Between writing The Hidden Goddess and editing The Lost Kingβs audiobook, Iβve had the honor of writing a short story for a fantasy anthology, Midwinter Magic & Mayhem.
In it are stories from various fantasy authors, with stories ranging from spooky to romantic to wholesome. Whatever mood youβre in this fall and winter, these stories are sure to accommodate!
My own short story, βSins of the Fatherβ, features Val from his childhood. If you have read my Warriors of Bhrea series, you will see a few familiar charactersβall set in the ethereal, eerie, and wintry Detma Forest.
If you havenβt read my series yet, not to worry! You donβt have to read the series to understand the short story. It can be read completely on its own.
And, you will get to enjoy stories from other excellent authors, such as E. P. Stavs, Anna Tizard, Frances Evelyn, and more!
Well, what are you waiting for?! Grab some hot chocolate, tea, or apple cider, and then grab your copy of Midwinter Magic Mayhem today for only 99Β’!
I’m so excited to have another announcement so quickly! Book 4 of The Warriors of Bhrea series is set to come out in October–probably October 15, but it could get delayed a couple weeks if the need arises.
In the meantime, you can enjoy this beautiful cover done by the amazing Kiarou! You can check out his (and his partner in crime, moui’s) webcomic HERE. You won’t regret it–it’s a very well done comic!
Now, without further ado, here is the cover for The Hidden Goddess!
If you haven’t read the first three books yet, be sure to check them out:
If you love audiobooks and prefer that format for consuming books, today is your lucky day! After 3/4 of a year recording and editing, The Warriors of Bhrea: The Lost King is now on Audible (and iTunes soon)!
If you already own the ebook, you can add the audio version for just $7.47!
I hope you enjoy! I had a blast recording the story how I imagine it, including the accents, the emotion in the dialogue and prose, all of it. And, I believe it came out to a wonderfully-sounding product in the end.
Get your copy today!
Now to just get the rest of the books produced…π
And we’re back! In this post, we will continue discussing creating a writing system for your conlang, diving into a few more practical details to help you plan and design a writing system that fits your language. For previous posts on constructing a language, click here!
Types of Writing Systems
Omniglot has a ton of information about writing systems and languages, so check it out if you are interested. I’m just going to briefly describe the different types:
Consonant alphabets: consonants have their own letters, and vowels may be indicated by consonant letters or by diacritics (Arabic, Hebrew).
Alphabets: letters represent vowels and consonants. Each letter might have only one sound, or a letter might represent a set of sounds (English, Russian, Georgian).
Syllabic alphabets: symbols represent a syllable–a consonant and inherent vowel. The vowel might be modified by diacritics, or have its own symbol if it’s the start of a word (Hindi, Nepali).
Syllabaries: the symbols represent a syllable–usually a consonant and a vowel (Japanese, Cherokee).
Logographic: a symbol represents the meaning and the sound. They might resemble the things they represent, or they might be an abstract representation (Chinese, Egyptian hieroglyphs).
Getting some familiarity with different types of writing systems is extremely helpful for creating your own. Would you prefer an alphabet-based system for ease? Or are you going all out in creating a complex, logographic system? Take a look at Omniglot for excellent sources of inspiration, whether from the real world or another conlang.
Applying Some Basic Principles
So, after you get an idea of what kind of writing system fits your language, it’s time to start experimenting with design. This part is one of the most fun! All you need is a piece of paper and pencil, or you can use a drawing tablet if you have one.
Graph paper might be helpful for those who like lots of visual organization, but it’s not necessary. Here are some simple sketches of possible characters or letters in a writing system:
This is a great opportunity to play around with lines, curves, circles, squares, dots, and squiggles. Perhaps you want an alphabet that is composed of straight lines–try making combinations of lines and different angles. Maybe you want a more flowy script–sometimes just letting your hand go free with the curves will lead to some interesting ideas. I also sketched some characters in a more square configuration, as well as some more circular shapes (generally). Combining several of these elements will create a more complex system, if that is what you are looking for.
Korvet’s Alphabet
Korvet uses an alphabet, read from left to right. After some time of experimenting with different shapes, I came up with this:
I wanted there to be a more flowy element to the written language, something that could flow and fit together as it is written. Keep in mind that it took me a long time to perfect my ideas–this was NOT the starting product. So, remember to have patience with your own process.
You can see how I build upon certain elements. For example, when converting the basic vowels to dipthongs or making variations, I took the original letter and added/changed a different element to indicate a change in sound. The letter for /a/ loses its dot and gains a line to make the dipthong /ai/.
Here is a sentence written in Korvet:
The beautiful woman cries for her lost lover.
Some Considerations for Creating a Writing System
There a few things I recommend considering, should it be relevant to your particular conlang.
First, consider its history. If your world follows roughly the same progression in written language systems, the first media for writing would likely be stone, clay, wood, or bones. This will limit how some languages can be written. If it’s carved in stone, it probably cannot have many curves. Straight lines will be much more practical unless there is a high level of specialty involved (such as a scribe class that is paid to carve complex characters). If the writing system is painted on a surface, that allows for more curves and complexity. Using other simple shapes like wedges could also be practical (think Sumerian cuneiform). Then, as time goes on and media like paper or vellum develop, scripts can evolve with those advances.
Second, think about how practical it is to write these languages quickly. When you are writing, are you focusing on creating every letter or character perfectly? Probably not. Languages frequently develop ways to make writing more practical, such as cursive or shorthand. Consider how your language might reflect that.
Third, keep in mind the direction of reading and writing you want. English and Korvet are read from left to right, top to bottom, in rows of text. However, traditional Chinese is read from right to left, top to bottom, in columns.
Lastly, the concepts I have covered here assume a human or humanoid writer that has hands with five digits. If you are creating a world filled with nonhuman species, you could have a lot of fun coming up with ways to adapt their writing to their two-fingered hands, tentacles, claws…whatever you can imagine! For example, in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the dragon language is written with large claws and reflects that. In Arrival, the aliens use tentacles and ink blots to write.
Skyrim’s dragon languageArrival’s ink blot language
Wrapping Up
I hope you find some of these basic ideas for creating a writing system helpful. As you develop your conlang, you might find your writing system inspires changes in your phonology or syntax, or vice versa! It is not a linear progression to create a language, so keep that in mind.
Though I don’t feature the writing systems themselves in The Warriors of Bhrea, my books feature a few conlangs of my own creation! Check out my books here.
Merry Christmas, everybody! I hope all is well in your corner of the world during this holiday season.
I am more than stoked to announce the release of my third book, The Warriors of Bhrea: The God of Forgotten Things!
It is now available in ebook, paperback, and hardcover formats.
If you haven’t read the series, you can get the first book for free today and tomorrow (25th and 26th), and the second book for $.99! The sale will last until Monday, so get your copies for a great price while you can!
Without any further ado…enjoy the third installment of The Warriors of Bhrea series, The God of Forgotten Things!
If you were desperate enough, would you trust a cursed god, the god of forgotten things?
I’m back, and I have a couple friends here to join us this time! The next step of conlanging we will cover is creating a writing system. Check out this page to see all the previous posts on creating a language. They have a lot of great info and resources!
Creating a Writing System: An Interview with Two Webcomic Artists
I have with me artists/writers Kiarou and moui. They are co-creators of the web comic Messenger to Gevurah, a beautifully illustrated story with its own fleshed-out worldbuilding, including an amazing writing system! Before we launch into writing systems, here is some amazing art from their comic. Please do check out their work–you won’t regret it! You can find multiple formats and places to read their comic here.
Now tell us a bit about the writing system! What inspired it (if anything) and what are its characteristics?
moui & Kiarou: We knew right off the back that language and writing would be important themes in our story. However we definitely didnβt want to keep everything in English, simply for immersion sake. Since the world of Messenger To Gevurah is a pure fantasy, it just seemed appropriate to immerse that world even more with its own language and writing system.
When first creating your world, what things did you consider when it came to the language/writing system? How did those considerations change as you got deeper into writing the story, if they did change?
Kiarou: The funny thing is, Iβm actually not very gifted in languages. Itβs always been an area I struggled with in school. We knew that there was a certain aesthetic that we wanted to go with, but the system itself had to be simple. So we made it a simple phonetic translation system, where the symbols simply stand for sounds that can be phonetically translated into English! Itβs not thatβs complex and easy for me to keep straight.
Practically speaking, how did you go about designing the writing system?
moui & Kiarou: The aesthetics of the visual style of the writing system was actually built backwards from the logo design. We had an idea for what the series logo should look like: The title MESSENGER TO GEVURAH, but then have a subtitle of the series in a different language. Almost like in Japanese animations where they will have the English title with the Kanji title underneath it. Well, we definitely didnβt want Kanji or any other real world language, so we made up our own. We worked with the logo to see what visually looked good as a logo.
Original doodle for the logoDigital refinementNew conceptFinalized concept
Once we had our logo finalized, we made the rest of the alphabet to fit with the symbols used in the logo. Since the setting of MtG was a city that is strong, inflexible and imposing, we wanted a written language that reflected those qualities. We referenced various languages like Latin and Hebrew as a visual motif guide on how to get an alphabet to look cohesive.
Original lettering guide sketch
Did anything surprise you about creating a writing system? If so, what?
moui & Kiarou: An unintended benefit of having a made up written language was how much easier it made drawing some panels! In some scenes where there is a book with a large amount of text whose content is unimportant, itβs easier to just mash a bunch of symbols together rather than having to type something out. And it looks much better than just drawing squiggly lines as a shorthand.
What advice would you give to a new conlanger who wants to create a writing system to supplement their conlang?
moui & Kiarou: Think about the people and culture that use this written language and try to get that language to reflect the culture at large. Is the culture a complex web of hierarchies and systems? Then make the language complex and difficult, so that not every layman in that society could pick it up. Is this culture free thinking? Then a visual style that blends words together or is flexible in the scripts is a great direction to go. Even if the language doesnβt make 100% sense from a philology perspective, the visual information you can subconsciously give your audience is invaluable.
What has been the most fun or rewarding thing about developing your comic and its setting?
moui: Itβs been so interesting seeing how the art style has changed over the years. Since it takes us a very long time to complete a chapter, there is a clear visual development from the first chapter of Volume 1 to the last. Itβs kind of cool to see how seamless it happens, but then when you contrast the first page with the last, itβs like βwow, Iβve really improved!β. Itβs exciting to wonder how the art will look after several volumes are completed!
Any final thoughts regarding designing a writing system, and worldbuilding/conlanging in general?
moui & Kiarou: Be as simple or as complex as you like, I think the important thing with these type of things is how it functions as a component in the story and in your world building! Itβs very easy for us fantasy writers to get caught up in the world building process, but itβs always good to step back every once in a while and ask βwhat function does this serve and am I getting the most out of it?β If you keep the practical function of these story components in mind, then you will find all sorts of creative and efficient ways to incorporating language into your story!
As you can see, lots of great and practical information to get inspiration from! A big thanks to Kiarou and moui for coming over to my little corner of the internet to talking about creating a writing system. Again, check out Messenger to Gevurah… If you like manga, webcomics, art, or just a plain ol’ good story, check this hidden gem out here!
Next Time
In my next installment of this series, I will go into some more detail on writing systems and resources to draw upon as you create your own. Stay tuned for that, and check out my books on Amazon while you’re at it! They include the conlang Korvet and are epic stories to boot.
As some of you know, I’ve begun producing an audiobook version of The Warriors of Bhrea:The Lost King (on sale for 99 cents by the way).
I’ve got a microphone, a studio set up, and for the past couple weeks, I’ve been practicing getting settings right and getting familiar with the process of recording. Very soon, I will begin recording The Lost King chapters.
In the meantime, I’ve been honing different character voices and accents. Here are some sample lines from different characters in The Lost King. I’d love to hear what you think! I want to ensure the voices are entertaining and understandable, so I am eager for feedback. π
Hope you enjoy, and again, let me know what you think!
I am ecstatic to announce the release of my third book, The Warriors of Bhrea: The God of Forgotten Things. Let’s cut to the chase and show you the AWESOME cover, done by Kiarou (check out his stuff here!)
Isn’t…it…AMAZING???
And it’s coming to Amazon on December 25, 2021. That’s right, my Christmas present to you is the next book of my series.
In the mean time, if you haven’t read the first two books, FEAR NOT! Today and tomorrow (Oct. 16 & 17), the first book is free, and the second book is only 99 cents. That’s two full length novels for a dollar. A sweet deal, if you ask me. Click HERE to grab your copies!
Stay tuned for more updates, including some exciting things I have planned for showcasing what I’m planning with The Lost King‘s audiobook!
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? π Fear not, my little Tolkienians, we shall continue! In this post, we will go over a few ways to flesh out your language beyond just its grammar and vocabulary. If you’d like to look over my previous posts, check them out here!
Spicing up a conlang with culture
Something that gives conlangs a little “oomph” is to flesh it out and really integrate it into the culture you are creating. Culture and environment shape language and vice versa. The lives that the people live dictate what words they commonly use and their general outlook on life, expressed in language.
After reading my book, The Warriors of Bhrea: The Lost King, you might remember the concept of pakrea, or etiquette. Pakrea manifests in Korvet by using many different words and inflections to talk to and about different types of people. For instance, when talking to an aristocrat as a commoner or a servant, you would use an entirely different set of pronouns than if you were talking to a social equal. The social caste system is built into the language, thus enforcing the social strati even further.
In Po’Am, a tropical island culture, they have no word for things like snow and ice because they do not experience that weather. However, there are many words for storms and rain, differentiated by minute details that may not matter to a landlocked nation, but to a sea-faring nation, the differences could mean life or death.
These are the small details that can really bring your language to life. Play around, have some fun, and let your imagination run wild!
What about other cultures?
No culture exists in a vacuum. There is a world beyond your culture’s borders, and chances are, your culture interacts with it. Perhaps they are trade partners, perhaps they are at war. Regardless of the nature of those interactions, there are almost certainly words and cultural bits shared between the two cultures.
A really good way to spice up your conlang is to include borrowed words from other languages. They may be integrated into your conlang by changing a few sounds, but their origin will be different, and thus the word might sound a little unique in your language.
In Korvet, there are a few borrowed words from another language, Sopta–the language of the southern country Zulda. Some of these words include:
Jesvena (from Chesfena, the Zuldan Sun Goddess)
desakh (from desuq, a popular drink)
Some more borrowed words:
ajlit, slang for “awesome” or “cool” (from Bwe’at’s achelet, meaning “bird wing”)
An interesting phenomenon that occurred in English (and I’m sure other languages) was that when the Normans invaded England and essentially took over, the English language we see today reflects the social changes occurring in England. If you are a native English speaker, you might use these words every day! For words that describe the source of a meat product, the etymology reflects the more lower-class Saxon side of English: pig, cow, sheep, deer. This was because they were the ones hunting and raising these animals. However, the upper-class French Normans would have usually only seen the culinary result of hunting, thus influencing the words used to describe the meat: pork, beef, mutton, venison. Read more about this fascinating tidbit here!
The reason I bring that up is because the conqueror between two cultures might very well replace or usurp the conquered language’s words in certain ways. Yet another way you could think about fleshing out the cultural influences of your language!
Language families
Another aspect to consider is whether a conlang is part of a language family. In the world of Bhrea, Korvet is related to several languages: Pronegh, Bwe’at, and Detma, to name a few. It is also more distantly related to the Bhaida family, a group of Algaran languages.
Here is a rather rudimentary table from when I was doing some early planning:
***** Faghaena/Algara *****
***************** Bhrea *******************
Gloss
Proto-Bretasji
AncientBhaida
Aroa
Fardh
Gwae
Ancient Jolan
Korvet
Detma
Pronegh
Kewas
Bwe’at
one
sajun
runa
roa
shru
ro
sjun
jun
shun
sjun
sjua
chu
two
davti
dava
dafh
sa
fa
dva
dva
tva
dvat
dvan
dvar
three
gwal
gwae
gwaelh
gwaet
gea
gwa’al
gal
kal
gwom
gwal
ka’al
four
ngetya
nai
naio
nat
nai’e
nge
nge
nge
gae
nga
nes
five
sobad
soa
san
ona
soa
soka
soka
sokra
sog
sokan
zoka
six
ayaj
taka
tagh
taya
ta
ayaki
aya
ayan
aki
taki
aha
seven
mit
mit
bitai
pit
bi
mira
mir
mirl
viti
mita
omi
eight
ve’at
fe’a
faedh
taekh
fe’a
ve’et
vet
veh
ve’at
ve’et
set
nine
liang-ga
liya
lita
lida
le
nia
ria
niang
liya
liang
tiaz
ten
sjevet
re
reka
ret
ge
sje
sjekh
sjeng
sjet
resje
sjeche
I personally did not go into much depth beyond this chart. However, it is nice to have in the background as a reference for general patterns in changes between related languages. For example, when I want to reference the Bwe’at language, I know from this chart that the /s/ phoneme often changes to /z/, that /j/ or /Κ/ changes to /tΚ/. Perhaps this method would be useful for you as well.
Wrapping up
There are many more things to consider when integrating your conlang into a culture–I’ve only listed a few! Here are some resources on worldbuilding/conlanging to help flesh out your ideas:
Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions (this is very helpful for determining how a society and environment might influence the language)
Hello Future Me (some general, broad ways to structure your world, and writing as well)
Worldbuilding Stack Exchange (an incredible collection of resources for just about any aspect of worldbuilding you might want to explore)
Next time, we will go over writing systems. And, I will have a special guest on to showcase how he created his own writing system! Stay tuned, and don’t forget to check out my series, The Warriors of Bhrea, complete with several conlangs and unique cultures.
I hope you brought your Tolkien hats, because it’s time to get conlanging again!
Before we dive in, I hope you get a chance to check out my book series, The Warriors of Bhrea, which has its very own constructed language called Korvet. If you’d like to see a conlang in action (and have already read LOTR), take a look at my series here!
You can learn Korvet right along with Lauren. π
Now, back to business. In Part 1, we went over sounds. In Part 2, we created roots. And in Part 3, we created words and their structure. Check out those previous posts if you have not already!
Now, it’s time to put those words to work and make some sentences.
The Basics
Next it’s time to think about how to organize words in a meaningful way. In other words, you need to create a syntax.
How does a sentence have meaning? If you think back to elementary school, you probably learned that there are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. In English, the word order helps you determine the word’s function.
He walked to the store.
We know that the subject of the sentence is “He” because it is the first noun. If it were in another order, it would have a different meaning.
The store walked to him.
A weird sentence, and it TECHNICALLY makes sense. Grammatically, at least. I’ll let you determine the capability of a store to walk. However, that shows my point of word order mattering.
“To the store he walked” is also an acceptable sentence in English, Yoda reminds us.
Here are a few sentences that DON’T make sense because they violate English’s syntax rules:
The store him to walked.
Walked he store to.
To him walked store the.
As you can see, they don’t make a lick of sense due to the order of the words! This is why word order matters in English.
Linguistic Typology
Linguists categorize language typology by what order the subject, verb, and object go in. There can be six combinations:
Objectβsubjectβverb
Objectβverbβsubject
Subjectβverbβobject
Subjectβobjectβverb
Verbβsubjectβobject
Verbβobjectβsubject
SOV is the most common type, at about 45% of languages (such as Japanese, Latin, and Urdu). SVO follows closely behind at 42% (Mandarin, French, and Thai). English is SVO, or subject-verb-object. We can see that in the example from above:
He (subject) walked (verb) to the store (object).
Korvet is OVS, which apparently is a very rare type–about 1% of the world’s languages (and, funnily enough, Klingon). That wasn’t intentional, but somehow it ended up that way! A Korvet sentence might look like this:
bis (store) + –em- (accusative case) -jat (to) + il- (past tense) + lar (walk/go) + -ra (he) = bisemjat illarra (he walked to the store)
The typology is the most basic component to consider for your conlang. However, what about more complex sentences? If every sentence were just a subject, verb, and object, that would get old pretty fast, don’t you think?
As you flesh out your language’s syntax, you’ll want to add elements like how to make subclauses, conjunctions, and transformations. And that’s just scratching the surface, really!
Resources
Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ll give you some resources to dive deeper into creating more complex sentence structures. Seriously, check these out, because they are incredibly helpful, and their creators are deep wells of conlanging knowledge to draw upon.
This was and still is my conlang bible! For any aspiring language builders, I highly recommend taking a look at this site. Mark Rosenfelder writes his process in an understandable yet entertaining way.
If you prefer video resources, this is a hidden gem! If you admired the usage of conlangs in media like Game of Thrones, The Witcher, and more, you can watch the creator of those languages (David Peterson) show you his process as he creates new conlangs with an experienced linguist.
Perhaps you are old school and enjoy the good ol’ days when web pages were neatly organized into walls of text with headings and paragraphs of text underneath. That’s not a knock against anything–the info is seriously useful! Rick Morneau dives deep into syntax and gives you a full run down. If you want to know pretty much all there is to syntax, this is a wonderfully informative page.
In the next part, we will go over fleshing out your conlang and adding cultural flourishes that will give the language some oomph and “realistic” feel. Until then, happy conlanging!
