thequantumwritings:

Sometimes i think about the idea of Common as a language in fantasy settings.

On the one hand, it’s a nice convenient narrative device that doesn’t necessarily need to be explored, but if you do take a moment to think about where it came from or what it might look like, you find that there’s really only 2 possible origins.

In settings where humans speak common and only Common, while every other race has its own language and also speaks Common, the implication is rather clear: at some point in the setting’s history, humans did the imperialism thing, and while their empire has crumbled, the only reason everyone speaks Human is that way back when, they had to, and since everyone speaks it, the humans rebranded their language as Common and painted themselves as the default race in a not-so-subtle parallel of real-world whiteness.

In settings where Human and Common are separate languages, though (and I haven’t seen nearly as many of these as I’d like), Common would have developed communally between at least three or four races who needed to communicate all together. With only two races trying to communicate, no one would need to learn more than one new language, but if, say, a marketplace became a trading hub for humans, dwarves, orcs, and elves, then either any given trader would need to learn three new languages to be sure that they could talk to every potential customer, OR a pidgin could spring up around that marketplace that eventually spreads as the traders travel the world.

Drop your concept of Common meaning “english, but in middle earth” for a moment and imagine a language where everyone uses human words for produce, farming, and carpentry; dwarven words for gemstones, masonry, and construction; elven words for textiles, magic, and music; and orcish words for smithing weaponry/armor, and livestock. Imagine that it’s all tied together with a mishmash of grammatical structures where some words conjugate and others don’t, some adjectives go before the noun and some go after, and plurals and tenses vary wildly based on what you’re talking about.

Now try to tell me that’s not infinitely more interesting.

This is a good idea, but my one caution is that it could lead to overcomplicated world-building. You shouldn’t have to be Tolkien and create you own language(s) before you write the darn book.

deirdrearchleone:

“One of the simplest ways to make the audience like a character is to show him liking other people. One of the easiest ways to make the audience care about a character is to show him caring about other people. We care about Harry Potter in no small part because he cares so much about his friends. It’s impossible to imagine Harry seeing Hermione get hurt and feeling anything but horror and guilt, no matter how terrible a fight they might have had beforehand. Katniss is by design a more prickly and “difficult” protagonist than Harry is, or than Moss seems intended to be, but we care about her from the start because we see how deeply she loves her sister and her willingness to sacrifice herself to protect her. Bad writers, though, often make the mistake of thinking that you make a character likable by showing that other characters like him, and make the audience care about him by showing that other characters care about him. This tends to have exactly the opposite effect. At a certain point the reader starts to wonder what’s so great about this guy that everyone is showering him with praise, and starts actively wanting to see him fail or be told off.”

— https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/325399.html?thread=1869956375#cmt1869956375
(via pitviperofdoom)

alyseofwonderland:

1 am thought: Tolkien wrote the original cross over au, taking Shakespeare, arthurian legend, and Norse Mythology to make his era’s SuperWhoLock, which he filled with his OCs, many that are either based on friends or work enemies, while also fixing canon issues, he went to the bar to drink and tell his buddies his head canons, wrote his fan fiction when he was supposed to be doing work, and he would receive comments begging to publish the next in the series from his readers. Tolkien was the OG cross over fandom writer and now he is taught in schools. 

Writing a book that is influenced by other books/plays is not fanficiton. Influence does not equal fanfiction.