Three shorts currently up for submission:
Asylum (Submitted)
Exoticism (Submitted)
The Ruined Lady (under revision).
Asylum has been submitted to Dark Recesses, and Exoticism is being queried with Down in the Cellar. I've actually got it's status listed as 'submitted', but apparently Cellar's server isn't accepting attachments (I'm not entirely sure whether they're accepting submissions, since they didn't make it clear which December submissions were closed until), so it's being 'queried' instead. I suspect their inbox is just full. I want to revise Ruin a couple more times, then I get to pick someone to send that off to.
Here we go!
Editted: Cellar was having spamfilter issues, so Exoticism is now submitted, and they'll let me know if they receive it. Wonderfully prompt response!
Tuesday, April 8
Sunday, April 6
Naming Places
I did naming characters, so this seemed the logical next step.
When it comes to setting a story, I tend to be vague. My two 'real world' projects are both vague in their setting regarding anything more than country. The only project I'd consider naming the setting in details is the much mused-about Roman project, since the settings would be relevant to the plot. When place isn't relevant to plot, especially in any kind of 'real world' setting, I avoid it.
But in Grenhelm, well, that's fantasy. Places need naming. And my attitude to it is much the same as to character names: they have to be realistic (apart from those I made up when I was thirteen and can't bring myself to rename!). While the individual countries have made up fantasy names, the towns and villages have names that wouldn't look odd on a map of England. Well, Southern England.
There are two types of place name: descriptive, and enticing. It's the difference between Iceland and Greenland. You don't tend to find many enticing place names in 'old' countries; they're something associated with exploration and settlement. Most of Europe was settled before it was officially named, so the names tend to be descriptive, which is what I'll be focusing on.
In Britain, there are multiple languags to draw on to compose these names, and in a fantasy world, the same can apply. However, if, in your protagonist's country they speak what is basically English (or the language is 'translated' into English), and other influcing languages aren't immediately recognisable as French or German or Latin or Old Norse, then you need to be careful about using those languages to name places (it's that etymology thing again). You need to stick to recognisable dialectal variations on English words, or you need to use words that your readers will recognise as part of your invented languages.
Since I don't have any invented languages, I've been naming places in a noticeably English way. Famous people, names of local landmarks (usually rivers), combinations of landmarks, type of settlement and geographical positions. There's a lot of variation on spellings, though I've only thrown it about in a few of them.
Prefixes tend to be geographical, so you've got the following:
e- we- su- so- no- nu- nor- etc
You can also preface a place name with North, South, East and West, obviously, as well as other descriptors such as Greater, Lesser, Small, Under, and so on. These usually come into play when there are multiple places with the same name, usually because they're in the same region (so you can have a Greater and Lesser Hillmouth, for example)
Suffixes tend to be geographical landmarks, though it also includes other obvious descriptors, such as the type of settlement (which may no longer be accurate by the time the story begins). This is not an exhasutive list:
-ford -bridge -mouth -port : all river related
-hill -lee/ley/ly/leigh -vale -head -stone -down -cliff : hilly/mountainous regions
-green -field -broad -flat : flat or lowlying areas
-bush -wood -marsh/arsh/ersh/mersh -heath : local ecology
-ton -ville -ham : type of settlement
-bury/bry -home/house : people related
Again, sometimes you find suffixes as separate words; these are usually geographical, and clarify position further, for example, Hillmouth Green. These suffixes are usually recognisable whole words in English (so you wouldn't have Hillmouth Ville, for example).
I'd like to point out that Hillmouth appears to be a nonsense name, since it's fairly improbable that a river would be called the Hill (also, Ville is a fairly french looking word; it represents village, which is more English, but it's a suffix to use carefully). However, our river that this village is at the mouth of might not have been called the Hill, back when our village was named. It might have been the Ill, or the Hile, or something like that. The difference between separate and conjoined prefixes and suffixes is lazy speaking. When creating a place name, it's best to come up with something obvious, and then repeat it until you start mumbling, and see how it sounds. Syllables just fall out (to take a real example: the Guilded Ford is now Guildford, where Ford Prefect claims to be from, and that central d is almost never pronounced).
Pronunciation is tricky; only the writer knows what is intended, and attempts to make it obvious can just baffle people who grew up with a different accent to yourself. My advice is not to bother with anything other than the straight forward.
To run through some place names in Greenhelm (which is the Green 'Helmet' of the island), I've names a couple of rivers the Song and the Let. So there's almost certainly Songmouth and Letmouth, and probably places like Songford, Letbridge, Songmarsh, Letleigh, and Songton, and minor changes (sometimes just in pronunciation) to give Songreen, Sonersh, Lefford and Letham. Trust is rumoured to be buried in a certain area, so the town there is Trusbury. In the empire, you'd expect to find the occasional Kingbry and Queenham. There might be a Wonmarsh and Tomarsh on the border - one side of the marsh and t'other side. Oakley and Yevale would be a valleys of oaks and yews respectively, and Redford would be a crossing through an iron-filled river.
It's so... easy. Of course, some of these names probably already exist, somewhere in the British Isles, in some form. Naming places like this can help solidify geography without a ton of maps (though it's worth mapping a place for your own sake, to make sure you don't end up with Treemouth in the middle of the mountains, for example) and can also give names to fictional places in real world settings. If you want latin or french or spanish names, when you just need to pick some appropriate components and run them through a dictionary; the nice thing about place names is that they don't need to be grammatically correct. The same goes for invented languages, or course.
If you're still absolutely, one hundred percent stuck (or you don't want to name somewhere in England!) then Paperback Writer has a good list of name generators. They're good fun to play with, especially the inn names.
Naming places is something personal, but like naming characters, I think there has to be a certain consistency to it. If every single place as a completely different made up name, they're going to be hard to remember, and they're going to make me wonder why people in this universe are somehow dramatically different to every other culture I've encountered in our universe. If the made up names have some consistency, then I'll start to think they were named by people speaking a slightly different language (York, for example, comes from the Norse name Jorvik thanks to the invading Vikings, and thus would look out of place amongst the Milfords and Brightons of the Anglo-Saxon South East). If elements of that language are still lurking about, even better.
Places were described before they were named, so people could find them. This will be true of anything set in Europe or Asia, and anywhere in Africa, Australasia or America that still has it's native name. It ought to be true of almost every fantasy novel I've ever read, though it hasn't always been, which is a shame.
When it comes to setting a story, I tend to be vague. My two 'real world' projects are both vague in their setting regarding anything more than country. The only project I'd consider naming the setting in details is the much mused-about Roman project, since the settings would be relevant to the plot. When place isn't relevant to plot, especially in any kind of 'real world' setting, I avoid it.
But in Grenhelm, well, that's fantasy. Places need naming. And my attitude to it is much the same as to character names: they have to be realistic (apart from those I made up when I was thirteen and can't bring myself to rename!). While the individual countries have made up fantasy names, the towns and villages have names that wouldn't look odd on a map of England. Well, Southern England.
There are two types of place name: descriptive, and enticing. It's the difference between Iceland and Greenland. You don't tend to find many enticing place names in 'old' countries; they're something associated with exploration and settlement. Most of Europe was settled before it was officially named, so the names tend to be descriptive, which is what I'll be focusing on.
In Britain, there are multiple languags to draw on to compose these names, and in a fantasy world, the same can apply. However, if, in your protagonist's country they speak what is basically English (or the language is 'translated' into English), and other influcing languages aren't immediately recognisable as French or German or Latin or Old Norse, then you need to be careful about using those languages to name places (it's that etymology thing again). You need to stick to recognisable dialectal variations on English words, or you need to use words that your readers will recognise as part of your invented languages.
Since I don't have any invented languages, I've been naming places in a noticeably English way. Famous people, names of local landmarks (usually rivers), combinations of landmarks, type of settlement and geographical positions. There's a lot of variation on spellings, though I've only thrown it about in a few of them.
Prefixes tend to be geographical, so you've got the following:
e- we- su- so- no- nu- nor- etc
You can also preface a place name with North, South, East and West, obviously, as well as other descriptors such as Greater, Lesser, Small, Under, and so on. These usually come into play when there are multiple places with the same name, usually because they're in the same region (so you can have a Greater and Lesser Hillmouth, for example)
Suffixes tend to be geographical landmarks, though it also includes other obvious descriptors, such as the type of settlement (which may no longer be accurate by the time the story begins). This is not an exhasutive list:
-ford -bridge -mouth -port : all river related
-hill -lee/ley/ly/leigh -vale -head -stone -down -cliff : hilly/mountainous regions
-green -field -broad -flat : flat or lowlying areas
-bush -wood -marsh/arsh/ersh/mersh -heath : local ecology
-ton -ville -ham : type of settlement
-bury/bry -home/house : people related
Again, sometimes you find suffixes as separate words; these are usually geographical, and clarify position further, for example, Hillmouth Green. These suffixes are usually recognisable whole words in English (so you wouldn't have Hillmouth Ville, for example).
I'd like to point out that Hillmouth appears to be a nonsense name, since it's fairly improbable that a river would be called the Hill (also, Ville is a fairly french looking word; it represents village, which is more English, but it's a suffix to use carefully). However, our river that this village is at the mouth of might not have been called the Hill, back when our village was named. It might have been the Ill, or the Hile, or something like that. The difference between separate and conjoined prefixes and suffixes is lazy speaking. When creating a place name, it's best to come up with something obvious, and then repeat it until you start mumbling, and see how it sounds. Syllables just fall out (to take a real example: the Guilded Ford is now Guildford, where Ford Prefect claims to be from, and that central d is almost never pronounced).
Pronunciation is tricky; only the writer knows what is intended, and attempts to make it obvious can just baffle people who grew up with a different accent to yourself. My advice is not to bother with anything other than the straight forward.
To run through some place names in Greenhelm (which is the Green 'Helmet' of the island), I've names a couple of rivers the Song and the Let. So there's almost certainly Songmouth and Letmouth, and probably places like Songford, Letbridge, Songmarsh, Letleigh, and Songton, and minor changes (sometimes just in pronunciation) to give Songreen, Sonersh, Lefford and Letham. Trust is rumoured to be buried in a certain area, so the town there is Trusbury. In the empire, you'd expect to find the occasional Kingbry and Queenham. There might be a Wonmarsh and Tomarsh on the border - one side of the marsh and t'other side. Oakley and Yevale would be a valleys of oaks and yews respectively, and Redford would be a crossing through an iron-filled river.
It's so... easy. Of course, some of these names probably already exist, somewhere in the British Isles, in some form. Naming places like this can help solidify geography without a ton of maps (though it's worth mapping a place for your own sake, to make sure you don't end up with Treemouth in the middle of the mountains, for example) and can also give names to fictional places in real world settings. If you want latin or french or spanish names, when you just need to pick some appropriate components and run them through a dictionary; the nice thing about place names is that they don't need to be grammatically correct. The same goes for invented languages, or course.
If you're still absolutely, one hundred percent stuck (or you don't want to name somewhere in England!) then Paperback Writer has a good list of name generators. They're good fun to play with, especially the inn names.
Naming places is something personal, but like naming characters, I think there has to be a certain consistency to it. If every single place as a completely different made up name, they're going to be hard to remember, and they're going to make me wonder why people in this universe are somehow dramatically different to every other culture I've encountered in our universe. If the made up names have some consistency, then I'll start to think they were named by people speaking a slightly different language (York, for example, comes from the Norse name Jorvik thanks to the invading Vikings, and thus would look out of place amongst the Milfords and Brightons of the Anglo-Saxon South East). If elements of that language are still lurking about, even better.
Places were described before they were named, so people could find them. This will be true of anything set in Europe or Asia, and anywhere in Africa, Australasia or America that still has it's native name. It ought to be true of almost every fantasy novel I've ever read, though it hasn't always been, which is a shame.
Thursday, April 3
Naming Characters
Okay, so I'm stealing post ideas from LibraryThing, because the writer-readers group is full of people asking good questions.
For the most part, I try and give characters ordinairy names, often old friends or people I went to school with. No one I know too well, in case they ask questions! Preferably names belonging to multiple people I know. Sometimes, I repeat names of minor characters, especially common names, because that's how real life works. Honestly, it gets a little creepy when there are over a hundred named characters in a series and not one repetition of either fore or surname.
I only have a few charactes with made up names, despite being a fantasy writer; Laina and Vaughniter Fale. 'Vaughniter Fale', as a name, came to me in a dream, which mostly proves that dreams are a bad source of names. 'Laina', despite a change in naming philosophy since I named the character, is going to stay, but the rest of the family will have equally unusual (bu real) names. Consistency in naming, I feel, is important.
I deliberately avoid giving characters 'meaningful' names; I want my readers to decide based on my writing, not my naming, whether characters have certain traits. Much as I love latin, and etmology in general, name meanings are hard to do tactfully enough not to annoy bright readers; if Dolores is depressed, I'm going to be annoyed with the author for showing off. The same goes for names with certain connotations, especially historical names. Is Alexander a bit of a conquerer? A redhaired, left handed, bisexual conquerer? Do I want to slap some subtlty into you?
Having said this, I have stuck myself with a family in which all of the characters have 'virtue' names. It's actually an improvement on Arthurian names (in the above paragraph, I am very much speaking from experience), which were chosen based on Bernard Cornwell's characterisation in his Arthurian series. I changed this, but it was important to me to choose a series of names with consistency; it's a family to which lineage is very important. That I chose virtues was almost artibtrary; an ancestor of the family was called Trust, and it seemed like a good place to start. The difficulty was in choosing names that neither reflected nor rejected their personalities; I've gone for fairly generic traits. It turns out, masculine virtue names are hard to come by in English speaking countries, and once I'd used Earnest and Valiant (thank you Oscar Wilde and terrible 80s Arthurian cartoons) I had to make up another for my main character.
It was Diligent, in the end. Positive, but not predictive.
I've also been naming characters in another project after fantasy heroines. I started out with traditional and literary characters, but that's overused, so any fantasy film in the last twenty years is being explored. Badly. I'm probably going to change my mind about this (as I have done every time I've started a new draft of this story - two different sisters have been named Lucy and I can no longer remember which I'm refering to without the story to refer to).
In my pulpy projecy I made a point of giving the characters fairly cheesy names, to suit the tone of the story. Honey Smith and Dirk Miles; the names make me happy. They aren't going to get changed, not unless there's a real Honey Smith or Dirk Miles who've done something massively famous that I've managed to miss. That has happened to me before; it's always worth googling names, just in case.
For the most part, I try and give characters ordinairy names, often old friends or people I went to school with. No one I know too well, in case they ask questions! Preferably names belonging to multiple people I know. Sometimes, I repeat names of minor characters, especially common names, because that's how real life works. Honestly, it gets a little creepy when there are over a hundred named characters in a series and not one repetition of either fore or surname.
I only have a few charactes with made up names, despite being a fantasy writer; Laina and Vaughniter Fale. 'Vaughniter Fale', as a name, came to me in a dream, which mostly proves that dreams are a bad source of names. 'Laina', despite a change in naming philosophy since I named the character, is going to stay, but the rest of the family will have equally unusual (bu real) names. Consistency in naming, I feel, is important.
I deliberately avoid giving characters 'meaningful' names; I want my readers to decide based on my writing, not my naming, whether characters have certain traits. Much as I love latin, and etmology in general, name meanings are hard to do tactfully enough not to annoy bright readers; if Dolores is depressed, I'm going to be annoyed with the author for showing off. The same goes for names with certain connotations, especially historical names. Is Alexander a bit of a conquerer? A redhaired, left handed, bisexual conquerer? Do I want to slap some subtlty into you?
Having said this, I have stuck myself with a family in which all of the characters have 'virtue' names. It's actually an improvement on Arthurian names (in the above paragraph, I am very much speaking from experience), which were chosen based on Bernard Cornwell's characterisation in his Arthurian series. I changed this, but it was important to me to choose a series of names with consistency; it's a family to which lineage is very important. That I chose virtues was almost artibtrary; an ancestor of the family was called Trust, and it seemed like a good place to start. The difficulty was in choosing names that neither reflected nor rejected their personalities; I've gone for fairly generic traits. It turns out, masculine virtue names are hard to come by in English speaking countries, and once I'd used Earnest and Valiant (thank you Oscar Wilde and terrible 80s Arthurian cartoons) I had to make up another for my main character.
It was Diligent, in the end. Positive, but not predictive.
I've also been naming characters in another project after fantasy heroines. I started out with traditional and literary characters, but that's overused, so any fantasy film in the last twenty years is being explored. Badly. I'm probably going to change my mind about this (as I have done every time I've started a new draft of this story - two different sisters have been named Lucy and I can no longer remember which I'm refering to without the story to refer to).
In my pulpy projecy I made a point of giving the characters fairly cheesy names, to suit the tone of the story. Honey Smith and Dirk Miles; the names make me happy. They aren't going to get changed, not unless there's a real Honey Smith or Dirk Miles who've done something massively famous that I've managed to miss. That has happened to me before; it's always worth googling names, just in case.
Fixed!
Thanks to my lovely co-host, SignificantKinks is back online. It's absence was apparently blogger's fault; the present of blogger in the 'allow hotlinks' (which I'd done in the hopw it'd sort the ftp issues) list caused the problem. Anyway, darling person fixed it, after I'd tried deleting the whole site and the subdomain and reuploading both.
I'm keping my blog on blogspot for now; though I'd love to reimbed it, I don't think it's worth doing until I find something a little more reliable. Or learn enough PHP to unstand what cutenews is on about.
I'm keping my blog on blogspot for now; though I'd love to reimbed it, I don't think it's worth doing until I find something a little more reliable. Or learn enough PHP to unstand what cutenews is on about.
Tuesday, April 1
Tenses and Voice
I've been chatting to kvtaylor about some pieces I intend to submit soon, and we've been exploring tenses. It's a very interesting discussion, and I thought I'd expand on it here.
For clarification before we being: 'past' refers to imperfect, perfect, pluperfect and the rest, for example, and 'first', 'second' and 'third' person can be singular or plural.
Now, as the monologues I wrote for my degree reveal, I like to play with voice as much as tense. Unusual combinations of the two, and so on. Of course, they're all quite short (the limit for the three combined was 5000 words, which naturally kept them brief). Tense is interesting to experiment with in short pieces, but in long the unfamiliarity of certain combinations can create an unintended challenge for the reader.
For example, when it comes to the Present tense (Third Person limited) in longer fiction, I've tried it in something about 20,000 words long, and it's tiring to read (which, in that, is deliberate, considering the point of view). It's not something I'd try in a novel or novella without a very definite reason before beginning. In something novel length it'd have to be a bit Joycian. This is a shame, because if readers and writers could grow more accustomed to it, it could be well employed in stories requiring suspense, especially when it's first person.
First Person Past is a combination that I struggle to enjoy. It often destroys suspension of disbelief. Memoirs of a Geisha brought this to my attention during my teens, with the protagonist's ability to remember conversations that happened decades ago word for word. Now I can't help but notice it. It's more bearable in something like a detective story, or perhaps speculative fiction, where the disbelief is suspended rather higher, but it's still painful. If you've chosen first person past, there are some sacrifices you have to make, and dialogue is invariably one of them.
Some tenses suit voices better than others. First Person Future is just surreal. First Person Past, as mentioned, has its issues. First Person and Present Tense slot together in much the same way as Third and Past (though that's a combintion of convenience and familiarity). Second Person and Future works, but it's noticeably pretentious, and not something I'd do often. Second Person Present (and imperative, as second person present is wont to be) also works, but I suspect Second Person Past would, again, crush any suspension of disbelief. After all, the reader knows that they didn't experience what you described.
So:
Second is probably the most engaging voice, and I do enjoy it, but it's always a conscious decision. First allows for the most identification (it's best used when playing with characters one would not immediately identify with, in order to make the reader question themself), but is often abused. Third can be used for anything; and paired with any tense.
So:
Present is good for suspense, and can raise interesting questions about reliability, too. Past is so often used due to familiarity, without any thought of reliability or identification or voice, which is a shame. Future dares people, but is usually abused in deliberate pretention - like second, it's best used sparingly (Stephen King and Peter Straub use both well in brief segments of Black House, as I recall). All three tenses, though, are flexible in intention: you can use them to create intimacy or distance depending on how you pair them with voices.
I'm glad I wrote the three monologues, to deliberately play with tense and voice combinations, and I'll probably do some more chopping and changing in future pieces to see if I can make certain combinations work. Otherwise, I must admit, tense is usually instinctive for me - it is only on very rare occasions that I make a conscious decision, such as when I've used the future. Voice defaults (I'm almost ashamed to admit) to third, though some pieces have a reason to be in first (like Unsent Letters, being a kind of epistle itself). Second tends to come on me by surprise, but it is fun to write.
- I'm having real trouble posting this. Blogger tells me it's there, but also tells me it's still loading, while on the blog itself sometimes it appears and sometimes it doesn't. Le Sigh.
For clarification before we being: 'past' refers to imperfect, perfect, pluperfect and the rest, for example, and 'first', 'second' and 'third' person can be singular or plural.
Now, as the monologues I wrote for my degree reveal, I like to play with voice as much as tense. Unusual combinations of the two, and so on. Of course, they're all quite short (the limit for the three combined was 5000 words, which naturally kept them brief). Tense is interesting to experiment with in short pieces, but in long the unfamiliarity of certain combinations can create an unintended challenge for the reader.
For example, when it comes to the Present tense (Third Person limited) in longer fiction, I've tried it in something about 20,000 words long, and it's tiring to read (which, in that, is deliberate, considering the point of view). It's not something I'd try in a novel or novella without a very definite reason before beginning. In something novel length it'd have to be a bit Joycian. This is a shame, because if readers and writers could grow more accustomed to it, it could be well employed in stories requiring suspense, especially when it's first person.
First Person Past is a combination that I struggle to enjoy. It often destroys suspension of disbelief. Memoirs of a Geisha brought this to my attention during my teens, with the protagonist's ability to remember conversations that happened decades ago word for word. Now I can't help but notice it. It's more bearable in something like a detective story, or perhaps speculative fiction, where the disbelief is suspended rather higher, but it's still painful. If you've chosen first person past, there are some sacrifices you have to make, and dialogue is invariably one of them.
Some tenses suit voices better than others. First Person Future is just surreal. First Person Past, as mentioned, has its issues. First Person and Present Tense slot together in much the same way as Third and Past (though that's a combintion of convenience and familiarity). Second Person and Future works, but it's noticeably pretentious, and not something I'd do often. Second Person Present (and imperative, as second person present is wont to be) also works, but I suspect Second Person Past would, again, crush any suspension of disbelief. After all, the reader knows that they didn't experience what you described.
So:
Second is probably the most engaging voice, and I do enjoy it, but it's always a conscious decision. First allows for the most identification (it's best used when playing with characters one would not immediately identify with, in order to make the reader question themself), but is often abused. Third can be used for anything; and paired with any tense.
So:
Present is good for suspense, and can raise interesting questions about reliability, too. Past is so often used due to familiarity, without any thought of reliability or identification or voice, which is a shame. Future dares people, but is usually abused in deliberate pretention - like second, it's best used sparingly (Stephen King and Peter Straub use both well in brief segments of Black House, as I recall). All three tenses, though, are flexible in intention: you can use them to create intimacy or distance depending on how you pair them with voices.
I'm glad I wrote the three monologues, to deliberately play with tense and voice combinations, and I'll probably do some more chopping and changing in future pieces to see if I can make certain combinations work. Otherwise, I must admit, tense is usually instinctive for me - it is only on very rare occasions that I make a conscious decision, such as when I've used the future. Voice defaults (I'm almost ashamed to admit) to third, though some pieces have a reason to be in first (like Unsent Letters, being a kind of epistle itself). Second tends to come on me by surprise, but it is fun to write.
- I'm having real trouble posting this. Blogger tells me it's there, but also tells me it's still loading, while on the blog itself sometimes it appears and sometimes it doesn't. Le Sigh.
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