Lexicon

When I think about it, yeah, I'm busy. I'm letting one trilogy sit for a week before a final lookie, I've got two books bubbling away on a back-burner and making notes as they occur, I'm considering expanding two long short stories and making a book to post and I'm writing the sequel to Huntress.

None of the above are far from my thoughts. But it is Hunted that's taking up my attention.

For the past two days, I've not written much - but I'm working on the piece. I had a translator fail on an alien world and so... have to create a new language for my protagonist to not understand.

I tried LangMaker, and while I'm sure it's perfect for some, I'm more of a perfectionist. For example, no comes out as 'gik' but not came out as 'rekshash'. Obviously, the two words bear no resemblance to one another and I think they should. Of course, it may be I'm being too 'English' in my approach.

So I set up my own little database and tried to sort out the basis for a language - not so easy. You really have to dig in to the basis structure of a language and develop it from there. I've done some research, including J.R.R. Tolkien's languages. He, of course, spent years on his languages which are spoken today by Tolkien fans.

I have no hope of getting close to that mark, nor do I want to; I just want my new language to sound and look like a real language.

It also seems like a lot of work for a couple of sentences, but to be convincing, you - as a writer - must go that extra mile. When you write fiction, you must sound as if you know what you're writing about and that means learning about the subject. You don't have to drop an infodump into your work, just give enough information to sound as if you know your subject.

Language, creating a new one, is the same, so I'm working on it. Twenty words. That's what I need, but I have to maintain the integrity of the piece otherwise, it won't work and I doubt making it up as I go along will succeed.

Sigh. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it...