Worldbuilding

I’ve been in the trenches, writing scenes and reviewing outlines and generally ramping up and actually writing this first book (I think it’s the first book). But I’m also having to think about things like names and maps and other fantasy-adjacent issues.

For now, I’m doing this sort of trick:

____ looked up at the towering castle of ____, perched on the highest point of ____, a rock that a dozen armies had dashed themselves apart against.

Which is fine for now. And I even have some names I’m using for some characters that I will absolutely not not use, too. For example, I have a character who’s a girl from a vaguely Scandinavian place – snow and ice and mountains and gruff bearded men considered kind of barbaric by other cultures – and I’m calling her Bjork in my draft.

The blanks and the Bjorks will need to be addressed sooner or later, and the names have more significance than just a blank can really capture. The names (and inspiration behind them) ought to inform the story, at least a little (or so I’m telling myself at present).

So I’m reading about the formation of the holy roman empire and looking at maps and names of places from a thousand years ago. I’m looking into naming conventions of various languages (your “burghs” vs. “grads” vs. “shires” vs. “tons/towns” etc…) and trying to see what fits for a story vaguely inspired (think GoT being inspired by the War of the Roses) by a sort of viking civilization and medieval england and the holy roman empire and the crusades and byzantine empire.

It’s kind of a lot, so the writing is scattered.

But there’s plenty I can write that doesn’t need to be held up by thinking up names.

And I’ll keep writing that stuff while I keep thinking up names.

I’d love to have that locked in fairly early, as I think using “London” in the draft and then doing a find-and-replace to make all of those “Middenshire” or whatever.

Not only does that cost me the character of the city itself, but it also could lead to some embarrassing typos.

True story, when I was a kid I had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Album. Not the one from a movie or anything, I mean the one they released. The one where they “toured” and appeared at theme parks and Raphael played the saxophone because that was the cool, sarcastic instrument of the 90s, I guess.

Anyway, the tape came with an insert with all the lyrics.

And I guess someone had done a find-and-replace late in the game that none of the editors noticed, changing all the “don”s to “donatello”.

Which led to the memorably typo that lives in my brain 35 years later from the song “Pizza Power.”

The word ‘gourmet’ just donatellon’t exist

(Don’t go listen to it, but if you do, notice that the lyric is “the word ‘gourmet’ just don’t exist”)

I hold myself to a higher standard than the TMNT Out of Our Shell album.