A Fantasy Writing Community's Journal

Another Conlang Post
The previous post led me thinking along these lines. Sometimes, you need a conlang. You can't go around naming dragons Pamela and elves Barry. Not unless you're writing in a very tongue-in-cheek humorous style.

But people tend to notice when a name is 'made up', and start rolling their eyes at it too. The best solution is to develop a language and let the naming patterns emerge from a race's native language, no?

But not everyone can develop conlangs for whatever the reason. I've done research into it and everything I find says first determine what things sound like. Which I cannot do.

Which means I'm stuck with hiring someone else to do it for me. Which in turn leads to copyright issues. And the fact I'm not exactly able to plunk down a couple hundred or whatever would be a fair price to develop a couple of languages.

Is there another recourse aside from just scrapping three rough drafts, a detailed universes, and plot-intensive several-novel outline because fantasy writers need their own conlangs to be taken seriously with names for places and characters that aren't normal Earth languages?

Current Mood: discontent