Elaz

Writeblr | Estranged Poet

[elaz-ivero]

Hey, I don’t think you’ll ever read this, but if you do, I’ve been coming back to this blog since late 2020, something about the way you write is so evocative. I hope you keep writing, if not on here. Peace <3

Oh no I feel so bad! I haven't touched this blog for months, tysm sorry it's fallen away from me, I really appreciate your message <3

[elaz-ivero]

Worldbuilding Diaries- Chapter Nine; Developing Complex monarchies and Unique Royals

Depending on the story royalty can play a key or subtle role in how growing tensions and thematical beats unfold. I've read a fair number of novels in my favored genre; fantasy where the main character is closely connected or even part of the monarchy. It's easy for the role relegated to kings and queens to feel meaningless, simply having the presence of someone above the law and with endless amounts of power is not enough to make an impact. My own fantasy novel has five unique systems of royalty, lineage, and rights on the basis of power and I've learned a lot about how the way one uses and treats their royalty in their worldbuilding impacts the prominence and success of their novel.

The key:

- Distinctness

- Power

- Control of the narrative

We've seen the same rulers in literature over and over again, the benevolent king who suffers at the hands of his temperamental and jealous wife, the treacherous younger prince whose right to the throne is thwarted by prophecy or anticipated birth. The patriarchal hereditary-based monarchy is old, readily anticipated and while it can gain favor by rising tensions with the sudden passing of a royal or apparency of an unclear bloodline, it isn't the only possible structure for rule.

Diarchy- two people ruling simultaneously or joint rule of spouses(Sparta)

Personal Union- separate independent states share a monarch but retain their separate laws and government (The sixteen Commonwealth realms)

Absolute Monarchy- a rule that is protected by its divine nature

Elective monarchs- elected by a group of individuals, sect or by the populous

Self-proclaimed monarchy- claimed individual monarchy without any historical ties to a previous dynasty (becoming nomadic or an isolated settlement and crowning oneself)

Rule by combat- Exchange of power occurs after a challenger kills the currently reigning ruler.

There are many more ways of rule and during your story, you can transfer from one to the other. Adding a distinctness to your royal line and transfer of power will make it more memorable, a matriarchy is more memorable than a patriarchy. There are so many ways to make power and rule interesting and memorable, have an animal be king as a result of religious right, have power be gifted from one individual to another, maybe the ruler is decided based on a competition of different skills or achieving certain feats. I've tried many different ideas from lining up all the babies born over a short period of time and randomly selecting one to having a royal family that simply doesn't exist and has died many years ago but the castle is keeping up the façade. Distinctness is imperative to keeping an audience interested and engaged and can lead to new scripts and story potential.

Power is imperative, without power your royalty holds no stake in the story or world. Sometimes I read stories where certain members of the royal family are just...there, they don't do anything and just agree or disagree with the plans or ideas of the main character. If you want your powerful characters to not act on changes In the world then give them a reason not to do so, a restriction that comes as a result of their royal obligations or maybe they care more about their image and the permanence of their reality than the consequences of inactions.

I would advise that you give your royalty power, power to execute on will, to restrict or unbind the path of the main character. Have them make decisions that negatively or positively impact themselves and their lineage, show in-fighting, sweeping orders that change the course of history. The degree to which you humanize these characters or victimize them will change the amount of realistic power they wield, the less human the more they feel like a force, a nondescript wall of unflinching power, and unfortunately a simple narrative device.

Control over others, control over themselves, the narrative, the impact, the result, people with power deserve to hold precedence in the story. Their actions of course should still have causes and consequences and whether they are aware of these preceding or succeeding factors is up to you. How much control royal characters have over their circumstances and position and their ability to avoid consequences are all indicators of power.

Making the most of your royalty and power structures within a given world can make a difference in how alive and active the world feels.

-E

[elaz-ivero]

Wrong Entrée | Short Story Update

Int// When I first began collecting my stray ideas, concepts, and unfinished flash fiction together for my second-trimester workshop I knew I wanted to start experimenting more with settings in my short fiction. I decided to set one in Russia, one in suburban America, and another out at sea.

Plot// Wrong Entrée reads like a PETA activists' part-time prose, it follows 30-year-old Oisin, a vegetarian and correspondent for the Marina Conservation center as he spends a week on a small unregistered fishing vessel. He's forced to introduce fish into his diet or starve and the story is told through the meals he eats as he slowly realizes those in his company's hospitality is wavering. Wrong Entrée was originally titled Six Set Meal until I realized only four meals occur, three main dishes, and an entrée. The short story sits around 1,800 words.

Characters//

Oisin: Cautious and reserved. His vegetarian nature lends itself to the way his voice alters the descriptive terms and imagery used. As the narrator he plays an incredibly passive role, watching and listening doing exactly what was instructed, and barely fights back as he meets his fate.

Huriu: A fisherman on board who takes Oisin under his wing, equally reserved and way too young to be manning a vessel. He tries to warm Oisin to not report back to the Conservation center until he reaches land.

The Captain: Spooky unnamed captain of the ship is cold and deceptive, he shows no sympathy as he destroys Oisins equipment and is always standing behind something, behind a door or veil of plastic he is physically and emotionally distant.

The story went through one rewrite since I struggled balancing realism and creating a sense of doubt in readers on the reliability of Oisin's narrative and depicting the sheer vast quantities of catch and bait I visualized in my head.

I really enjoyed writing in a constrained environment, Oisin couldn't walk away from the sea-boat or run for help he had to rely on his words and promises to keep him aboard. While I would have enjoyed exploring past events on land and in other settings enclosing the story in a small ever-changing environment made the slow realization that the narrator wouldn't make it out alive a little bit more daunting and inescapable.

Wrong Entrée is a simple premise, simple execution short story with no cautionary tale or moral lesson, just a story that begins and ends in the Tasman Ocean.

I really enjoyed figuring this story out even if I struggled initially and challenged my ability to describe a small fixed environment.

-E

[elaz-ivero]

Wren Versus The Russian Government Short Story + Double Narratives

//A deep dive into my own writing

Wren Versus the Russian Government is a 3,000-word short story with one of my signature features, a double narrative. A double narrative is a story that possesses two plotlines, a surface-level story of which the characters unconsciously navigate and a second, a double-meaning playing out just beyond the lines. Wren Versus the Russian Government follows...well…Wren as he faces off against the Russian government. I wanted to set the story in Russia and offset the stereotype of Americans being an opposing force to a Russian presence after the cold war. By placing an emphasis on Wren being a Russian citizen the story felt slightly more believable and grounded in its setting. The story initially appears to be about the twenty-year-old failing university student succumbing to his madness, insistent that every agent is a government spy and that the voice in the radio is speaking instructions to him but beneath all that Wren sounds less and less crazy and some scenes imply there's some truth to his beliefs.

Inspiration//

Wren Versus the Russian Government was heavily inspired by Netflix’s interactive work 'Bandersnatch', a show I was fixated on when it first came out. Both Wren and Stefan navigate their own spiraling understanding of the world around them and the constraints of the medium in which they inhabit. However, in Bandersnatch the audience leads Stefan down their chosen path and attempt to control his beliefs in this story Wren is already certain, he doesn't need convincing that what he thinks is right. I experimented with implementing facets of 'Bandersnatch' like fourth wall breaks, intimately knowledgable characters, and the allusion of audience choice however they didn't really fit with the short story I was trying to tell. 'Wren Versus' poses more of an audience's struggle as they try and independently decide whether they trust Wrens interpretations of the world around him, whether he's crazy or not.

Narrative//

Wren Versus is made up of many intersecting scenes with the first two taking place in the past. The story begins with Wren reflecting on his childhood and how it felt like he was 'stepping onto a game-show, with him; a lonely contestant'

"An unnecessary addition to an already extensive family portrait, Wren, with a generic face and a minimal range of expressions was a black sheep of sorts. He refused to eat anything but toy-branded cereals, jellos and t.v meals and didn't trust his own two eyes."

As he grows up he begins to isolate himself, living out of a van and refusing to perform simple tasks that might expose his hide-out. Here an impervious stranger tells him of a radio channel that will inform him of how the government aims to track its citizens.

When the audio recordings the radio plays stop and the voice on the other side speaks directly to Wren he runs and attempts to escape the prying eyes of an all-seeing government by hiding in a nearby arcade.

"At night he'd open the boot in unlit parking lots and at the edge of nature reserves and wait, the warmth of his portable heater and the rustle of glad wrap were breadcrumbs in the dark"

Of course, no stone goes unturned and the government finds him, captures him and the voice on the radio reveals himself as general secretary and that foolish Wren had been taking advice from the government all along.

"Wren pulls out the roofing stapler and loads it like a gun, sliding sachets of metal clips into his steel throat, it clicks closed with new weight and purpose."

Wren is honestly one of my favorite characters to work with, he's so extreme and stupid (my favorite character trait) I also really enjoyed the rhythm the story is high-speed all the way throughout and only pauses briefly before the final scene. Excited to gradually bring this story toward submissions.

Learning/s// That character you have hanging around in the background vibing with their own mini-narrative WILL eventually come in handy.

-E

[elaz-ivero]

How I write Short Stories / From titles to topics

It's been an age, a long and tumultuous age but I'm back, and hopefully, my creative drought will be forcibly ended by my poetry course that has just begun. The course itself may only be centered on poetry but it has helped me slowly ease back into a cycle of writing and creativity. Today I hope to take you through my unique process for writing short stories, an enigmatic process that unfortunately occurs only once in a while.

My process is one that is super loose and insists that I pour all my creative energy into one product at a time otherwise if I schedule projects they'll sit on the shelves for years and never be touched or tuned into again.

As a very visual person I usually get inspired by images, 'Sumatran Is A Type Of Tiger' spurred from a Pinterest post depicting a boy staring at his reflection washed out by blue light, and from that, I got rivalry, competitive swimming, honor, and pressure ideas that played heavily on how the story came together and the crux of the story. However, sometimes I begin my tyrannical spur-of-the-moment writing and run out of content after a couple of paragraphs are setting the scene depicted in the image and outlining the characters, images often lack...well change, movement, an evolution of depicted events.

Sometimes my ideas stem from stories or the idea of strange conditions, my published poem 'Bury The Lamb' came from a family friend of mine who told me how he got a nose bleed while burying a lamb in a desolate paddock and that struck me, the image of a boy alone in some dark field suddenly bleeding like he's wounded, funnily enough in that dark town hall during a talent show my nose starting bleeding...a sign, perhaps.

Some other ideas or concepts that compelled me to start writing were a story told entirely through meals, or through board games, a story set on an illegal fishing vessel, a story told through incorrect recitals of ancient poetry.

But strangely enough, a lot of my ideas come from titles, one-off sets of words run together to assimilate some sort of story, 'Houndstougue' and 'Three-headed mice with three-headed children' are two such stories that started off as titles.

Once I run out of initial material or ideas I take a step back and start re-thinking my plot. Often, short stories can feel meaningless, a character meandering through their thoughts I always ask myself 'what is happening in the story and 'how can I get out more story beats' some of the best stories either cover a couple of hours or a couple of days. One of the easiest ways to add depth is a story is to at any point go back or go forward, include a flashback, or change the scene just don't stay stationary.

Most of my plots involve a fight, someone succeeding and then failing or a step-by-step process of achieving a goal (how to kidnap a dog, how to get your step-dad to love you) that way events feel realistic as well as fantastical.

It's hard to describe a style without being an outsider, my style is definitely literary fiction with a degree of surrealism my stories are often abstract with double meanings with characters with ambiguous motives. They are often action-based like a mini-novella following one character as they navigate the narrative realm I created. My writing is often incredibly descriptive with a random short sentence thrown in for impact. My stories are often either incredibly heavy or super light and usually, the antagonist is the main character's own self. On a more minute note, there is almost always a description of a face with nicks and scrapes, freckles, or an angular jaw. There's almost always a parental figure and an interesting friend dynamic, relationships are important to stop writing empty stories!

When it comes to style I still feel like it's incredibly important to write diverse and radically different stories and allow your natural influence on your work form connections between them.

[elaz-ivero]

Worldbuilding Diaries - Chapter Nine; Crafting Sustainably Complex Characters

/header art by orestas grinvaldas

Crafting complex characters is a feat that for a long time has been turned into a contemporary aspect of developing strong and compelling stories. Characters need to be rounded, realistic and multi-faceted, they need to contradict themselves and have complex personalities. However, as I've slowly strayed further into my working projects I've started to prefer shallower characters...well characters that are shallow at first. I've begun to relegate my characters into the stereotypical archetypes of their genre and almost summarised them, foreshortened their personalities and range of development.

I feel like true complexity comes from change and the only way to achieve that is to allow the story to affect the character.

There's something so satisfying in comparing a character's appearance at the beginning of a visual medium (whether that be comic book, movie, theatrical performance or television show) to the final episode and to physically see how the story has affected them, the scars, the grey streaks in their hair, the wedding band on their finger, the way their relationships with their friends and family have changed. It's these physical changes that signify a greater emotional change and mental growth, a marker that your story has gone somewhere.

bare bones & beginnings - beginning a story with a blank canvas

Beginning a story with a blank canvas isn't that difficult, most ideas begin with a niche image or vague understanding of a characters thought-process and immediate values. Light characters are allowed to stretch in the folds of the first page, to exist half-full and unfixed within the imaginative bounds of the reader. It's nice to write simple characters and I've practised with characters that respond to change in the same way, characters that refuse to change and are persistent in their mundanity. Interest, of course, occurs when the character is confronted with an event or idea that introduces something new, a little complex and a lot more convoluted into their worldview. Maybe they cannot give their default response, their perfect excuse gets picked apart and fails, they are unsuccessful in achieving something they've done a million times before. I've found that as I pursue a long-winded story with varying arcs characters have room to grow and change persistent longer and are more sustainable in the long run.

If you can make a character interesting when they are at their simplest they have all the room in the narrative to grow.

actions speak louder than words - how your story beats can shape your character

Any time an event happens in your novel the choice your character makes should reveal something about them, whether that be the extremes to which your character will sacrifice or dedicate themselves to a cause of ideology or their choice to share or repress information speaks volumes. Don't tell your audience what your character would give to win...show it, show them ignoring warnings, have their actions directly oppose their words, show silent sacrifice.

A character's actions will be far more memorable than their words unless their words rewrite or revoke their actions. I can guarantee that every single character whether a member of the secondary, supporting cast or main character will see an event from a different angle as they are influenced by what they know and what they don't, who they trust and who they keep a keen eye on.

What was once a blank surface-level character should become an individual with a complex relationship with themselves, others and the ideologies they respect/represent. They are shaped by the narrative, by the story-beats presented to them, they might be hypocritical, two-faced and selfish but with reasonable grounds to do so. Punish your characters by turning them into the people they once rivalled against, force them to confront the dark underside of their strengths and weaknesses, test their resilience, test their trust and you'll get a compelling character.

I often draft multiple versions of a scene tracking out what might happen if a character were to act irrationality or 'out of character' choosing trust in something they hadn't before or step into something new. This lets me find new ways to approach my characters' worldview and approach conflict and resolution.

The process of crafting complex and compelling characters will always be unique to each author; you might have already found yours.

-E

[elaz-ivero]

Poetry Fieldnotes ||Broken Artists Collective||

[image description: a block print with a bright red border around a greyish blue grainy image. Atop it is a pair of discoloured hands, palms facing forward, red and outstretched. Above the hands in white Garamond font are the words, Broken Artists Collective and in smaller font, and other poems. /end id]

Over the past week, I may or may not have fully embraced the concept of a broken artist finding myself unable to conjure up a single creative thought unless I'm lying on the floor surrounded by scrawlings and broken-spined books. For a long time, I have been trying to cater my work to a series of magazines that clearly yearn for a very specific 'type' of poetry that I am incapable of producing. These poems are ones that applied pressure, the ones that were crammed into inattentive submission boxes and were returned in empty emails.

Here are the poems,

[image description: a photograph of a boy laying down looking upward, a lit cigarette stands upright in his mouth and his features are overlayed with the shadows of ferns and other plants. He wears an orange collared shirt and around him are the words in white Garamond font, Floor Bound Echo Location. /end id]

Floor-bound Echolocation is a disjointed 403-word prose poem that is a coalesce of liminal spaces, chaotic ingenuity and a reversal of grief. Like many of my poems, it describes a series of small events and feels more like a corrupted scene from a novel than a stand-alone poem. It's a short tale of a brother and sister cleaning out the garage-workspace of their genius, estranged and recently deceased cousin. It opens as follows...

All the lines are in lowercase and of sporadic length, every so often a single random word is isolated and highlighted. These are the words that were isolated throughout the poem.

//enigma //a test of patience //satisfied //memorized

I adore this poem and it feels strangely personal (my own experiences often slip into my work unconsciously like fears finding their place in dreams) as a creative I fear the idea that a lot of my work and unwritten ideas will never be read or known. The poem focuses on one of the cousin's creations, a geometric pattern drawn in chalk on the concrete floor. This pattern, its design obsessive and laid out like a triggerless trap takes over the narrative of the poem. The characters wash it away and the pattern, the physical manifestation of this dead cousins genius clings to the idea of being appreciated, recognized.

[image description: a boy sits up against a wall in a barren green and blue-tinted room, to the right of the image, is a window showing trees outside and beneath it a gas heater is attached to the wall. The boy's wearing a similar orange shirt and on the wall beside him are words, 'it blends and swirls with the oiled water and tidals along the length of the driveway to passer-by's what remains of it asks, begs, to be, memorised.' /end id]

I wrote 'floor-bound...' in a day and made subsequent edits over the course of a couple of days, I tend to write out my ideas and make minor changes to word choice and sentence length before I add in the details that make each poem unique. The isolation of individual letters was a way to almost mimic the process of looking in a cluttered space you'll see something recognizable and latch onto it.

Status: Submitted

[image description: A girl with long black hair, olive skin and a tired solemn expression face forward, an unlit cigarette held loosely in her mouth. She stands in a red elevator, the doors are closed and on the left on the image is the metal switchboard showing she has reached level 12. On her right is the word, 'Peephole'. /end id]

Peephole is a mirrored poem and is split into 'Inside', and 'Outside' with Inside, aligned to the left and Outside, aligned to the right, they are reflective of each other, mirrored. Peephole is about a young drunk woman staying inside her boyfriend's cramped apartment inspired by the 43-Square-Foot rooms in South Korea and an image from the article below inspired the entirety of this poem.

A Photographer Shows the Harsh Reality of Living in 43-Square-Foot Rooms in South Korea

Korea is widely known for its diverse culture, magnificent skyscrapers, delicious food, and highly developed technology. But South Korean ph

She, aware that the apartment seems to reject her, steps out into the hallway, the 'Outside' which feels apocalyptic with a burning wining sun and a ghost standing by the elevator, a personification of her sickness silently assessing how she is still alive and if she could find her way home in this state. The women in turn assess how this hallway faintly reminds her of the one from 'The Shining' leading into a breaking of the fourth wall.

[image description: A photograph that looks similar to a corrupted piece of film, tinted red and showing a woman's profile looking toward the right. Words on the left of the image read, 'I take an imaginary drag as if setting the scene of some ninety's horror, slasher, mounting suspense with the final girl, alone, a lonely lamb how easy would it be to just end a film right here.' /end id]

The tone of the poem is gritty, realistic and almost elusive in its design. I love writing poems without intending to care about its audience, with no closure, no clarity, no kindness. This poem is an amalgamation of all the recent media I've consumed, 'The Shining', Final Girl, Wikipedia dives into the housing crisis and psychological horror. I love writing poems that reflect a blend of culture, using language as a way to implement distinctive voices in my writing.

[image description: Another room tinted green, on the bottom of the image head barely in frame is a women looking off into the distance, above the cigarrete she holds red smoke reflecting in the shine on her face twirls and unfurls. Text reads, 'Tiger balm and salt, "kapuahi ahi" his whisper hurts my ears and sounds like, toungue on velvet, tooth in cheek.' /end id]

Status: Submitted

[image description: a close up of a brides face covered by a sheer veil in front of a black background, her eyes are tinted with red eyeshadow and she looks forward with a bored stare. Large text in the upper left-hand corner reads, 'Chekhov'. /end id]

Chekhov, my most recent poem is- as the title suggests- from the perspective of a gun, a woman on her wedding day is left at the altar by a cheating groom and hunts him down in the orchard venue with an heirloom of a gun. I love the perspective of this poem, the way it slowly reveals the origin of the 'voice' and grows darker and darker as the wedding dress soils and darkens with dirt and blood. Few of my poems spur from ideas rather than images but the idea of a furious bride filled with anguish and horror brought this poem to life.

[image description: a young bride looking behind her as she runs toward a patch of dark trees in the middle of a field. One hand holds up the edge of her white dress, it's evening. Text on the left-hand side of the image reads, 'Darling when my steel feels soft, revoke your vows and kiss something just as cold and cocky. /end id]

This poem is split into three stanzas, before the wedding, during and the evolving aftermath. I feel like I could extend this into a short story saving the strange gunpoint perspective till the final scene.

Status: Completing

[image description: A black and white image of a boy looking up, his expression a mix of horror and fear while blades point down at him and hold steady inches from his neck. The image is a still from "Ivan the Terrible" by Sergei Eisenstein. Text aside it reads, 'The Sound of Hamlet Rehearsed. /end id]

The sound of Hamlet Rehearsed, inspired by my own recent exploration of scriptwriting and theatre. The sound of Hamlet Rehearsed is about a boy being held accountable during a faux court hearing, on stage on opening night. The narrative slowly switches from fiction to reality as it dawns on him that the punishment is about to be dealt and he struggles with understanding how much of his reaction is performance or authentic. It's structured in a sporadic unbroken series of words and moments.

Tone-deaf touchtone tipping point Ziplock bags and scented zip ties off script the boards atop the trap door tremble imagine the conductor beneath torch amongst teeth briefly making out direction from diction.

Status: Editing

Those are the poems I've been working on! I'm not going to write any more poetry until I come to my poetry course next trimester and instead are going to focus on short stories (I'm developing two right now, three-course meal and Wren versus the Russian Government) and continuing by Worldbuilding Diaries series.

-E

[elaz-ivero]

It's an Honour to Eclipse | {New WIP} |

[image description: a storefront during midday with the sunlight bleaching giving the photo an orange tint. the glass door has a 'yes we are open sign' on it but the door and windows are behind iron bars. a rainbow is painted on the front of the building, on an angle white text in bold Garamond font reads, 'It's an Honour to Eclipse' beneath it in smaller font, 'A novella' is typed over the image. /end id]

Genre: LGBT +, Young Adult, Mild Mystery

Setting: Wellington, capital city of New Zealand

P.O.V: Third Person, Omniscient

Synopsis: Neveah after leaving university and moving into her first apartment is reinventing herself, discovering the city she lives in, finding the short-cuts, the cheapest restaurants, shaking her head. But when her estranged ex-boyfriend Oka disappears, no one seems invested in his disappearance, no one seems to be looking for the boy she stopped loving and yet his name keeps appearing, turning up in the margins of her life and Neveah is forced to confront the twisted history and secret life of the boy she intended to leave behind.

CW: Religion, drug use, smoking, police violence

[image description: a skyline at dawn, the bottom of the image is cluttered with the tops of colourful houses, hotels, stores and apartment buildings, the sun brings out warm tones hidden in the paint. Above the tops of the buildings, a great blue sky stretches upward and clouds tinged with the yellow of a rising sun. Over the clouds in the centre of the images words in white bold Garamond font that read, 'WIP Beginnings' /end id.]

Frequently my subconscious approaches me with a set of storylines, a character name and a set of random scenes, It's An Honour To Eclipse was a small series of ideas that naturally grew the more I thought about them. I suppose this story came as the result of me moving into a boarding facility in the middle of the city and having to adapt to the fast-paced individualistic world of the great city. My own fear of the housing crisis and the crime rate of a busy city translated neatly into my main character whose whole life surrounds her trying to perfect some form of self-preservation.

The main drive of this story is her relationship or now lack thereof with Oka, a mysterious unfinished boy who drifts in and out of the story. I still don't know where this novella might leave, maybe Oka's captured by an underground secret society of 'face stealers' or people that replace talented local artists. I honestly have no clue but for now, I'm putting it under the vague category of 'mild mystery'. Often, when writing I don't have a firm understanding of my characters or of the ending that is about to surface I follow the flow of expectations and allow my characters personalities and ambitions to drive the story toward its conclusion. Right now Oka takes over the passages, slips into chapters not intended to be given to him, simply because he is a mystery to me and I want to figure out why this boy disappeared and the clues in his behaviour, in the known parts of him.

[image description: a pale arm is turned toward the camera, the cuff of a chunky knit mustard coloured sweater can be seen at the top right-hand corner of the image. At the centre of the image is a coloured tattoo, a renaissance angel holding a branch of baby's breath and wearing a brown and creme-tone cloth himation. In the bottom left-hand corner of the image white bold Garamond text reads, 'Characters' /end id.]

[image description: two images are collaged together, one portion of the image is a close up of a women face she has dark skin and brown eyes, the other portion of the image is another woman on public transit adjacent to a window showing a brick apartment passing by. Slightly central is text in bold white Garamond font that reads, 'Neveah' /end id.]

Neveah, the main character, Spanish and the first female in her family to graduate from university. She's stuck in a cramped apartment and her style consists of what she finds for free on the sidewalk and the brightest clothing at the second-hand opportunity shops. Committed the relationship sin of getting matching tattoos with a boyfriend she couldn't introduce to her parents, a tattoo of the window of their shared apartments in Neveah's there is a sunset in Oka's it's a night full of stars. Neveah is cautious and constantly conscious of how she can improve her situation and herself and tries to best facilitate her own growth.

More points:

Loves sparkling peach and mango juice

Deals with her problems mainly by listening to audiobooks all night and visiting the aquarium to feed the manta rays and stare at fish for hours, at least their coping mechanisms that aren't too harmful.

Neveah has an obligatory shrine to Jesus with the little framed photo...well painting of the son of God sent to her by her parents.

Dangly earrings and platform sneakers are her ish.

[image description: an overexposed photograph of two people, a girl and a boy in a lounge. The girl is sitting up on the couch, a blanket piled over her, one bare leg is extended in front of her. A boy leans against the couch, shirtless and with curly brown hair he looks off into the distance a pillow balanced in his lap. There is a pot plant on a small coffee table in the upper right-hand corner of the image and the ends of some pale curtains fall in the frame at the top of the image. On the bottom left-hand corner text in white bold Garamond font reads, 'Oka', there is texture on the image as though some tape had been laid over the left edge or a rip has been repaired. /end id.]

Oka is a mess, a boy reliant on Neveah's help to get dressed, make the bed, do the groceries. He's tall with brown hair he dyes grey and when he first meets Neveah he's almost quit smoking but crashes back into his addiction when they start dating and every week picks up a bulk box of discontinued unfiltered cigarettes. His dealer likes Neveah and gives her chocolate as a part of the deal and Oka made his living by picking up odd artistic jobs, being a nude model every Thursday, volunteering at an art club and working as a waiter at a local bar. Absolutely hates his Art history degree and will fight their landlord if the rent rises.

More brief points:

Thinks he's super cool for owning a white zippo.

Unironically owns two cowboy hats.

Is actually a pretty good artist but rarely finishes a piece.

Likes ginger drinks and strawberry milk.

Is temporarily nocturnal.

[image description: a wall of framed photographs and paintings, they are organised together in a way that is both scattered and organized. In the bottom right-hand corner there are two lit candles and on the right of an image, a monstera plant is in the corner of the cream-coloured walls. Someone holds a mug in the bottom right-hand corner. In the centre of the image text in bold white Garamond font reads, 'Planning Excerpts. /end id.]

A set of opening lines;

[image description: Over a dark image of pale pink roses growing against a white concrete wall. White text over the image reads, 'For two months all I could think about was diluting detergent- She took the time to change herself, paint thick lines around her eyes and contour muscles she didn't have. She remembered, however, the intricate way that he took up space-" /end id.]

[image description: A city skyline against a greyish blue sky, the building are in tones of brown, red, orange and yellow. In the upper right-hand corner orange text in Garamond font reads, 'Oka took his time, hours to get dressed, hours to eat, every day was half-lived from midday till three hours before midnight.' /end.id]

I see this story changing and developing the more time I put into it but for now, it is made up of its central characters, the colours I associate with the grand city and the mysterious implications of finding someone yourself.

That's an Honour To Eclipse in its rough beginning stages, I'm looking forward to sharing its progress.

-E

[elaz-ivero]

Poetry Update | Pandemonium Palate|

It's been a while. This year I have an upcoming poetry class and I've decided to rework my relationship to poetry, in the past, my poems tended to be dark irregular poems taking on an Aesop's fable appearance with ideas and concepts expressed through intangible metaphors now I'm developing my skills in 🌟 self poetry🌟 writing about my own feelings something which I've tended toward avoiding and being very cautious of.

Here's the poetry I've been writing:

1.

A Widows Guide to Ghosthunting is a poem I wrote and submitted in a matter of two days, usually, I like to sleep on a poem, let it exist for a moment before sending it off this one was different, it seemed to convey that strange semi-intelligence a lot of published poems have. It's about ghosts, liminal spaces and family. It's 353 words long and considered a prose poem with 29 lines.

It's a little bit emotional and a tad bit deep and I've realised that whenever I write personal prose I almost always mention the scar I have across my chest, an inherited ailment. I find my poems tend to explore, family, familiarity, inheritance and the burden of genetics, it's interesting how many feelings come forward when you're just trying to convey something indescribable. Overall I love how this poem progresses and look forward to submitting it.

2.

I write the best poems when I come up with the title first; Red-Haired Taniwha explores an elementary European immigrant and his exploration into a great lake where a taniwha resides, a metaphysical representation of culture, the taniwha is an incredible being in Maori mythology they take the form of deceptive currents or dangerous waves. The taniwha, Tama is deceptive and cunning and speaks of chosen and found history.

Red-Haired Taniwha is in a rough draft and sits around 402 words and breaks into two poems. Hopefully, I can figure out what I actually want to do with it and clarify what I wanted to say so I can edit it and prep it for submission.

-E

[elaz-ivero]

Celestial Bodies- Television Script // E1- Pilot

"If your afraid of these hills, of the pastures past the signs, of the people here who are just living their lives then your not going to make it out of here alive" -

Category - Young Adult

Genre- Coming of Age/ Thriller

Synopsis- Radon Springs, a small town tourist hotspot where the Bluepark radioactive disaster is memorialised in printed t-shirts, keychains and commemorative mugs. Within this town five teenagers, from social butterflies to newcomers unaccepting of the small-town traditions to investigators who learn of things they’d rather not know, find themselves in a religious once dead prophecy on top of the usual teen drama, romance and occasional death.

Tone- Dreamy, dark, nostalgic.

Inspo- Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Devil All the Time, I'm not okay with this, End of the F***ing world.

Celestial bodies is a project that I've started so that one day I can perfect it and add it to my end of year portfolio, since it's my first television script it's a bit rough and more literary than normal following my roots as a poetic writer. I use Writerduet.com for drafts of my scripts and celtx.com as a space for collaborative work and the 'rough' drafts sits around 2,223 words long the length of a flash fiction story. Following an already insane idea, each episode follows a specific colour scheme with the opening pilot being scarlet; danger, action, consequences.

The pilot of Celestial Bodies follows a non-conventional three-act structure to reflect the instability of the setting, in a place where radiation runs rampant and affects the technological efficiency of cameras, compasses, radios and computers of course it'd affect the filming process in a meta-way. I've always imagined Celestial Bodies being shot on disposable camera's at times and being overlayed with bleeding and colour replacement effects to make the film feel as though it is deteriorating as one watches which helps reflect the breaking mental stability of the opening episodes main character.

ACT ONE

The episode begins with a recording of an old documentary, the screen flickering and fading in and out of focus the establishing shots of the town interwoven with a male voiceover telling the history of RadonSprings and the infamous radioactive disaster hidden in its memory. I tend to stray away from prefactory information in introductions, however, I don't believe this choice takes away from the intrigue especially since almost everything else is shown to the audience through background visuals/ allusions in speech.

After this recording dies down, the voice mellowing to a melodramatic drum the shot changes to an establishing shot and we briefly meet our first character.

Dallas is the eldest daughter to her first-generation immigrant parents who've moved away from the illustrious big city to focus on whats important, family, connection and affordable house prices. Dallas is calm, collected, well-reasoned and willing to start over in a new town, make friends three years older than her and find herself again or under the worst circumstances hide away again and retreat into a formulated identity. We meet Dallas as she reckons with her parent's decision and when a stranger appears at their house at the end of the episode desperately reaching out to her mother and claiming to know her Dallas is left alone, her parents fleeing forgetting to pack her and her brothers. Left in a parental position and lost Dallas is desperate to find people her age whom she can connect with.

ACT TWO

We take a break from Dallas to establish Gecko, a young boy coddled by his mother for years who is about to do the unthinkable.

We meet Gecko briefly in the present day, wearing bright tight-fitting clothing, his hair recently dyed, movements pre-planned and anxious a brief cutaway to a few nights prior shows him in the form he's used to, 20 years old and still wearing hand-me-downs from his grand-father. He's apart of an average radioactive family, a mother faking her therapy degree and psycho-analysing her own son, a displaced father, drop-out older brother and him; a trigger-happy straight-A son still reckoning with his own gender and sexuality and unable to get higher-paid work because of his disability. The scene is slow but punctual with an intruder entering Gecko's house and threatening to attack his mother, Gecko does the only thing he can think to do, he grabs his absent fathers hunting gun and shoots one lethal shot into the burglar's back.

His mother takes care of it, burying the man in her tulip garden she reasons with him that this won't be the end for him and that if he just pretends everything's normal...no...everythings perfect it'll be fine. People die of gradual radiation poisoning all the time, people disappear all the time.

ACT THREE

Act three is an amalgamation of the aftermath of all these events, Gecko reinvents himself becomes a walking performance and summer school starts, all his old friends are back in town. Lexa owns a motorcycle, Scottie's picked up some work, Bea's preparing for the tourist season, each of them unaware of the changes that have been made to this small town.

Before I start Episode Two, I'm planning on going back through this script and adjusting some dialogue and lengthening some scenes so they feel more natural.

But that's Scarlet Fever! I love the vibes of this episode and how eratic it is in its unnatural delivery. My goal for this project isn't to complete drafting the two seasons I've planned but to just write a script that isn't shit. I'm loving this project so far and the characters are some of my favourite, so refined and mature!

Till next time

-E

[elaz-ivero]

The Sun Ballad Project//Chapter Five- The Uninvited

-"As he enters the light, the warm wet embrace of the blank paint dissipates, it grows heavy, pulls on the soft youth of his cheeks and sneaks into the edge of his eyes."

The Uninvited as it stands is a full bookending of Chapter Four, it ends as Chapter Four begins with Yhw unknowledgeable of his fate and the name of the spirit that haunts him, whispers into his ear and plays dangerous games with penknives. It stands at 4,158 words and is the introductory chapter to my novels early antagonist, Hesper that late prince whose soul becomes perpetually tethered to Yhw, connecting the boys and their own deaths and lives together. This chapter also explores the dangers of being a Medivan conservative and zealot to the Aullian Pantheon, the gods choose when you live and subsequently when you die and thus angering them is an inventable early death.

This chapter puts Yhw in a difficult position, does he walk the line of worship and risk dying at the hands of a divine or does he return to the grave-site where his attempted murderer is likely lying in wait, what fate should he wish himself into?

As a dialogue-heavy chapter, I rewrote many scenes multiple times to find the way to best communicate each characters feelings and goals with the added benefit of foresight, I love the way the ghost of Hesper slowly reveals himself, his voice indicated by italics in the novel.

//excerpts

The first scene

Second

Final

In the final scene after Yhw's ghost reveals itself, Yhw comes face to face with the soul he's tethered to, Hesper a boy younger than Yhw but a boy whose mind has outlived his body by months; a soul is so very different from a mind, ruthless, lacking in morals and a cruel imitation of the person it once was. Hesper, a prince whose mysterious death has been lost to the tales of time.

Hesper's soul is intertwined with Yhw's which means he is either wearing Yhw like a wolf wearing a sheep-skin or wandering the empty space between life and death, knowing and forgetting. It's interesting writing a character who is no longer bound by the limitations of a living body and dealing with a character whom I love to pieces being something so in-human and non-living, what have I done to this child!!??

Hesper's language during his conversation with Yhw is selective and often while drafting I'd isolate his lines and rework them to make them carry the kind of weight I was looking for. When writing significant dialogue I've always found I write best when I outline beforehand the intentions of each character and the limits of their knowledge. Hesper thinks Yhw has done something to tether them together, he wants to know why this is happening. Yhw on the other hand misguided to believe Hesper is Vwu, the god of hunting believes Hesper knows and is withholding information from him and thus both boys feel antagonized by the other.

“At least the gods aren’t angry.” The boy took a step back as if to mould into the wall while standing still like life left to hunger. His voice came out in a deathly low whisper that slid up to Yhw, twisted into dread incarnate and stagnated in his head.

“but I am angry.”

-E

[elaz-ivero]

The Worldbuilding Diaries- Chapter Eight; Crafting Fantasy Races

Fantasy is a genre characterized by its mythological creatures, references to magic or unexplained miracles and its exploration into humanoid races who walk the line between humanity and beasts. This post will explore how to create your own fantasy race with all your much-needed instructions on how to assemble your species with all the teeth, horns and extra appendages properly attached or it'll guide you on how to build on pre-established fantasy races to craft a new interesting creature to explore and build upon.

This post will cover: How to build upon pre-existing species How to craft your own species

Fantasy species should not justify your genre; this means that in the context of your story the inclusion of a fantasy race should someone add to your story and enrich your world. When you narrow down your field of focus to a select number of fantasy species you can put more care into their existence and use them to effectively make your world feel fuller and more lived in. Take the time to analyse how their inclusion will affect your story, do the characteristcs and visual appearance of this species fit within the bounds of your setting? If you do choose to include a fantasy species how can you add to its lore, modify others understanding of it?

Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Gnomes, Tieflings, Centaurs the list is never-ending and each of these fantasy species has a pre-determined set of characteristics associated with them, twisting these characteristics or simply building upon the pre-set design will make these species although largely unchanged feel more unique and their inclusion intentional. Take the characteristics of your chosen species and alter them, increase the range of their personalities and influential cultures or alter their physical characteristics, take the features of a fantasy race and emphasize them or replace them, give them fins, electrical pulses, horns, tails to aid them in combat etc. By employing these changes you have new impactful imagery and you also inevitably open up further questions on the history of your race, how did they gain these features, is this species an extension of humanity or something entirely different, are they born through magical means and what is their relationship with magic.

The fantasy races that are deeply intertwined with the fantasy genre are not meant to stay in a clean, organized, unaltered state, they are yours to toy with to change and alter to best fit your ideas and the story that you're trying to tell. Change them till they reach the point of no return and become something else entirely.

One skill I've learnt to embrace is building on 'comfortable features' take the pre-determined characteristics of a fantasy species and reverse them, revel in the opposite and the unrefined.

Most fantasy species are animals or ideas humanised to a certain extent or are extensions of humanity, elves are almost an extension of the positive or idolized aspects of humanity, wisdom, beauty, longevity, peace you could choose to humanize light or stray away from humanization entirely and have a species of intelligent non-humans.

When developing my story I decided to take the elven pre-set and alter them slightly, I darkened their skin, removed the elongated ears, gave them black teeth and altered their history and thus creating a species that was far enough away from the initial source material that I could call them my own. It's important to before you begin drafting/including this new species in your works to practise including them in the narrative, how do their advantageous characteristics and negative characteristics affect how story decisions are made, their fighting style and survivability. Does descriving their multiple limbs and complex anatomy break up the flow of the narrative and feel unnatural when included in a passage. Do they have a different region of origin, how have their characteristics influenced their history?

Your creations should be defined by writing.

-E

[elaz-ivero]

The Worldbuilding Diaries- Chapter seven; How to establish culture in your work

Image taken from- www.fgukmagazine.com

Fantasy cultures can veer on the side of absenteeism in a story or feel deeply understood and grounded in fantastical realism. When I transitioned from my main characters' perspective in my WIP, The Sun Ballad, to my secondary point-of-view character I entered a completely new world with an equally diverse culture I was bound to unearth. I found myself describing lavish rooms decorated with hand-woven tapestries, trays laden with sweetened milk and manuka chocolate trying to contrast the two perspectives of my characters with their environments.

It's easy when drafting a culture to simply write what feels right for the scene, describing clothing, dance, music and culture to better emulate a feeling or surroundings as opposed to conveying a culture. Implementing cultural concepts should emulate your own cultural design and feel niche in it's design.

This post will cover:

-Creating a distinct and realistic feeling culture

-How to contrast cultures

When creating a culture it's important to communicate a sense of unity in its design, these are a group of people with similar ideas who have not yet grown apart or diversified, although there must be a common ground, a common goal. For example, in the freezing arctic, it might be difficult to convince settlers that fasting is the best way to devote one's self to their chosen god. It's important to think about what percentage of a persons life can be dedicated to supporting a cultural evolution, In a place where life is hard and food is scarce there might not be as much time to whittle wood into little figures of gods or paint elaborate tapestries to gift the new king. Places that are prosperous and established can afford to put energy toward storytelling, arts and culture and people can turn these cultural arts into occupations and live their lives depending and developing it.

Start from the ground, the region, the ideas, the religion and begin working up if your god survived a fight by being protected from encroaching fire, settlers might vouch for modesty and punctuality, with armour on always. Build on, how might rulers and preachers control the populous? With story tales, ideas, threats, warnings on how the gods punish wrong-doers, are defenders of the law dressed in distinctive clothes or are they secretive in their duties taking on the role of spies instead of soldiers. What is enlightenment to these people, what is luxury, what is the worst crime someone can commit and how do they protect themselves from it?

Asking these questions allow you to think deeper on how culture originates, remember there is a reason why we tell stories, why we make things up and add value to shiny rocks and formulate a hierarchy within our groups it's because we're social animals, pack animals at heart. Acceptance and happiness is desired and culture is what is acceptable and what brings one happiness.

Around a laden table, people tell stories of the gods, of hunts and of heroes and villains, they feast on the favoured dishes of the area. What are these foods, if your people live around open seas and little rivers they may eat more fish, crustaceans and shore dwelling plants. If the region is surrounded by thick mountains, mountain lion meat and goat milk might be on the table. I've found that creating a list of all the foods fantastical or not, meat and vegetarian on a list to reference whenever my characters are eating, if they are feasting the delicacies come out. This way the food my characters can access in each region stays consistent and helps cement the culture of the region and its people.

It may also be interesting to explore how do different cultures in your story interact with food, is it something to be respected and treated with care should no one touch another's plate while they are eating, are religious figures required to bless every meal. Research how different cultures interact with their food, is it purely animalistic or inventive in design. How is the food presented and what table manners are vouched for?

People interact with food differently and how a culture or group of people eat can say a lot about their home region and culture.

From headresses to full-length ball gowns, information on your cultures treatment of modesty and accesability of decorative metals can help with a cultures memorability and impact in descriptive scenes. Clothing can be directly tied to a religion or wholly separated, certain characters or groups can be recognizable by a piece of unique attire or emblem. Remember you can also communicate classes through clothing, there will always be a simpler, mass-produced piece of cultural attire common amongst most of the masses. Diversity in cultural clothing is often the result of most of the populace trying to save some of their money and make life easier for them, painted on flowers as opposed to embroidered one, weaving old fabric into new to create a checkered pattern. Do not overlook heirlooms, keepsakes and smaller attire like jewellery and coin purses, clothing tells a story look to your own and see how much it tells you, the colours you like, cuts and fabrics most accesable to you, favoured animals or cuts.

Contrasting Cultures

All of these features and ideas to explore are enhanced when used to compare and contrast two cultures, what are the differences and how do they impact communication and collaboration between two groups. If one group respect and worship deer and another routinly eat it a relationship between the two groups might struggle to form and will likely fail to be established. Always note the impact of a cultural idea or development on others in the surrounding area and take advantage of these differences and dillemas afterall we fear what we do not understand and misunderstandings or mistranslations from one culture to another can create an interesting ripple-effect.

Cementing your characters cultures and worldview is paramount to crafting an interesting and believable world that strays far from our own, never underestimate the power of consistency and clarity.

-E

[elaz-ivero]

The Sun Ballad Project// Chapter Four - False God

-“In the dark room a little flicker of light appears, a lone candle flame flickers solitary until it is joined by a million more and objects, tables, bodies and glossy statues seep into sight.” 

False God is the fourth chapter and one of the shortest chapters in The Sun Ballad it delves into religion + extortion and explores the diverse culture of Mediva and its inhabitants. When I worldbuild I try and explore different ways for people in certain domains could choose to worship, to they sing, dance, what do they sacrifice, False God shows one facet of how Medivans worship their pantheon, it explores face shifting. 

Face shifting is a cultural commodity in Mediva, almost every major area has an elder with one hundred faces, figuratively of course who promises to reveal to a suffering individual which god they have angered by allowing the sick to watch as the elder paints his face to mimic the depictions of the nine great gods, the subconscious responds by painting out similar features upon the clients face. Like a planchette upon an ouija board. It is a deeply personal and unsettling experience and in this chapter Yhw is forced to return to the place where he was branded and changed from a child of his town to someone in eternal servitude to a magan, the same process of branding cattle. This chapter is honestly my favourite sitting around 2,002 words, the language is so evocative and the imagery is strong and emotional giving off a sense of unnatural warmth and the darker side of worship and a religion based in fear. 

//Excerpts

The elder with one hundred faces proves that not everyone mellows with age.

“Tension fills Yhw’s jaw and he stands, petrified as familiarity fraught with fear snuck into his head which treated Yhw’s imagination as a possible reality. The smell of burning fireweed turns, tricks into the tortured stench of burning meat, of oxtail tendons charcoaling and growing stiff. The sight of an old man, sitting upright at the end of a thin line of bone coloured carpet twists to become an uncanny wrathful beast mimicking the appearance of the human body to lure him inside.”

Even when writing this story I forget that Yhw is technically a slave to Erin, he is indebted to him, he does all the housework and fieldwork and is his only prodigy and in order to ensure readers are reminded I like to add in snippets, moments where Erin abuses his power and speaks to Yhw likes he’s property to remind them that Yhw is almost never in a position where he can refuse an order, decide his own fate. The old man is the same one who oversaw Yhw’s branding, Ahers magan symbol and Erin’s initials. 

“You are well dressed it’s rare to see someone so young be so conservative and accurate with their wear. I cannot decipher where you begin and where you end although...the earring in your ear reeks of vanity, it objectifies you.”

Imagine being objectified by one random earring in your ear, what a hard life my protagonist lives. 

“The elder opens his mouth again, his tongue twisting inside and immediately his voice changes, it becomes hollow without accent, without emphasis or pitch, it is words written without passion on paper and then read aloud, he speaks like this and the room descends into quiet, it has begun and Yhw trying not to let fear so obviously slide down his checks and tearfully drip from his chin looks up, only the elder can end it now.”

This ceremony is the equivalent to learning your results at the end of a doctors visit, the scary part is the end when you are forced to confront the truth. Here in this religion the gods can strike and smite a mortal at any moment and Yhw knows, deep down he knows he’s angered one of them likely the goddess of death and knows he has to do something to regain their trust and love and he isn’t always prepared to do that. 

The elder comes to the conclusion that Yhw has angered the god of hunting and thus should do what was required; 

However, Yhw thinks the elder is lying, covering up his confusion with an easy-out, when observing the pattern his subconscious creates Yhw notices it is erratic and non-sensical. In Chapter Five, he discovers who is really haunting him. 

What I learned/ reflections: This chapter simply taught me the joy of creating your own ambient playlist specifically for each chapter, I used ambient-mixer and a playlist of Polynesian music because the chorus and unison of the speakers sends shivers down my spine it’s so powerful. It helps immerse me in the scene and conjure up imagery that fits the scene and emotional vibe I’m going for. 

Explore alternate forms of worship; 

-E

[elaz-ivero]

The Worldbuilding Diaries- Chapter Six; Fantasy Langauges Part two

In Part One I went over how languages are formed and how their structure and style can impact how its speakers are perceived and the languages survivability, in this post I’ll discuss how you can make your fantasy language feel both believable and impactful existing and affecting communication between cultural groups. Communication can be the only way to resolve conflict and if combating groups cannot speak to each other due to a language barrier that might affect how problems and issues around ideas are resolved. 

Recording and teaching languages can be a long and painstaking process, many people have tried to create universal languages and teach as many people as possible their new conlang to no avail. In the region, your story is based is there one national language or multiple, representing different groups and their different dialects and languages. Are representatives and members of higher classes taught multiple languages so they can better communicate on their travels and if they don’t how does this affect their interactions with international parties and members of other groups. One criticism of the fantasy genre is how characters originating from different parts of the world unanimously understand each other and speak only English, this doesn’t have to be the case, language barriers can allow you to explore different forms of communication and allow characters to slowly get to know each other and understand each others’ cultures and tongue. 

Recording and translating information from one language to another isn’t always easy, double-meanings and poor translations can result in a piece of literature or message being interpreted different from people from different regions, your protagonist might struggle to reason with an antagonist that doesn’t understand him or find allies in foreign countries or allied nations that don’t understand their language or have different values. 

Explore these struggles, find ways for language and mistranslations to be interesting and impact your story. I tend to begin my stories with two main dialects and in the second draft blend these languages together and create sub-cultures with different translations and create a master list on the words I’ve used and what they mean. 

Happy writing and conversing, 

-E

[elaz-ivero]

The Worldbuilding Diaries- Chapter Five; Fantasy Languages Part One

Languages are an integral and crucial part of how we as a species connect, communicate and is susceptible to cultural evolution, it develops with the people who carry it and can be built on an already established language or be sprung out of a desire to teach beyond simple mimicking. 

It’s important to understand that implementing a fantasy language into your work isn’t as easy as mixing up the English alphabet and trying to find a word that sounds nice, your readers will be able to gauge whether your language includes things like unique phrasing, conjunctions and vowels. What you should aim to create is a conlang, a constructed language, elvish is an example of a conlang, a real language created through artificial means. 

First here are some important definitions; 

Language; the words, their pronunciation and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community. 

Accent; an effort in speech to stress one syllable over adjacent syllables 

Dialect; a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language.

Jargon; The technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group. 

Language is a large topic hence why this diary entry has been split into two parts, here we’ll discuss how languages originate and how you can evolve your culture and language simultaneously through understanding the process, sound theory and how to charecterize a group of individuals using their language and how biology can affect how language is spoken. 

Language originates when people, or intelligent life forms need to pass on information or discuss concepts beyond simple sounds, imitation and hand gestures, it’s important to understand that there must be an observable and instant benefit to your group if they use language for modern humans it allowed us to perfect tool making and make plans before executing hunts, leading to more food and an increased rate of survival. If your fantastical group is nomadic and isolated, hardly coming across another of their species they may not have ever needed proper or intricate communication and hand gestures and simple phrases might have worked just fine. 

Langauge is also diverse and I encourage you to listen to music and audio of the hundreds of spoken languages around the world, you’ll hear distinct differences in tone and pronunciation, for example, you might notice that a lot of northern languages use more rushed breaths, the mouth opens wider when speaking some African languages use clicking sounds as a substitute for words and these differences could help inspire some raw and new originality in your work.

For example, in one of my own fantasy languages, Nyefis , every word is spoken in two parts, Nye...Fis because the cultural group it originates from had to because of the protective gear in their mouths protecting them from the harsh arctic winds could only keep their mouths open for so long, words had to be spoken in two breaths and the words tend to be quite short until cultural evolution occurs and the group’s ancestors travel down the mountain to a warmer climate and explore literature and art more, later words associated with these things are longer and more romantic. 

By understanding how language originates you can also explore how your society originated and understanding how language dies will help you establish how fragile/well preserved the language in your story is. Has a language been outlawed due to war, is slang allowed or frowned upon, is everyone allowed to learn the language or can only a select few speak it? What birthed your language and what could possibly kill it?

Now you have your origin, what exactly is the language, if you choose to make your own alphabet (good luck making up over 20 new sounds) or use a pre-established one understanding how sound can indicate a culture or personality is interesting. I split my languages into three main types, light, harsh and medium. Light languages are built on soft sounds, H’s and S’s, whispered through pursed lips and delicately spoken, a lot of romantic languages play with lighter sounds, using o’s and frequently a persons’ pitch gets higher as they near the end of a word. By formulating a language using softer, sweeter, song-like tones and sounds the reader might already associate it with, civility, education, history, royalty.

Harsh languages are formulated with harsher sounds, k’s, t’s and q’s, it snaps on the tongue and you might notice a lot of ‘villainous species’ languages are either very huffy and low or sharp and loud this is because these sounds immediately convey anger, hostility and harshness. 

Medium Languages are a middle ground with both harsh and soft tones, it can be kind sounding or cruel and is open to interpretation. I like to choose the primary sounds of my language based on its origin, if the language originated from a hot climate it’ll likely be softer and shorter whereas if it originates from a harsher, survival against mother nature type climate it’ll be colder with stronger tones and sounds and include longer words. 

Treat your language like an art piece, chose the tones and shades carefully, did your people have the time to sit and chat and have long conversations or did planning have to be quick and concise and long words that mean several sentences had to be created. 

Biology is...important, human mouths are structured in a way that allows us to create a variety of sounds and yet some people struggle to roll their r’s or pronounce languages outside of their own, is their mouth structured differently? Nope, when we speak our mother tongue we cycle through muscle movements and tongue placements natural to us, pronouncing something differently forces us to figure out how to replicate the sound this is what leads to original accents poking through. If your society involves unique species that aren’t human clones with horns or longer ears think about their biological makeup, if they have fangs does that affect how they can open their mouths, can they whistle through one side of their mouth and that is a stand-alone letter in their language? For example, in my story I have a fantasy race that have black teeth which are shaped in a way that they have diastemas (gaps in their teeth) they can whistle through, a long whistle is a calling the equivalent of ‘come here’ or ‘follow me’, a short whistle is the equivalent of saying, ‘uhhhhhhhh’ its a thinking sound, a, please give me a moment I’m thinking. This is because they talk so much and so quickly they use this as a quick easy way to communicate to others without having to fully open their mouths. 

Think about other ways your species could communicate and how they could integrate that into your language, is a breath through the noise a way to breathe out after speaking for a long-winded period of time, is your language a mix of verbal and physical ques like signing or facial expressions. In order to avoid menial ‘small talk’ do the people wear necklaces with their name, parents and occupation on it so that they and a stranger can talk about what’s more important? 

Part 2 coming soon; 

Enjoy creating, there are so many amazing resources out there including the official conlang website https://conlang.org/resources/ 

Bye for now, -E

[elaz-ivero]

The Sun Ballad Project// Chapter Three - A Scene of Slaughter

“Outside, early morning mourned...”  

Chapter Three, A scene of Slaughter acts like a middle man between two much larger and catalystic chapters, it, as its title states is one long singular scene which shifts the stakes around each character present. It is 3,492 words long and is currently my shortest chapter, it’s about death and compounds the events of the previous chapters and steers it toward a resolution. This chapter follows Yhw as he is forced to slaughter an old oxen in his paddock and reckon with death in all its states and the reality that they’ve invited something non-human into their house. It ends with Erin deciding to entrust solving the manner to the closest religious zealot in the next town over, the elder.

A scene of Slaughter as it stands is a gradual introduction into the intense and complex chapter to come. It helps progress the plot forward and guide the reader to some closure for their questions. I’m really proud with how it’s written, the beginning establishes a scenic serene atmosphere that turns the usual bright open fields of Mediva into a foggy sea of ghosts and haunting talismen.

Excerpts

//Opening Scene

In the opening scene Yhw is struggling after two sleepless nights and although he is still hidden away at home, protected in his absence from society, he is still required to complete his chores, he might have almost died but he’s a servant first. In order to subdue the cow, he has to kill this boy mixes oats and brandy!!!! together, fully getting this poor cow drunk. But to his luck, spooky shenanigans have occurred as the oxen is already laying on the striking stone, ready to die. It’s in this cows severed head’s eye Yhw realises his right pupil has gone white, a sign of death and that he’s touched divinity, not a good sign. He returns to the house where he and Erin discover their traced spell sheets are currently in the fire...burning, placed there by someone or something.

Erin like every young mentor dumps his problematic apprentice at this regions version of a therapist and hopes the elder will discover which god Yhw has angered and provide some insight into how they can stop these superstitious events from occurring. Their gods aren’t kind though and are known to smite mortals if they wish and confronted with the possibility Yhw has upset one is an unsettling thought so they travel to Ismarn, where the elder, connected to the divine resides. Ismarn is a very different place to Boudow;

In Ismarn money is made purely to trade, to give and receive, you do not hold onto it or horde it in large amounts, they display their faith in purchasing, transforming the triangular bronze coins into preservers, quality materials and livestock. In Ismarn, it snows in summer and they are slightly less strict with their clothing and allow the tops of their shoulders (how scandalous) to be shown. 

Here, in this almost but not quite familiar town, Yhw returns to the elder’s abode which is grande and protected by many cold-faced guards, anything associated with divinity is dangerous and unknown and this is where the chapter ends allowing the next to be solely dedicated to exploring this unique aspect of the pantheonic religion Yhw’s society depends on. In this new room, Yhw has entered there will always be answers, which you will receive, only if the fates decide you deserve them.

// Final Line

A Scene of Slaughter is a chapter that acts like the binding connecting Chapter two and four together, the stepping stones connecting the splitting paths, there are moments where it slows and allows it’s poor characters to take a break and enjoy the scenery. I can’t wait to share Chapter Four, False God with you. 

Till then, Stay strung along the unbeaten path. 

-E