Back-side blurb

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by Interference

And nobody wants idiots reading their books. Lowers the tone.

More to the point, you can't please everyone, and I have decided not to try and please those people I consider "idiots".

Real-world languages are different, they look and sound different, and they are difficult to pronounce for outsiders. Fictional worlds should reflect this. To me, having distinctive languages is an important part of world-building, and my work is very much about the world-building. If all you want is characters and drama, you should steer clear of my writing. (Also, you're an idiot. :P)

[The Bloated Shaganat]

Spectrum,

I suppose it comes down to whether you want your book to have the best possible chance of being picked up by a publisher, or the satisfaction of producing a very personal piece of work?

If you can build worlds like Tolkien, and have his knowledge of linguistics, the reading public are yours for the taking, but if you can't, be prepared to embrace disappointent.

I for one would be in the giggle camp if I read long or difficult names on the back of a book - it would just seem terribly pretentious to me.

TBO

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by The Bloated Shaganat

Spectrum,

I suppose it comes down to whether you want your book to have the best possible chance of being picked up by a publisher, or the satisfaction of producing a very personal piece of work?

Mostly the latter. I want to create a story that I can be proud of. And then I want at least some people to read it and tell me how much I rule. But I don't need it to become a "success".

[Interference]

It's a difficult thing, being a writer. On the one hand, we want to tell our stories to as many people as we can get to listen to them, on the other we need to tell our stories and to Hell with the audience. Classics are written in each classification, so is tripe. But these, too, are purely subjective descriptions. A book can bore and be a drudge to read, but I'm told it probably isn't tripe. Another can be enjoyable and full of adreneline-pumping action and I'm told it is.

Perhaps there are two roads to being successful, too, assuming success is equated with acclaim and a moderate income for writing. Perhaps one road is to please an editor and target your publisher and get that foot in the door. Then the other is probably to ignore the wishes of the masses and express yourself in your own way with your own story and let the audience build slowly from people who like what you do.

I keep coming back to James Joyce, whom I just don't get. I get his life, his history, his wit, his oddness, his anarchy, but I don't get how setting out to write a book with one full stop at the end and that's it is anything other than a clever thing to do. On the other hand, I think I get Sam Beckett and I can enjoy the theatricality of his writing for its own sake along side the quirkiness and skill of wordsmithing. To be fair, I've read more Beckett than Joyce, but that's a whole other set of issues.

You know you're right, Spectrum, without my say-so, but the others are right for their own reasons, too. Personally, I think you should always, always listen to your inner voice, the one that told you your stories long before anyone told you you could get paid for them as well. He's the one who knows why you're writer at all, better than you do. I sometimes forget to listen to mine and I have to force myself to give him the attention he deserves, especially after I get another rejection slip, when the angst of "what am I doing wrong?" and "How can I please these people" rules for a while.

You learn the skills, the techniques, the rules and the guidelines, but in the end aren't they all just today's fashions? In a couple of generations, people won't even agree on spelling and will have abandoned punctuation altogether. Foreign languages will absorb common Amerenglish Textspeke. And Countdown (a Scrabble game on UK TV, other countries might have it, too, I don't know) probably won't even give you the option of vowels anymore. Maybe just the odd 'I'. Where are our rules going to be then?

C wht I ,mn?

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by Interference

Classics are written in each classification, so is tripe. But these, too, are purely subjective descriptions. A book can bore and be a drudge to read, but I'm told it probably isn't tripe. Another can be enjoyable and full of adreneline-pumping action and I'm told it is.

Of course. Artistic quality does not exist except as a purely subjective notion. Everyone knows that. (Except, of course, idiots. )

Originally Posted by Interference

C wht I ,mn?

Ys, I thnk I d.

[Interference]

Originally Posted by The Bloated Shaganat

If you can build worlds like Tolkien, and have his knowledge of linguistics...

Would that be Middle-Earth linguistics?

Originally Posted by The Bloated Shaganat

I for one would be in the giggle camp if I read long or difficult names on the back of a book

There's quite a large giggle camp for Tolkein, too.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by Interference

There's quite a large giggle camp for Tolkein, too.

Good thing that we already established that gigglers are idiots.

[Interference]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

Good thing that we already established that gigglers are idiots.

I was about to giggle when I read that and then I realised what that would make me ...

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by Interference

I was about to giggle when I read that and then I realised what that would make me ...

Hahaha, owned.

[Lith]

Pretension is great, but only if there's something of substance behind it. I'd expect your novel to be above the pack, and your understanding of language, grammar, and phonology to not only be better than most, but to be truly damned good. I understand that foreign languages all have their own sound, and their names sound strange to us. But even so, most fantasy names fail to sound like real names at all.

I want good characters and drama. I also want dragons, wars, languages, history, intrigue... I don't think it's too much to ask that a book contain all of them. Especially when ignoring the commercial aspects of writing. It's a tall order, but we're talking about great stories, right?

I often wonder if I'm wasting my time going into such details in my world-building. The more I see people who think like me, the more I believe it's not a waste of time.

If you're wasting your time, so am I. I've got a 200-page unfinished manuscript in my bottom drawer, along with nearly as many pages of history, grammar, and world-building, just waiting for me to learn how to write it properly, and for me to absorb an adequate amount of learning to be able to do it properly. Sigh. But if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, right?

I know that writing has to come from a place of pleasing yourself before you can please others with it. But if you only wanted to please yourself, you wouldn't feel any need to publish. And in order for others to enjoy it, you have to have some understanding of where they're coming from.

And if you want to impress us with your wit and capability as a writer, you'll have to find a more clever way of phrasing "you're an idiot".

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Lith

If you're wasting your time, so am I. I've got a 200-page unfinished manuscript in my bottom drawer, along with nearly as many pages of history, grammar, and world-building, just waiting for me to learn how to write it properly, and for me to absorb an adequate amount of learning to be able to do it properly. Sigh. But if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, right?

Everyone with a masochistic streak, I was going to say, but if it was easy it wouldn't be masochistic, so strike that.

I'm in the same process. I will confess to there being little grammatical substance behind the languages, as yet, but all their interrelationships and histories are broadly defined and make sense, as I understand it, in the same way that they do on Earth.

At the moment I am struggling with world palaeotectonics. I think I may not know where to draw the line.......

[timelord4]

If you're wasting your time, so am I.

hahah. Seems there's a lot of us, Lith.

Schematics of language is a difficult obstruction to a writer and can be detrimental to the read, if it bothers the reader.

I read on another forum not so long ago, where a reader blasted a particular author because of her use of old English dialogue throughout her book.

What the reader didn't know was that her post was directly in response to a light hearted comment the author (a pen name was used) had made. The post was long winded and a typical whinge. The return comment left me ROFLMOA! Couldn't find it again, sadly.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by Lith

Pretension is great, but only if there's something of substance behind it. I'd expect your novel to be above the pack, and your understanding of language, grammar, and phonology to not only be better than most, but to be truly damned good. I understand that foreign languages all have their own sound, and their names sound strange to us. But even so, most fantasy names fail to sound like real names at all.

I think many writers have good fantasy names.

Originally Posted by Lith

I want good characters and drama. I also want dragons, wars, languages, history, intrigue... I don't think it's too much to ask that a book contain all of them.

My story will have all of these, and hopefully they'll all be good.

[Spectrum]

BTW: For those of you who complain that my names are not believable, I'd like to point out that both Carzain and Narkiza are real names. I didn't learn this until after I made them up, but google them and you'll find real people named Carzain and Narkiza.

So nyah! :P

[Interference]

I've no problem with Carzain and Narkiza, but, come on - Spectrum> Sounds like an audience for a Jamaican spirit-drinking competition.