, I want to reflect those aspects and have a variety of characters who use different swears at different rates and intensities.

Types of profanity

As I see it, there are a number of different types of naughty words. Why is this important? Because different characters will use them in different tones.

The culture of profanity

The culture of the character determines a lot about their profanity. I've read that German profanity has a larger percentage of scatological phrases whereas Latin has more blasphemy.

Much of profanity are things that are not acceptable in the public eye of society. I assume, that in a openly sexual world, sexual-based swears lose their impact. Likewise, the creatures from the planet Tersurus probably don't have any flatulence-based swears, mainly because that is their form of communication. (Side note, "The Curse of Fatal Death" is probably the best Dr. Who parody of all time).

Why I want to do this

In Sand and Ash, I had a line of "Don't be a dick," which every single person in the writing group said felt out of place. I had built up a (hopefully) rich world of characters, language, and grammar and that single insult threw them out. There were a couple of things (including a couple references to "cute"). It was too modern-day English and not enough fantasy for what I have written.

Also, I had just a bland blasphemy ("Sands!") that just fell flat. In one scene, Rutejìmo is screaming as everything in his life collapsed on him and I felt like he was just screaming "Fudge! Fudge! Fudge!" at the top of his lungs. For what was in the scene, it lost some of the tension for me. "Sands" is a minced oath and neither Kanéko or Rutejìmo would use it, not as teenagers and their situations.

So, I needed to come up with something that fits better with the context. And, it needs to fit with both the framework of English and Miwāfu. Part of Sand and Blood is to build up a world to show the contrast with Flight of the Scions.

Making a calendar look good

2013-09-24T05:00:00Z

While I thought I was done with making a calendar, someone asked if they could see a visual form of the calendar. I thought this would be a fairly simple thing... but, it wasn't exactly. Took me most of the night to actually come up with something I'm fairly happy with.

In context, here are the posts related to this one.

Part 1: My reasons for doing this
Part 2: Some theory on what makes an interesting fictional calendar
Part 3: An example of creating a messy calendar
Part 4: Creating a visual representation of the calendar

And, the first draft of the calendar:

Arrangement

I decided to use the square boxes for the calendar (much like our own) instead of something fancy like a big circle. This is a lot more readable and shows some of the elements of the calendar.

Like our own, there is the name of each "month" with the Miwāfu glyphs on the left and English on the right. The line of text below it is the name of the weeks. In the boxes, I have simply numbered the days of the month from 1 to 47.

Fall days are shown by the circles, with a single circle being the "one in four", a double being "one in eight", and a triple circle being "one in sixteen". Seems to be fairly obvious, though it might need a bit larger view to see it well.

Numbers

I've been working on Miwāfu for a while, but I apparently completely forgot to actually do the numbers. This is actually what took most of the time, but I think I have a fairly good set of numbers that look pretty decent when put together.

The fun part is trying to figure out little things like decimal points and how a fantasy language would group numbers. Since the number eight pops up fairly often, I decided to keep the desert folk mostly centered around powers of two and went with groups of four but using spaces for grouping since they have the "number bar" that goes over the entire number. The decimal is the vowel placeholder under the number, but with spaces on both side. Since it never made sense to me, I went with using grouping even after the decimal so a large number would be "1234 5678 . 8765 4321".

Continual improvement

Nothing is set in stone with this, but I feel pretty good about what I've gotten done. I'm not planning on focusing on the lunar calendar for a little while longer, mainly because I have other things to do, but it will eventually show up.

mansupi tachira ripōchya (solar calendar)

2013-09-21T05:00:00Z

In the last few days, I've been posting a few links about time keeping in my novels and a rough guideline theory of how I'm going to create a calendar:

Part 1: My reasons for doing this
Part 2: Some theory on what makes an interesting fictional calendar
Part 3: An example of creating a messy calendar
Part 4: Creating a visual representation of the calendar

And now I'm actually getting to the crunchy bit of creating a fictional calendar. Creating the mifuno ripōchya (desert calendar), which I need to document when things happen in Sand and Blood.

Culture background

There are a few things that are important while creating this calendar:

The clans treat the clan itself as the primary purpose. So, instead of a family, they have a clan.
Clans get powers from the spirit of their clan.
All clan spirits get their powers from one of two powers: Tachìra, the sun spirit, or Chobìre, the moon spirit. Both Tachìra and Chobìre (male spirits) are in love with the desert spirit (Mifúno). They don't like each other.
The desert clans are big on ownership, even if it is only in people's minds. This results in them naming their horses, weapons, and even mechanical devices.
Clans have accented names (Kosòbyo) but when used as an adjective or ownership, it has no accent (Kosobyo Valley).
There are no capitals, but I write it with capitals to make it easier for English readers.

World mechanics

Though no one has figured it out, we have a couple of cycles that we need:

The solar cycle is currently 368.3087 days long.
The lunar cycle is currently 32.8873 days long.

There are more decimal places beyond that, but I'm not planning on getting into any more details. The world isn't precise enough yet for that.

The three base calendars

Because Tachìra and Chobìre are considered rivals for the desert's love, their cycles were developed apart from each other. Because of this, we'll end up creating an Aztec-style calendar where we have two related cycles that combined together to form a more holistic calendar.

tachira ripōchya (TR): The solar calendar
chobire ripōchya (CR): The lunar calendar
mifuno ripōchya (MR): The desert calendar, the combined version (the Aztec "long cycle")

The neat calendars

I like to start with a neat and idealistic calendar. This is just the first blush where things seem to "mostly" work without being too accurate.

TR (368 day year):
- 8 solar periods (ríchi) named after the eight initial spirits
  - Wochifúmi (Wochifumi ríchi)
  - Netsugío
  - Myuràku
  - Hizogōma
  - Kosòbyo
  - Jiyokòni
  - Sachikónu
  - Kyodòte
- ...of 46 days (rōte)
CR (352 day "year"):
- 11 months (chòchi) for the 11 children of Chobìre
  - Wochyòko
  - Pyakígo
  - Defòshyu
  - Jipóre
  - Rozàtsu
  - Byóki
  - Nabunìro
  - Guwifómu
  - Jyuùchi
  - Radága
  - Tokomōfo
- ... of 32 days

The least common multiple of these two calendars is 8096, so the TR and CR come in sync once every 8,096 days (22 TR, 23 CR) using this system. That isn't so bad, but obviously these aren't very accurate calendars but they are a good start for an idealistic person who tried to come up with the "perfect" system to account for time.

Let's screw it up.

Changes to the solar calendar

The changes I'm going to make the calendar are in order but the actual time of them isn't as important at this juncture. I want context and to show the gradual changes of the calendar over the centuries.

To mix the calendar up, I'm just creating a few moments in time of the calendar's history where it was changed.

Initial State
- 368 = Wo 46, Ne 46, Myu 46, Hi 46, Ko 46, Ji 46, Sa 46, Kyo 46
Kyodote Upheaval
- Kyodote richi goes from 46 to 47 days
- Sachikonu richi goes from 46 to 45 days
- 368 = Wo 46, Ne 46, Myu 46, Hi 46, Ko 46, Ji 46, Sa 45, Kyo 47
Language diminutives (mostly inspired by the oral traditions spreading the names)
- Wochifumi ríchi becomes Wofuríchi
- Myuraku rìchi becomes Myoràchi
- Kosòbyo rìchi becomes Kosobyòri
- Sachikónu rìchi becomes Saríchi
- 368 = Wo 46, Ne 46, Myo 46, Hi 46, Ko 46, Ji 46, Sa 45, Kyo 47
Kyodote Dominance
- Myoràchi goes from 46 to 47 days
- Jiyokoni richi goes from 46 to 45 days
- 368 = Wo 46, Ne 46, Myo 47, Hi 46, Ko 46, Ji 45, Sa 45, Kyo 47
Bochigomāsu
- Growing trade from the southern countries gives the concept of an eight-day week. Since eight is a holy number in the desert, this becomes quickly popular.
Migafi Mapyózi
- Mapyózi, as a teenager, realizes that the calendar isn't accurate enough. She spends the rest of her life traveling the desert to spread the understanding. This is also where the idea of giving an extra day and taking it away was the way to correct the calendar (instead of leap days as in our world). Later, she realizes that she wasn't correct and commits suicide.
- Netsugio ríchi goes from 46 to 47 days, loses a day once every four years
- Kyodote richi loses a day once every four years
- 368.50 = Wo 46, Ne 46.75, Myo 47, Hi 46, Ko 46, Ji 45, Sa 45, Kyo 46.75
Myuraku Jinokìn
- Upset about the diminution of his clan's name in the calendar spends his life trying to get it renamed back to the original name. He fails, but in the process of trying to garner favor, he shifts the days around before he failed his life's mission.
- Myoràchi is reduced from 47 to 46 days
- Jiyokoni richi is increased from 45 to 46 days.
- Jiyokoni richi is changed to Jinòkyo
- 368.50 = Wo 46, Ne 46.75, Myo 46, Hi 46, Ko 46, Ji 46, Sa 45, Kyo 46.75
Fimùchi Calculations
- Kosobyòri loses a day once every eight years
- 368.375 = Wo 46, Ne 46.75, Myo 46, Hi 46, Ko 45.875, Ji 46, Sa 45, Kyo 46.75
Hizogōma's Betrayal
- The Hizogōma clan becomes one of the most famous of the clans to turn their back on Tachira and join forces with Chobìre.
- Hizogoma rìchi is renamed to Hizofūne
- Hizofūne is reduced to 44 days
- Myoràchi is increased from 46 to 47 days
- Kosobyòri is increased from 46 to 47 days
- 368.375 = Wo 46, Ne 46.75, Myo 47, Hi 44, Ko 46.875, Ji 46, Sa 45, Kyo 46.75
Language continues to drift
- Wofuríchi is now known as Furíchi
- Netsugio ríchi is now Netsúo
- Kyodòte is now Dòte
- 368.375 = Fu 46, Ne 46.75, Myo 47, Hi 44, Ko 46.875, Ji 46, Sa 45, Do 46.75
Mansūpi Observation
- This was a politic reform in an attempt to "normalize" the calendar. It makes the leap days more evenly spread out through the year, continues the stealing of days from Hizofūne and shows the continual rise of the Kosòbyo clan.
- Hizofūne loses a day once every 1/8 years
- Kosobyòri no longer has a fall day
- Jinòkyo loses a day once every 1/16 years
- 368.3125 = Fu 46, Ne 46.75, Myo 47, Hi 43.875, Ko 47, Ji 45.9375, Sa 45, Do 46.75

I could keep going, but I think this has enough of a messy feel for me. There are other things I can do to add in complexity, but for purposes of my novels, I'm pretty happy.

This calendar may have started with a regular (neat) system, but by making little changes here and there, I build up a little bit of the world's history, add some interesting events, and gives me some hooks.

The calendar is also fairly regular. The shortest "month" is 44 days and the longest is 47. This is similar to the Gregorian calendar (28 to 31 days). There are more "fall" days (as opposed to leap days) than the Gregorian (4 verses 3).

The final solar calendar (mansupi tachira ripōchya, MTR) at the point of Sand and Blood is:

Furíchi: 46 days
Netsúo: 47 days, fall day 1/4 years
Myoràchi: 47 days
Hizofūne: 44 days, fall day 1/8 years
Kosobyòri: 47 days
Jinòkyo: 46 days, fall day 1/16 years
Saríchi: 45 days
Dòte: 47 days, fall day 1/4 years

I'll do the same with the lunar calendar, but this post is getting a bit long.

Year

The last big part I need for the novel is a year number. The number itself isn't that important, though it will pretty much identify when the Hizogōma's Betrayal happened (which is the "zero point" of the calendar, 0 HB).

As a completely arbitrary number, I'm going with 1471. It keeps it in line with our own dates. I'm planning on using 1832 (the rough beginning of the Victorian age) in a different calendar to represent the same time period, but I like having numbers close to each other.

Formatting

How to write a date is important. We have a number of formats in our world, so we need to have the same. These are influenced by the northern countries by using one-based numbers, but the desert doesn't follow the conventions of zero-padding.

1471/3/1
1471 Myo 1
1471 Myoràchi 1
Myo 1

The slash is used because it is the closest symbol to the symbol in Miwāfu.

World-building and calendars

2013-09-18T05:00:00Z

If I'm going to track the time of a given chapter, there are two things I have to keep track of: date and time. Ignoring time for now, tracking dates in a fictional world is somewhat difficult.

Assuming that the fictional world doesn't use ISO dates (yyyy-mm-dd), which none of mine do, then I have to figure out the calendars on my own (and eventually write programs to coordinate them between the different cultures/calendars). There are also little issues of how you display them in a story (or in personal notes).

This is part two of a four part series:

Part 1: My reasons for doing this
Part 2: Some theory on what makes an interesting fictional calendar
Part 3: An example of creating a messy calendar
Part 4: Creating a visual representation of the calendar

Fictional Calendars

There are a lot of components to world-building. Calendars are one part of the bigger picture. It is also a part that I feel is frequently glossed over and moved beyond by many creators.

Time keeping can be the source of plots and stories. Not every world has a Halloween or they may have more than one. I love Kingdom of Loathing as they introduced different holidays over the years, it adds depth and fun to the game.

When you have calendars that people believe in, you have things like the Y2K scare, the panic in 1899, the whole end of the Aztec calendar, or even the terror that will strike in February 2038 when the Unix timestamp would hypothetically roll over. All great things to hang plots on.x

Different calendars are a wonderful source of stories. More so when they are close, but slightly different. If you have a two thousand year old machine that, at the stroke of midnight will destroy the world, which calendar do you use? Which midnight? What if they use Julian days which roll over at noon?

Hollywood seems to think that all ancient civilization planned ahead so their date would match the Gregorian Calendar instead of whatever was used when said plans started. More specifically, the Gregorian calendar started in 1582. That isn't that long ago and it did change leap year calculations.

The movie End of Days is a good example of using modern time tracking for the plot. The conception must happen at the stroke of the millennium and it was planned for thousands of years. They should be off by a few days, that would make an interesting twist if everyone goes to stop the coming of the ultimate evil, only to find out that the real conception is going to happen six days later. You know, when everyone has relaxed and thought they saved the world.

Neat Calendars

Most fictional worlds I've seen have "neat" calendars. Twelve month of twenty-nine days. Eleven months of forty days. It is the starting point of a lot of calendars, including our own. I'm guilty of the same thing since I really like thousand-day years because it formats nicely to 000-999.

They also have names that follow a pattern. It could be "something-month, something-month" or long, flowery names that are utterly impractical for day-to-day use. If you look at the Gregorian calendar, it has short names (May, June) and long ones (September, February).

When I see a neat calendar, I feel there is a lost opportunity to show progression and depth in a world. Creators seem to assume that somehow the world was perfectly in tune with the calendar's cycle and that someone was precise enough to figure out the exact length of day on the first try. Pretty good for cultures that have been around for thousands of years but still haven't invented the toilet.

That said, a purely random calendar looks almost as bad as a neat one. If the month lengths are 7, 45, 19, and 35, you have an impractical system. The Gregorian Calendar only differs by 4 days for any given month (28 to 31 days). This is more practical because it is easier to remember than "seven days come January, forty-five in February, then 19, 35, 83, 2, 41, 36...".

Starting Neatly

Calendars start neat, then reality happens. It appears that our own world is simply twelve months of thirty days. Yeah, it's off by five and some, but you could easily start with that point.

I like calendars should start with that idealistic neatness. It just seems that most world builders stop at that point. It's "good" enough to figure out the fun things like the entire rest of the world.

But, I don't think it takes much to mess it up a bit, put in some interesting hooks, and still get a usable, messy calendar to inflict the world with. Even better yet is having competing calendars splitting apart and merging again later as the world advances.

Refinement

The tools to measure time are constantly improving. When you only have ticks on the side of a tree, you probably can't get the number of seconds in a year precisely. When you have an atomic clock, it's a lot easier. That is why we had calendars that make a few smaller and smaller changes to the previous one (Gregorian previous and our current leap minutes).

The broadest strokes of a calendar change is that refinement. The better the tools, the more the world has to put in "patches" to get it to work. Add a day every four, remove it every hundred.

This is also why Fedran's solar cycle is 368.3087 days long. Why? Because I want to have the gradual improvement over the centuries.

Politics

Politics are the other big reason for changing a calendar: an emperor might want to have a month named after him, an invading country forces their own world view, or trade requires a change to make it profitable. I consider religion to be one of these. These changes can result in messy calendars that aren't any more accurate the previous one, but has little bits shuffled here and there.

The easiest changes I've seen politics inflict on a calendar are changing the names of months or stealing a day from another one cycle to another. It's the minor shuffle that, take time after time, messes up the calendar.

Mixing it up

These can be combined together. When I create a calendar, I try to create 5-8 significant points in the evolution of the calendar. During those times, there is a bit of refinement and politics that alter it. And the resulting changes are, I think, a bit more realistic and create a richer world.

Effort

Doing this is work. For someone who is just trying to get enough there to have an exotic sounding month for their novel, it may be overkill. If someone really just wants to focus on other aspects, a simple calendar might be enough.

For me, I think I'm going to be in this world for a while. I want to have a comfortable foundation to track my stories but also to maybe give it richness in later tales.

It's also a fun diversion for a couple of days.

Time keeps on passing

2013-09-17T05:00:00Z

So, in the last few weeks, I've been thinking about time in my stories. While Sand and Blood only covers a few short weeks of time, excluding the epilogue, Sand and Love is stretched out across months and years.

I seem to like stories that do this. The weekly serial I just finished was seven years from the beginning to the end. There were a couple chapters that summarized a year, but for the most part the chapters were scenes that, when put together, became a much larger story of the main character's growth. The RPG games I run seem to be the same way, though I had to thank my players for that. The ten-year D&D game ended four centuries after the first group of players woke up in a prison wagon. Over the years, the players adventured, grew older, got married, had children, and some of them even died of old age. And it was awesome.

Time is a component of the novels I'm working on right now, not only inside a given story, but also in relationship with each other. Rutejìmo's story (the Sand series) touches against Kanéko's (Flight of the Scions). Yes, Rutejìmo would be in his mid-forties when Kanéko turned twenty-six and the two will never meet each other, but the two stories do reflect the events of each other and other ones I want to write in the next few years.

True, plans never work out the way I want them to, but its still a future goal. It's like writing the serial. I couldn't go back and edit earlier chapters. I had to have the little hooks and plans as I write, so I can later hook on to them with a different story. Might be fun, might be a disaster, but only time will tell.

Of course, this also means I need to keep the relationship of these stories in mind. It's one thing to say "ten years later" with one series, but keeping track of all the plots, past and future. It would be bad if I forgot the order.

Which is why I'm thinking about time. Since I'm not writing anything right now, I'm working on some of the maintenance part of writing. One of them is figuring when and where things happen. I need to do this not only at the novel/story level, but also at the chapter. That way, probably around book seven, I'll be able to overlay the novels and show their relationship together.

It doesn't matter if I won't be able to pull it off, but I think it will be awesome if I did. Which means I need to A) write enough novels to make it work, B) keep track of the details as I write, and C) have faith.

This ended up being a series of four posts:

Part 1: My reasons for doing this
Part 2: Some theory on what makes an interesting fictional calendar
Part 3: An example of creating a messy calendar
Part 4: Creating a visual representation of the calendar

Introduction to Miwāfu

2012-10-25T05:00:00Z

One of the things I have on my dependency list for BAM is to finish up a chunk of Miwāfu, a naming conlang I used in both BAM and in FOTS. Conlangs (constructed languages) are one of my (many) interests, so I thought I would write a bit of why I created Miwāfu, its influences, and some of the things that have come up while using it.

What is Miwāfu?

When I was working on FOTS, one of the themes I wanted to work with was racism. Kanéko's father is from Kormar, white, and in the majority. Her mother, Mioráshi, on the other hand, is from the desert and not only is a stranger to the culture, she also chooses not to adapt to the world she lived in for the last sixteen years. Kanéko is also a racist, but that is mostly influence from her parents.

To make the racism a bit easier to identify, I wanted a language that looked different than the language of the land (Lorban, notationally in English). Fortunately, I had a number of rules for the Lorban, including that all proper names start and end in constants. This made it easy to find a way of making it different, by having names end in vowels.

Influences of Miwāfu

I'm a hack, let's start there. Most of my ideas are remixes of different things put together. In this case, Miwāfu is actually based on Japanese, a language I still want to learn, coupled with some ideas from other languages I know.

The syllables comes from Japanese, except that I took out a few and added in the rest of the "f" pairs (fa, fi, fe, fo).

I wanted a language that was obviously gendered, but I didn't want to use the "la" and "le" of French. Instead, I went with an accent over the penultimate syllable. Later, I changed it so only the penultimate syllable of the phrase is accented, so instead of Waryōni, pagáni, and héru, we have this:

Waryoni pagani héru
Waryōni pretty mare
Waryōni's pretty mare

I went with three genders: male, female, and neuter/child. They are represented by the acute, grave, and macron respectively. I bounced back and forth between using circumflex and macrons, but after an in-depth opinion poll (I asked Fluffy), I went with macrons.

Going with the macron is somewhat of a mistake. Japanese allows "n" as a syllable itself. So does Miwāfu, but very few fonts can handle the "n" with a macron. I'm planning on creating a glyph to represent it, but for the time being I'm not allowing "n" to be the accented character.

Another difficulty I had with readers is not accenting proper names that are adjectives or "of" relationships. For example, Waryōni is the name of a clan. Garèo is a man in that clan. So, instead of saying Waryōni Garèo, they use Waryoni Garèo.

A third one is that it is hard to touch-type accents. I ended up having a rather large auto-correct list while writing it.

Names

The entire reason I first created Miwāfu was to figure out Kanéko's name. It went through quite a few iterations before I found a name I liked. I also didn't think I needed it to much, mainly because it was just for her name. And maybe her mother's and the other desert guy. But, then as I was building up the world, I needed clan names and then horses and, from there, it just blossomed into this whole little ecosystem of names.

I went with relatively long names for characters. Minimum three characters with 3-5 being common for someone's first name and 3-6 for a clan name. This is obviously influenced by my Indian co-workers but also because I'm comfortable with longer names like Rutejìmo (main character of BAM) or Mioráshi (Kanéko's mother).

Names became a very big thing in the world. The people of the desert name everything: their mounts, their weapons, their vehicles. Each one is a "member of the clan" as it were and may have a gender associated with it.

The longer names did cause problems for some of the readers, most so when there are scenes with a large number of characters. I tried to reduce it in BAM, mainly by adding a few chapters to slowly wind up the characters, but everyone in that novel speaks Miwāfu. I found that around chapter 5-6, the writing group was getting somewhat comfortable talking about them.

Politeness Levels

But, there was an unexpected benefit of the longer name. It started because I wanted to go with different levels of politeness in Miwāfu, but mostly subtle. With the names, I could use the penultimate and ultimate syllables as the informal name.

Polite: Garèo
Formal: Waryoni Garèo
Familiar: Rèo
Inferior (to Superior): Great Waryoni Garèo
Superior (to Inferior): Boy, thief, idiot, etc.

Making it Fun

I love conlangs, so this was actually just a way of having a bit of fun with the world while giving some structure to how I name people. I honestly wasn't expecting it to expand out, but I'm getting so the names feel right when I read them.

I think what Tolkien did with Elvish was an inspiration, but I also like that you didn't have to know the language to read the book. It was just a little bonus feature if you took the effort to know it.

Diabetes, MythTV, and world-building

2009-04-16T05:00:00Z

Weight Loss: 14.7 kg (32.4 lbs)

Rough night, mainly because I kept thinking too much. Stupid little things that keep you up. I call it my monkey, a little chattering thing that won't shut up so I can go to sleep. Fortunately, not everything was negative, just... loud.

Obviously, the main thing was the whole weight and diabetes thing. My doctor is test-happy, so I limit any blood work to every few months unless it is an emergency. So, I have two months or so to get glucose and weight down. No problem, in Weight Watchers, my first goal is 10% anyways. It was also my goal at the beginning of the year, but I didn't have a good idea of my weight then. Three months ago, the doctor's office said I weighed about 151 kg. According to WW, the scale said 147 kg. So, I already lost about 4 kg, if all those scales are right. I'm going to use the 147 kg point and say I need to lose 14.7 kg in the next few months. I won't get upset if I don't make the 14.7, but I will if I don't make at least half that (5% goal) of 7.4 kg.

It's a plan. I managed to get used to eating half a gallon of vegetables every day for lunch, I can get used to 30-60 minutes of exercise a day.

I was also thinking about the MythTV box. I decided to migrate the hardware to a slightly slower machine (Pentium D 2.8 GHz to a AMD x64 3800+ at 2.0 GHz). It allows for more RAM (4 instead of 1 GB) and it's 64-bit which should help with encoding. That and it's rated higher than the Pentium. I ordered a new 1.5 TB drive for the file storage (and another 1.5 TB for my "personal" computer). I'm enjoying getting it working, but with everything else, it just takes time to get it done and I'm impatient.

I also got a new mailbox yesterday. Forgot the address already, but I really like having a postal box for my writing. With commissions and everything, I've always been uncomfortable with people knowing my home address. I also post my address on-line, for that strange day when someone might want to send me fan mail. Yes, the mailbox place (also a UPS Store like last time) knows it, but it offers a bit of veil for my on-line presence. I'll start changing my various on-line addresses, like domain records and such, over the next few weeks. It may only be temporary, since I don't know where we'll get the non-rental house, but it at least gives me something.

Finally, Fedran and religions. This is actually the fun topic, since I'm trying to show historical progression and change of various religions as they mix, fold, and separate over the centuries. I wanted to have denominations, not unlike this country, where every church has a slightly different view on things. Fortunately for me, a co-workers wife is going to seminary so I got a really good view of what she is going through to become a preacher, including the different types of relationships between a pastor and a church. Coupled with years of listening to my Roman Catholic friends, my experiences in random religions, and everything else, I think I finally have a good handle on how I want religions to work in this fantasy world.

It also lead into how I want to show history in the world. On my wiki site, I'm building up the various countries and everything as my working notes. If I ever get a book published, that is the point where I'll worry about backward consistency so everything is still mud-like right now. But, I could create a little SVG file of the continent and use that to show snapshot influences of a religion over time. So, I can show where Tirmol started and how to expanded over the years until the wars with Devmas which eventually lead to the religious truce of that became the Divine Marriage. And the fracturing later which will give me the God-King split and all those other denominations.

In my head, it's all pretty. Now, to see if I can make the website match and actually be informative.

I wish I had more discipline for updating the wiki and keeping the continual world-building going. I might now that things are settling, but I honestly feel that the reason my other world works is because I spent years building up the world. I wrote stories, ran games, and even made up little comics in that world. Not all at once, but layering idea after idea on top of it until I had such a wonderful place to write in. And, like wine, it had the influences of my ideas at the times, which changes constantly.

Well, I'm excited and creating today, despite everything.

Death threats

2009-04-14T05:00:00Z

It is interesting how I'm finally in a state going through its own moral crisis when it comes to gay marriages. While I'm not in a gay relationship, I happen to believe that love is as blind as justice should be, and that as a society, we shouldn't be saying who can love each other. It doesn't matter if we disagree with religion, race, or gender. I'm completely apathetic toward the differences of love; though I'll agree that people shouldn't marry their dog but that has nothing to do with gay marriages. Seriously! I'm not sure why that keeps coming up in conversations about gay marriage.

Well, I guess I could. No doubt while this country believed segregation was the right thing, people claimed that marrying blacks was like marrying beasts. Of course, today, only the psychos and bigots say that. But, I can't help see the similarities. I probably wouldn't agree with it then, and I don't agree it with now.

I honestly believe that apathy toward particulars is a good thing when it comes to most of my life. I simply don't care what a person's gender, religion, age, race, or anything else is. I care about their actions and the words that come out of their mouth.

I'm sending a letter to my various Iowa representatives today, but I saw this little news article going through the AP rounds about one of the openly gay Iowa legislation getting a death threat. It also reminds me of certain people near me who feel that gays shouldn't be killed, but tortured and mutilated is just fine.

I really can't describe how much that saddens me, both the mortality aspect of the former and the nearness of the latter. Just as sadly, I've seen those people near me use the bible and their religion for their reasons for their vocal violence. To me, I'd rather go with the simple atomic rules of that religion:

You shall not kill - Exodus 20:13

You shall not kill - Deuteronomy 5:17

... seems contradictory to me. I mean, death threats and not killing could be combined in empty threats, but we already know that people have been killed for simply being gay. Or a cross-dresser, or TG, or black, or a ton of other things. You have simple rules, why not follow them? In Wicca, you have the basic one: do what you want, as long as you harm none. Yet, I've seen violence and "witch wars" among those communities as much as I have seen them with other religions.

The reason is simple: it has very little to do with religion. It has to do with fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of something different.

People don't like to be afraid. They don't like to realize they are terrified of change or of something different. So, we use a shield, a hand puppet, to mask our fear. We use religion, manifest destiny, or the American Way, as a reason to mask our fear and justify our actions.

Now, somewhere in there was a point. Oh yeah, writing fear. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm religious but I don't put a label on it. I refuse to use it a puppet for my actions. I am religious, I believe in the divinity in a particular way, but I don't celebrate it. I just believe.

But, with writing, it seems like an interesting way of creating characters with depth. When laid out on paper, I have a simple list of specific likes and dislikes, but also a general preference toward consistency verses chaos. Older people, at least in my writing, lean closer to consistency and quid pro quo while younger like more change. This isn't a universal belief, but I have noticed people get crusty with age. Our thoughts wear a grove in our minds and we struggle when someone tries to pull it out over that rut; change is great when you are twenty, not so great at fifty.

Since I'm adding religions to my world, no doubt I'm going to use it as the mask to justify someone's actions. I'm also going to create the honestly good people for the same religion, because I know so many who are "currently without church" or good for good's sake. I've been around too many paladins in my life to believe that any religion is wrong; it comes down to people and their actions.

I don't like using religious villains, because it gets too close to the "the Church is the evil" that some writers get into. And I simply don't believe that is true. I want to create lots of beautiful faiths that inspire and lead. And then make complete assholes who use them for their own purposes.

Easter and Religions

2009-04-13T05:00:00Z

I didn't celebrate Easter. Actually, it's pretty safe to say I don't celebrate any holiday. This includes the holidays of my chosen religion despite the fact I consider myself at least reasonably dedicated to the faith. Yet, I don't care about the days.

I view birthdays and secular holidays in the same way. I don't really celebrate them, though I do like the occasional present on my birthday, I don't actually expect anything.

When I look at that, I realize that my worlds suffers from the same view. Given that over two-thirds of this world believes in some religion, some divine force, my worlds are remarkable in their absence of religion. It doesn't make sense, but I've had a "Here be Religions" mark on the map and history for quite a while.

It makes me wonder, how to create a religion that is probable when you don't really follow any religion. In some ways, creating a very religious individual is actually a fantasy for me, since I don't understand it myself. It is putting myself in much different shoes. I'll try it, of course, simply because I think it will make a better world, setting, and depth, but still is a challenge.

The hard part is also creating religions that conflict with each other, but from the point of the reader, are neither entirely right or entirely wrong. Religion is a wasp nest for me, but I think it is a needed one.

In writing, it is so easy to blame a religion. For me, the more obvious ones are the Wiccan writers who have the big sign "blame the Church! It is the evil!" over their words. I don't like that, I don't think anyone should be at fault, even fake religions that are usually thinly veiled real world ones.

I've been thinking about this for a while. My creative drive is coming back nicely in the last week or so, so I'm enjoying letting a surge of world-building bubble up through my thoughts. I realized my Fedran map was off and started to move civilization to the outer edges of the world. A super-continent (like Pangaea) would have a lot more deserts and tundras in the center and would therefore have less population centers. Moving everything around got me to thinking about how religions and cultures would adapt to a world like that.