The process of writing a rough draft can be… well… a bit rocky. Surprisingly, at the time I originally wrote this post to send to newsletter subscribers, the draft for a novella I’d been working on (and later shelved) had been going surprisingly smoothly.
Well… sort of.
Originally, I planned on it being a short story. (If you’ve been following me long at all, you probably have an idea of where this is going.
At the time I wrote newsletter email, the story was sitting firmly in the “novella” category at 28,000 words.
And it wasn’t done yet.
The story finalized at finalized at 37,000 words. For comparison, Magic’s Stealing is a novella of 34,000 words, and Wind and Words clocks in at 22,000 words.
The good news was that I only had two or three scenes left before the story is complete. Then came the challenge of editing to create a tight plot (because extraneous scenes like to make their way into the rough draft while I’m still figuring out the details).
Then I got to go back and add in the translations for the various spells and sections in different languages.
Which is what I wanted to talk about today. Because seriously, I had sections in the rough draft that looked something like this:
He came out of the storeroom with a shallow bowl and a pitcher of water. “Be la mireyan naébiéeth so nocho Farris NAME chono li mirra da nac so wusna miduhan la be.” (CHECK PHRASE… add (not to exceed my focus))
In this case, I snagged the scrying spell from The Shadow War, inserted the correct name (and realized I didn’t have the targetted character’s last name), and made a note to myself to recheck the phrase and add in an extra qualifying statement.
Err… it looks a lot more coherent when it’s done.
The extra fun part of this was that I knew I’d probably have to do additional grammar work due to including the then-fledgeling conlang in the story.
He went back to the storeroom and came out with a shallow bowl and a pitcher of water. “Be la fayquelvi miruen, mireyan naébiéeth so nocho Farris chono li mirra da nac so wusna miduhan la be.”
Magic, not to exceed my focus, reveal the location of Farris in the form of an image in the bowl of water before me.
And as you might notice… I decided to omit the last name. Ideally, the caster would use the full name. But this character is supposed to be exceedingly strong at wielding intent versus precision (which is also extremely dangerous), so it’s fine. And words got added.
But that’s a little look into my rough draft process where conlangs are involved.
Originally I planned to release this story after Magebane, with the idea that it was going to be a bridge between The Wishing Blade series and the Stone and String series.
But Isaac pointed out some world-breaking holes in the current version of the story, so it’s been hanging out on the back shelf of one of my hard-drives while I tackle other books.
That said, I’d like to return to this one eventually…
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Read the two series that this novella was intended to bridge…
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Happy reading and writing!
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 