Jessica Chastain As Lady Lucille Sharp In Crimson Peak

The Addams Family (1991)

plague doctor types

Lucerys Velaryon & Aemond Targaryen in 1.10 “The Black Queen”

Jack! I need urgent assistance!

Why the fuck is it so hard to make a realistic fictional language?!

I have literally scoured the deepest, darkest places of the internet to try and understand how to make my own fictional language that is important to story but I just don’t get it.

I have watched behind the scenes Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and Avatar to try and understand how they came up with such beautiful and articulate languages but once again, came up empty, it’s like trying to explain physics to a donkey AKA me.

Can you help me? And if you can, please explain it to me like I am a dumb toddler trying to learn how to write my name for the first time?

Oof. Now, there's many conlang guides out there, but they're all for people who actually like conlanging and I, dear reader, do not. I hate conlanging, I suck at it, and analytic grammar is a consistent foe of mine that I cannot beat. But, conlanging is one of the best ways to introduce a whole heaping helping of realism to your setting as well as getting you to really think about how said setting works as you need to figure out what would have an individual word and why. Now that'll make sense in a moment, I promise.

But first...

Jack's Quick 'n Dirty Guide To Conlangs For If You Hate Conlanging

Step One: sounds.

Sounds (ha!) easy right? Weeeeeell... yes and no. Now, the easy part is making the sounds, really. Just start babbling in a way that you want your conlang to sound like and get going! Sing a bit, put on whatever accent you want, really have some fun with it until it sounds right. You got that? Good, now note that down in plain text as best as you can. Do whatever makes sense to you, but make sure you know exactly how to pronounce the sound once you've annotated it so you can reproduce it later, trust me on this one. But now comes the hard part.

Step Two: IPA

If you don't know what IPA is, bless your heart you innocent soul, you're about to learn something that will make you lose a bit of innocence today. IPA stands for the International Phonetic Alphabet and it can annotate the exact pronunciation of any words in any language in the world. If you've ever had a dictionary in front of you and you see that little section underneath the word where it's written again but like, with upside down Es and symbols that look like æ and đ and even ɮ? Congrats, you know what IPA looks like. Now, this thing was designed by some very clever people with an eye for thoroughness but not for practicality. See, it can notate every pronunciation there is, but boy oh boy, will it not make that easy for you. Read up on it anyway, learn how to use it, pull out an afternoon for it, you're gonna need it. IPA Chart is a good website that will help you out here, it's an interactive version of the IPA alphabet with short pronunciation sound clips attached to each symbol. Done all that? Good. Now we get to the really bitchy part.

Step Three: notate every funny sound you made down in IPA

Yes, every single one. Pull up an excel spreadsheet, notate the plain text in one column, a pronunciation in the second, and leave a third open for later. Notate every single word as best as you can, and make sure to save your work. This is gonna be long work, this is gonna be tedious work, and it's gonna be necessary work. You won't like it, you won't have fun, but future you will thank you and you would do anything for that bitch so get notating until you get to

Step Four: What does anything even mean????

Finally, some fun again. Now we get to the part where you get to assign meaning to each sound you've produced. Remember how I advised you to sing a little song? Yeah? Excellent. A quick and easy way to get a bunch of words sorted is to write a roughly similar song in a language that does exist and one you preferably understand already, and use that as a "guide" of what each word is "supposed" to mean. Make your own rosetta stone! Give yourself a break, trust me, it's much easier this way. And don't be afraid to get creative. See one sound or syllable you used a lot? Great, that can be a pronoun or an article or something else that's often used in a language.

Example: I liked the word "ra" a lot, so that's the word for "I" in Karilaa. From there I picked a few other words I liked and roughly hashed out the following

Ra = I

Ta = You

Su = We

Vu = They

Easy, good, simple. I don't bother with gender because fuck gender, but if you want it, go for it champ, now's the time. And you know what else I noticed while doing this? I was using "ra" and "ta" a lot in the last syllables of words, so I figured out how tenses work in my language as well in one fell swoop and made them affixes to verbs.

Really, there are no rules, so make them up to suit whatever aesthetic you want your language to have, but make sure to write everything down. No exceptions. Everything has to be written down.

Step Five: Rinse and repeat

Congrats, you now have some basics of a language! You can basically use and reuse this recipe to get More Language of the language you already have and guess what! Now you already have some language so you won't have to start from scratch! It's like a sourdough starter! Now ain't that neat. Now, if you do this and keep meticulous notes like I told you to you'll essentially be building up your own dictionary as you go, ready to consult for all your future conlanging needs.

Now, is this how good conlangers do it? No! Hell no! Absolutely not! But I'm not a good conlanger, and if you want this guide, neither are you. I'm sorry, but I'd rather you hear it from me than them when they invoke J.R.R. Tolkien's ghost to roast you. This is a guide for people who want a conlang but suck at conlanging. This is a guide for people who can't do it all neat and according to the rules but need to brute force a bitch in order to get some practical results for immediate use.

Now go forth and create!

core classes as undead :)

ingrid sundberg's colour dictionary - writing help

Gods help us all.

AEMOND TARGARYEN AND DAEMON TARGARYEN AT HARRENHAL Artwork by Tomasz Jedruszek

The prince helped his woman down from Vhagar’s back, then turned to face his uncle. “Nuncle, I hear you have been seeking us.” 

“Only you,” Daemon replied. “Who told you where to find me?” 

“My lady,” Aemond answered. “She saw you in a storm cloud, in a mountain pool at dusk, in the fire we lit to cook our suppers. She sees much and more, my Alys. You were a fool to come alone.” 

“Were I not alone, you would not have come,” said Daemon.

“Yet you are, and here I am. You have lived too long, Nuncle.” 

“On that much we agree,” Daemon replied.

Vhagar had come at last, and on her back rode the one-eyed Prince Aemond Targaryen, clad in nightblack armor chased with gold.

He had not come alone. Alys Rivers flew with him, her long hair streaming black behind her, her belly swollen with child. Prince Aemond circled twice about the towers of Harrenhal, then brought Vhagar down in the outer ward, with Caraxes a hundred yards away. The dragons glared balefully at each other, and Caraxes spread his wings and hissed, flames dancing across his teeth.

The prince helped his woman down from Vhagar’s back, then turned to face his uncle. “Nuncle, I hear you have been seeking us.”

“Only you,” Daemon replied. “Who told you where to find me?”

“My lady,” Aemond answered. “She saw you in a storm cloud, in a mountain pool at dusk, in the fire we lit to cook our suppers. She sees much and more, my Alys. You were a fool to come alone.”

“Were I not alone, you would not have come,” said Daemon.

“Yet you are, and here I am. You have lived too long, Nuncle.”

“On that much we agree,” Daemon replied. Then the old prince bade Caraxes bend his neck, and climbed stiffly onto his back, whilst the young prince kissed his woman and vaulted lightly onto Vhagar, taking care to fasten the four short chains between belt and saddle.

Prince Daemon took Caraxes up swiftly, lashing him with a steel-tipped whip until they disappeared into a bank of clouds. Vhagar, older and much the larger, was also slower, made ponderous by her very size, and ascended more gradually, in ever widening circles that took her and her rider out over the waters of the Gods Eye. The hour was late, the sun was close to setting, and the lake was calm, its surface glimmering like a sheet of beaten copper. Up and up she soared, searching for Caraxes as Alys Rivers watched from atop Kingspyre Tower in Harrenhal below.

A Guide to High Fantasy Worldbuilding

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1. Subgenre

One of the first things you need to establish in your story is the subgenre of the high fantasy story you'll be writing. But Azura, high fantasy is already a subgenre?? Yes, it is, but what type of high fantasy?

Different types of high fantasy will require different types of worldbuilding. For instance, dark fantasy needs horror elements and an eerie setting, while steampunk fantasy will have complex machinaries instead.

Here are some examples of high fantasy subgenres :

• Epic fantasy

• Steampunk fantasy

• Dark fantasy

• Medieval fantasy

• Heroic fantasy

• etc!

2. Magic system

Most high fantasy stories will have a magic system, so if you're planning to include one, you'll need to do loads of planning.

Who can or cannot use magic, and why is that? Is it inherited, learned, or both? Are there any taboos in using magic? Are magic users praised or feared? What's the limit of using magic? Are there any incantations or magical tools involved? There are countless questions to tackle while coming up with a magic system, so make sure you plot it in detail.

3. Culture

Where there's people, there's culture. Although it won't be too frequently mentioned, having certain cultures in your world will make your worldbuilding more realistic.

Are there religions? Do people worship God(s)? When are the holidays? Are there any unique traditions? What gestures are considered impolite? It's little things like these that bring your story to life.

4. Type of government

Naturally, your world will have a government system. Decide what yours will be. Republic? Monarchy? Democracy? Theocracy?

Your government should also reflect your time and location setting - maybe using an emperor or empress to reflect a more medieval timeline, and using a president for a more modern setting. If your world is going through a war, you can use a system governed by the military. I have a post about writing a fictional government, you can refer to it for more info!

5. Language

What language do the people in your WIP speak? Is it fictional or not? If your setting is in a single region, they'll probably have the same language, but if it's set in different parts of the world, it's only natural to have more than one language.

Different languages can also be used to indicate diversity. If you're wondering how to incorporate multiple languages in a single language book, try reading Six of Crows as a reference - it shows the contrast of people speaking in different languages perfectly, even though the book is only in English.

6. History

Having a history of your world will help you understand it better. Has there been any previous wars between nations or disputes between the government and civilians? Or has the land always been peaceful, for some reason?

A great way to record your world's history is to make a timeline of main events that affected the plot. I also suggest creating a history for your magic system - how magic was discovered and normalized.