“Naming Names…Terminology, Place Names and People Names”

Every author of fiction deals with the issue of names.  Names of people.  Names of places.  Science Fiction writers have additional challenges, when writing about future events or technologies, alien cultures, distant places and worlds.  Sometimes it’s a strain on the old imagination.  And you need to be consistent too.

In my sf novel, The Farpool, I was faced with the need to develop a language and some terminology for a race of intelligent marine creatures.  The planet is called Seome.  The inhabitants are the Seomish.  Below is what I said in my Notes about their language…

‘Seomish is designed phonetically to carry well in a water medium. Hard, clicking consonants are common.  The ‘p’ or ‘puh’ sound, made by violent expulsion of air is also common.  Modulation of the voice stream, particularly at high frequencies (sounding much like a human whistle) produces the characteristic “wheeee” sound, which is a root of many words.  Translation from Seomish to human languages like English requires some inspired speculation, since so many Seomish phrases seem to be little more than grunts or groans, modulated in frequency and duration.

‘Most Seomish words are grouped according to several characteristics: (1) Who is speaking (the personal); (2) who is being spoken to (the indicative); (3) state of mind of the speaker (the conditional); (4) the kel-standing of the conversants (the intimant).

‘Each classification has a set of characteristic pre-consonants, to indicate the nature of the coming words, etc. Thus:

1. k’, kee, t’
2. tch, g, j, oot
3. m’, p’, puh’ (both anger, dislike, distaste, etc), sh, sz (both joyful)
4. each kel identifies itself with a unique set of capitalized consonants, like a vocal coat of arms.  Example: t’milee, or CHE’oray…Seomish  versus Timily or Chory…English.’
    
   I was faced with creating a language from scratch and creating words to describe things and concepts, and doing so in a way consistent in itself and consistent with the nature of a marine world where sight was less important and sound and scent were more important.  You’ll have to read the book to see how successful I have been.
    
   Even when writing stories set on Earth in this current time, you have to give people names.  Sometimes, you have to give places names too.
    
   I have found that a map or an atlas is a great place to look for both.  Think about it: many towns and cities, in countries all over the world are named for people.  Pick a country.  Say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in central Africa.  Suppose you have a story or a scene set there.  You have characters from there.  A cursory examination of a map turns up names like Kisangani.  Or Kananga.  Mbandaka,  Or Lualaba.  The first three are towns.  The last is a river.  All could serve admirably as names of people.  Or you could concoct your own, by mixing and matching syllables…Kan-daka, Luangani, Mbananga, etc.  You get the picture.
    
   It can be fun to do this.  For some of my stories in Tales of the Quantum Corps that are set in Kenya, I used a combination of Google Translate (Swahili) and my own made-up words to give some of the locals phrases to say, to lend some authenticity and color to the story.  In doing this, beware.  A little goes a long way.  And indeed, in The Farpool, I had to dial the language and the jargon back a few notches in the interest of advancing the story in ways that could be understood by human readers.
    
   Which brings me to people names.  Most authors could expound for days on this subject.  There are writers who chose people names with excruciating care, in ways that resonate with their imagined personality or character.  An optimistic person, persevering in the face of incredible odds, with a name like Hope.   Or Franz Kafka’s story The Castle, where the protagonist is named simply ‘K,’  or The Metamorphosis by the same author, where the main character Gregor Samsa is transformed into a large bug. 
    
   In my serialized story Nanotroopers (and in Tales of the Quantum Corps), the main character is named Johnny Winger.  Does that mean he wants to fly or fly off?  No, I just like the sound of it. 
    
   When a writer chooses a name for a character, it should never be something which detracts from the intent of the writer in telling the story.  It should support the writer’s concept of the character or at least be neutral.  And the main character might not even be human, to wit, ‘HAL’ in Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
    
   Some pundits say use a phone book for people names.  Does anybody still use phone books?  Or a map or an atlas.  I say use common sense.  My next door neighbor is named Jim Morris.  His wife is Maureen Corley.  I’ve used names of people I know for years in bit parts of my stories.  And I didn’t ask permission. 
    
   Like anything else involved in writing stories, naming names should be done with some thought and care.  That doesn’t mean you spend weeks and months agonizing over it.  Before I ever write one word of a story, I have a Chapter and Scene Details outline and a List of Major Characters.  That’s where I settle on names and jobs and functions and basic personality.  In fact, here’s the list of characters for an upcoming novel in my Tales of the Quantum Corps series:
    

Major Characters:   This occurs in 2155 AD.

1. Johnny Winger   A nanobotic angel swarm entity with Doc III maintaining original identity
2. Doc III   Evolved variant of Doc II swarm entity that works as a valet and butler to Winger.
3. Liam Winger  Nanobotic angel, deconstructed from and patterned after the only son of Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant; once a physicist at Cambridge University UK
4. Dana Tallant  A nanobotic angel swarm entity, de-constructed from and patterned after the original Dana Tallant
5. Dr. Vijay Vishnapuram  Secretary General of the United Nations
6.  Moki Matsumora   Solnet reporter
7.  General Lamar Quint   CINCQUANT (UN)
8.  Angelika Komar   UN Security Affairs Commissioner (UNSAC)
9.  General Mahmood Salaam CINCSPACE (UN)
10.  General Nat Coker   CINCCYBER (US)
11.  President of the United States (POTUS)  Julio Echeverria Fernando
12.  Dana Polansky  Reporter for Solnet/WorldNet and a contributor to Special Report series
     
    Naming names and developing terminology and language is a key part of the writer’s craft.  Every writer is different but there are some good practices to follow to make it work.  Just remember this: when you choose a name for a person or a place, make sure it doesn’t (unintentionally) detract from the story. 
     
    Next Monday is July 4 and Word Shed will take this day off, returning to posting on this blog on July 11.  Have a great holiday.
     
    Phil B.

“The Farpool  is coming…get ready!”

1.     I have just recently finished the first draft of my new sf novel The Farpool.  With this post, I hope to give you a peek behind the curtains at what comes next.  See, the writing part is the fun part.  Now, comes the hard part.  It’s like eating cake versus flossing your teeth.

2.     Currently I’m giving the story a good first read, editing as I go.  So far, I’ve dropped the Prologue completely and will probably drop an entire chapter.  The story as finished at first draft, and with an appendix, is about 310 pages, formatted for Smashwords.  When I’m done, I expect it to come in at about 280 pages.  It should be a tighter story.  That’s what editing is about.

3.     When a writer puts on his editor hat, it’s important that he isn’t in love with his own words. Does the story move and keep you interested…or do your eyes glaze over?  Sometimes, the writing was such an effort that it’s like tearing out fingernails to give up any of those hard-won words.  My advice: tear out your fingernails.  Especially in certain types of science fiction, where alien worlds have to be designed and developed, there is a tendency to include all your research, to make it worthwhile.   This temptation should be avoided.  Include what’s necessary to move the story and convey the atmosphere, no more.  And remember, the reader’s own imagination is your best tool.  A few well-chosen evocative words can go a long way.

4.     After editing, comes marketing.   There are a number of possibilities for a relatively unknown writer such as me.  This blog is one of them.  I do have another blog as well, but that one is more devoted to my series Tales of the Quantum Corps.  I’d like to keep the two separate.   I can and have done chapter excerpts.  I could even set up a whole new blog for what I hope will be at least three Farpool Stories.  The only thing that keeps me from doing that is I’d be writing three blogs at once and that’s more than I want to undertake at this time.

5.     Another good marketing tool I will be working on is making sure I have a good cover.  I have a working cover and it conveys the general idea but you can tell it wasn’t done by a professional.  Let’s face it: we all judge books by their cover.  Mine is supposed to convey the idea of whirlpool, beginning in the oceans of earth (like a waterspout) and blending into some kind of interstellar wormhole/black hole whirlpool in an outer space setting.  Thus, the Farpool…get it? 

6.     I keep all the things I need to do in this post-first draft phase by maintaining a file called NEXT STEPS.  Below is my file for this project, updated to be current….

NEXT STEPS:

7.     Complete any needed expansion of General Story Outline, especially Research Needs. DONE

8.     Write up details on Coethi-Uman conflict, circa early 2300s. Explanation of starball weapon.  DONE

9.     Research details on sequence of events in a star collapse, or supernova.  Is Sigma Albeth B big enough to go supernova?  DONE

10.  Time Twister design and operational details DONE

11.  Create a map and details of Scotland Beach, FL. DONE

12.  Background and personality sketches on major characters DONE

13.  Some detail on the nature of the adaptive modifications that Chase and Angie go through to enable them to survive on Seome.  DONE

14.  Finish Table of Plot Lines DONE

15.  Group table entries into chapters  DONE

16.  Write Chapter and Scene Details  DONE

17.  Start a List of Major Players DONE

18.  Create details of Uman Time Displacement Battery stationed on Seome’s Kinlok Island.  DONE

19.  Re-read The Shores of Seome before starting  DONE

20.  Started first draft: 13 October 2015.  Finished first draft: 8 June 2016.

21.  Review and edit final 

22.  Spellcheck 

23.  Book descriptions 

24.  Tag lines

25.  Word 97 version

26.  Verify cover format USE JPEG! 

27.  Print final

 

This is just a big To Do list, with some things done and some still to be done.  This is how I make sure I do all the things necessary to make a story into a finished book product.

 

28.  I would also like to include a map of Seome if I can find out whether Smashwords formatting will support it.  A map would help clarify things in the story.  The problem with this is that Smashwords’ Style Guide says their formatting requirements strongly advise against using an image with text embedded in it.  Well, a map is pretty useless without some embedded text.  So this may have to wait for later.

29.  This post is an update on how The Farpool is coming along.  With any luck, you’ll see it uploaded to Smashwords (Fiction/General Science Fiction…) sometime in the next month.  Then I’ll clue everyone in as to my next project.

30.  Next week’s blog post…Naming Names.  Terminology, place names and people names.  It’s a little discussed piece of the writerly arts.

31.  See you on Monday June 27.

“SF Writer Invents Brand New Thingamajig!”

To mangle a popular witticism, “invention is the mother of necessity.”

Science fiction writers are always inventing new worlds, new species, new technologies, bigger and faster spaceships, etc.  I’m no exception.

For my new SF novel The Farpool, I invented a device called a Time Twister.  The Time Twister is actually a weapon.  It’s designed to be based on a stable world and search out enemy forces, then yank those forces into another timestream.   At the time of this story, humans can travel back and forth in multiple time streams and so can the enemy.  To preserve human settlements in the Galactic Halo, these timestreams have to be regularly policed and swept clean of enemy forces.  One of these Time Twisters is physically located on Seome, the oceanic world that is at the center of The Farpool.  In fact, the actual Farpool is a spinoff phenomenon from operating the Time Twister.

Here’s what I wrote in my Notes describing the Time Twister:

The Time Twister and the Farpool

1.     The Time Twister is a device designed and installed by Umans (star-faring descendants of Earth and solar system Humans) to manipulate space and time over short volumes of space.  Any object caught in the Time Twister’s field of influence is accelerated out of the existing space –time field and flung through a wormhole into unknown and hopefully very distant reaches of space, perhaps even into other universes. 

2.     The Time Twister contains a naked singularity at the core of its field.  Umans have learned how to use existing stars and their extreme gravitational fields to compress matter enough to create such a singularity.  The distorted space-time field around this singularity core of the Twister is known as a twist field.  It’s like the warp field in Star Trek.

3.     Uman engineering has developed a way of both creating, maneuvering and regulating the effects of the twist field.  This is done through a screening field and series filters known as twist buffers, or just T-buffers. 

4.     Like a nuclear power plant with its core always on, but regulated by control rods, the Twister is also always on.  The singularity engine at the core, once created and activated, can’t be turned off.  But it can be regulated through a series of T-buffers.  These moderate the twist field.  The control station manned by Umans on Kinlok Island (Seome) essentially operates a system of T-buffers. 

5.     The military purpose (defensive) of the Twister is to protect a defined volume of space from intrusion or encroachment by enemies or adversaries.  The principal enemies of the Umans in the 24^th century (the Earth-centered time of the story The Farpool) are the Coethi. 

6.     The Time Twister is a Space-Time Displacement weapon.  It reaches out into space several parsecs and accelerates any unidentified object either forward or backward in time. 

7.     The Coethi are (thought to be) a race of sentient semi-robotic aliens whose main weapon against Uman forces is something Umans called a starball.  It is directed against the sun or star of a targeted Uman planetary system.  The only known defense is a Time Twister.  When a starball enters or is pulled into the twist field of a Twister, it is flung out of local space-time into the farthest reaches of the Universe.

8.     Umans and Coethi are contending for influence and territory in a region of the Milky Way known as the Galactic Halo.

9.     The main-sequence star Sigma-Albeth B is near the center of a key sector of the Halo.  It has four planets, one of them Seome.  Seome is an ideal site to build and operate a Time Twister to defend this sector, known to Humans as Halo-Alpha. 

10.  One of the side effects of Time Twister operation on a mostly oceanic world like Seome is a series of whirlpools near the base at Kinlok Island. 

11.  One of these whirlpools is especially deep and intense.  In this whirlpool, the twist field has spun off a sort of miniature or daughter wormhole.  It isn’t very big.  It isn’t very stable, fluctuating daily in intensity and location.  But it will send objects that enter to other places in the Universe, other places different in both time and space.

12.  The Seomish call this mother of all whirlpools the Farpool.  By accident, they have learned that at certain times of the year, under certain conditions created by operating the Time Twister, the Farpool can send small objects…a few Seomish and their gear…to other places and times.  One of those places turns out to be 22^nd century Earth itself. 

13.  In effect, the Seomish have learned how to travel back in time and space to the ancestral home planet of the Umans.  The Umans don’t know this.  And they don’t care, as they are engaged in running duels with local forces of the Coethi. 

14.  Using the Farpool to reach Earth and return to Seome requires exquisite timing and control of the whirlpools generated by the Twister.  Use of the Farpool is basically at the mercy and sufferance of the Umans and how they operate the Twister.  But the Seomish are smart.  They have catalogued the conditions they need and built an algorithm to help predict when these conditions will occur.  When the right conditions appear, the Seomish know to be ready to enter Farpool. 

15.  There have been several occasions when the Farpool didn’t work as the Seomish predicted.  In all these situations, the Seomish travelers failed to make it to Earth, or failed to return to Seome.  Where or when they went is unknown.  When this has happened, the Seomish have memorial services and try to learn what went wrong.  This process has led to their ability to predict and manage how to use the Farpool.  In recent months, the Seomish have been able to reliably go and return from 22^nd century Earth. 

16.  The Seomish hope to use the knowledge they gain from these expeditions to either shield their world from the destructive effects of the Twister or, failing that, drive the Umans from Seome and destroy or disable the Twister.  It’s wrecking their ocean waters.  They know that if the Twister is destroyed, they will lose this link to another world of intelligent people.  That would be a loss of inestimable value.  But the Twister and the noise and vibration it creates on Seome is an existential threat.

17.  The Time Twister must go.

18.  The dilemma is that Seome lies in a disputed region of space, the Middle Galactic Halo.  The Umans have sited the Twister on Seome because its vast oceans help cool the machine and help conceal its purpose.  There are 3 reasons why Seome is the best location for this weapon:

a.     Its strategic location in the Galactic Halo

b.     Stability and cooling properties of the oceans

c.     Concealment possibilities of the ocean

19.  The Umans want to prevent the Coethi from entering the Halo in force.  By controlling the Halo, the Umans deny the enemy effective reconnaissance positions for galaxy-wide operations.

20.  The basic structure of the Twister is that of a truncated cone surmounted by some 72 hemispherical caps and resting on a shallow conical floating platform.

21.  The Twister is approximately 12 km in diameter, about 38 km in circumference and nearly 1 km deep.  The caps are time displacement nodes and are above the surface of the ocean.  The rest of the structure is below the ocean surface.

22.  In operation, the Twister oscillates at a high-frequency, sending strong vibrations around Seome’s oceans, which help to dampen the machinery.  These vibrations are deadly to Seomish life.

23.  There is some ‘spill’ of time displacement effects around the Twister.  These leaks take the form of deadly temporal flux currents—zones of time displacement—where an intruder could find himself momentarily shot forward in time a few minutes or hours, or even days, or millennia, depending on the leak.  One of these leaks is especially long-lived, and is the source of the Farpool.

24.  The Twister functions by creating a warping or twisting field in space-time, and rotating that field into the future (or past).  The hemispherical caps are the origins of the twist lines of force and they drag space time into an extreme curvature before translating it out of stability.  The Twister creates a vast cone of displaced space-time, in effect, a sink, some ten parsecs in axial effect.

 

Now the question for a writer is how much of this detail to use in the story.  In The Farpool, I have another device called an echobulb.  It’s basically a universal translator that enables our human hero Chase Meyer to be able to converse with intelligent marine creatures like the Seomish.  In addition, the echobulb functions as a sort of encyclopedia and dictionary, like a smartphone.  Chase can download and listen to explanations of things.  Convenient, huh?  I’ve used this technique to include some (but not all) of the text above right in the story. 

Next week, I’ll delve a little more into the backstory of The Farpool.  I just finished the first draft (it took about 8 months) and now I’m into re-reading and reviewing and editing.

 

See you on June 20.

 

Phil B.

“Update on The Farpool”

My next science fiction novel, The Farpool, is nearing the end of its first draft.  This will probably occur by the end of June.  I’m anticipating that the first draft will weigh in at around 300 pages, maybe a little more. 

Then the fun begins.  This is called editing, about as much fun as flossing your teeth, but equally necessary.  My normal practice during the first draft is to pause briefly every 100 written pages or so and re-read from the start, to see if the story flows and is tracking with my outline. Now, after completing the first draft, comes the Big Edit.  Re-read from the beginning and try to act like a disinterested reader.  Does the story grab me?  Does it pull me in?  Does it flow and make sense?  Are the characters, in this story, largely intelligent marine creatures, believable?  What can I cut out?  What can I do to tighten things up?  And is the setting believable and what of it can I cut out…usually a good bit.  I expect this will take several weeks, maybe a month.  But the end result should be a cleaner, tighter, more compelling story.

One thing that I am keen to do with this book is to use this story, especially the ending, as a way to set up the next book.  I have planned this as a series, probably three books.  So I have to lay the groundwork in the first book for the conflicts and story elements to come.  So far, I’m doing that by dropping hints, setting up conflicts that won’t really be fully resolved in this story.  And I’m writing the first story with a longer time horizon so the reader will understand that the story goes on.  In fact, because of a military conflict which has damaged their sun, the Seomish in The Farpool will be using the wormhole to emigrate to Earth and populate our oceans and live there…in other words, two intelligent races existing on the same planet.  And Humanity doesn’t really know about this, except for one young man: Chase Meyer.  Chase is the protoganist and a key character in the first story and his story will continue in the next.

Additional steps to be accomplished over the summer include finalizing the cover art (this is really important, since we all judge books by their cover), then write up my short and long book descriptions and tag lines for Smashwords.  Also, I’ll have to make a decision on what Smashwords category to upload this story into…probably General Science Fiction.

By the way, Smashwords offers authors a feature call Pre-order.  In this feature, you can upload a cover, some descriptions and other small details and Smashwords will post it as a pre-order.  You don’t have to upload the finished story until later, at a time of your choosing.  Smashwords promotes this as a way to build an early audience and enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.  I’ll decide on this late this summer and possibly upload the full story in the fall.

Which brings me to the world of marketing.  There are a lot of good marketing ideas out there but for authors who have limited budgets and who also work a full time job, the possibilities are limited.  I expect to make use of this blog and another that I write as a possible venue for marketing efforts.  So you can expect to see more in this direction on The Word Shed in the coming months, perhaps even including excerpts and sample chapters from the story.  I could even create a new blog just to engage readers and assorted hangers-on in a give and take about the world of The Farpool.  And it wouldn’t hurt to update my own website at wix.com, to include the first of what should be multiple Farpool stories.

So, look for additional details about The Farpool in the upcoming posts, including character background, details of setting, where the series is going and anything else I can think or you tell me would be interesting.  I view The Word Shed as a medium for me as a writer-author to talk with and listen to my readers.

Don’t be shy.

See you on June 13.

Phil B.