Even though only like two people read these entries, I'm still going to post this here.
When writing, sometimes a name for a person or place just comes to me. Other times I end up using some generic placeholder until I can come up with something. When that happens, there's a method I sometimes use, that might be useful to other people.
First, think of some characteristic about the person, or place you're trying to name. Or you can even go with what they are/what it is. For example, if your character is your villain, and the place you're trying to name is a wizard's tower. Now that you've got that, go to Wiktionary and type that word in. Go to the translations section and look for a word in another language that would work as a name. You don't have to use the word exactly, you can change it slightly or significantly, this is simply for inspiration. I didn't like any of the ones under villain, so you can use synonyms for that (if you don't know any, or can't think of any, use a thesaurus to find some) and then type in that word. I used evil, and scrolled down to the translations.
Hmm, let's see, the Asturian word for morally corrupt (found under the translations for evil) is malvau. The dark sorcerer Malvau? Not the best one I've come across, but I could work with that, and I'm sure with a little thought a letter or two could be changed to make it fit my world better.
What about our place, the wizard's tower? Velho Tornis. I could see that on a fantasy map. It's a combination of the Finnish word for wizard (velho) and the Latvian word for tower (tornis). Again, not the best combo I've come up with, but I spent about one minute on coming up with names for the villain and the tower. Spend a few minutes more searching for some related words and/or direct synonyms, and I think you'll often come up with something that works for you.
Simple method, that while it won't always give a satisfactory result, takes little time so trying it out doesn't cost you much. I hope maybe this method will someone out. For the people who do happen to read this, if you've got methods you use, feel free to share them in the comments. New ideas on how to do things are always helpful!
Just a little excerpt, a part of a part, an intro of sorts, to something I've been working on, on and off, for a couple years.
Rhys awoke with no more movement than a slight jerk of his head, and the opening of his eyes. He stared silently into the darkness, his senses straining to find any trace of what had jarred him from his sleep. He tilted his head slightly to the side and craned his neck in the manner people often do when searching for an unidentified sound. It had to have been a sound, it was always a sound. Right now the only sound he heard was his own shallow, rapid breaths and beating of his heart as it tried to pound its way out of his chest. He didn’t need to hear it again, he hoped he wouldn’t hear it again, but he knew what sound had woken him. It was the sound of laughter.
That was the sound they made, the ones who were sick. One of the symptoms of the disease, Kuru-Ni, was uncontrolled fits of laughter. It was a terrible laugh, like the sound of an angry hyena. In fact, that’s what people had taken to calling those with the disease, hyenas, you’d often hear them laughing before they attacked.
And they always attacked. Kuru-Ni was a neurodegenerative disease, it ate the brain, and made the infected bat-shit crazy and aggressive as hell. Rhys had seen enough zombie movies as a kid for that to be scary enough, but these were no flesh-eating undead from his childhood that wanted to eat his brains. Not that they wouldn’t eat him when he was dead, they probably would, but what they really wanted was just the dead part. You. Dead.
Rhys almost wished they were zombies, at least they were always kind of stupid and couldn’t do much besides grab and bite you. The hyenas, well they were sure as hell as vicious as anything he’d seen in a movie, and crazy on top of it, but the worst part was they still had enough intelligence to use weapons. Thankfully not guns, the shakes, another symptom of the disease, were usually too bad for that. They could definitely use knives though, and bats, rocks, crowbars, and pretty much anything else they could get their hands on. Hell, he’d even seen one chop a guy up with a chainsaw once.
‘Well,’ Rhys thought to himself, ‘at least you don’t have to hit the hyenas in the head to bring them down. They’re no harder to kill than anyone else. Except for the fact that they’re strong, really strong. Why is it crazy people are always so fucking strong?’ Before he could come up with any answers, his thoughts were interrupted by another fit of laughter, somewhere in the distance.
He thought that bit of laughter sounded different than what he’d heard earlier. ‘There must be two of them. Fuck.’ He glanced around quickly, then sighed. ‘I’ve got to get out of the open.’ He pulled the straps of his backpack tighter onto his shoulders, stood up and touched the rough bark of the tree he’d been leaning against, then turned and started jogging down the hill in front of him, the sound of laughter echoing through the darkness.
It's not obvious, or even hinted at, in this piece, but the real focus of the story is what it means to be a hero. What it does to people. No one chooses to be a hero, they become a hero as a result of the choices they make. Those choices come with consequences. If you've ever heard the story of a real-life hero, or met one, you know there is one thing that seems to be universally true: heroes suffer. The journey of the hero isn't some grand adventure, it's a story filled with pain, and loss. Exactly what form that pain and loss take varies, but it's there, it's always there. Heroes, they are heroes not because they are superhuman in ability, but because they have a strength of will beyond what the rest of us possess. Somehow, despite the pain, the loss, the sorrow, they find the will to do what needs to be done, to do the things most of us could not, would not do. They rise above their fear, and use it, they use that fear to give them courage.
What happens to the hero, when the war is won? What happens to the hero, when the celebration is over? When talking to someone once about soldiers returning from war, and the mental and emotional trauma they've suffered, I said this: you cannot ask a man to go and do savage things, and not expect to then find some savagery within him. The things you have to do, to be the hero, do they change you?
Imagine that to save the lives of those you love, you had to kill. You had to kill with no weapon but your hands. It wasn't just one person, one man you had to kill, but several. You had to kill dangerous, determined men, with your bare hands, in a vicious way. Would you, after the blood, after the killing, be the same as you are now? Or would perhaps some part of you change, become lesser, with every life you tore away?
Now imagine you're the hero in a vicious world. To save the people you love, to save the country, the world you love, you have to kill. And kill. And kill again. You have to kill everyone who tries to stop you. You must win every fight, every battle, and eventually the war. Once you've won, once you've stepped over countless corpses, and saved the day, saved the world, how then, do you live in that world? Oh yes, you saved the world, but to do so, you had to become something, something that belonged in that vicious world, not this new, peaceful one. No, in this world, there's no place for blood, for killing, for a killer. There's no room for heroes here.
I'm not suggesting anyone make a game based off the ideas above. I didn't post this as a suggestion or advice. It's just a topic that I think about from time to time.
And speaking of time, thanks to anyone who took the time to read about the strange things that occupy my mind.
Since I'm relatively new and unknown in the community, probably no one will read this, but I'm going to write this anyway. Below are just a few quick tips that can help with the process of editing and proofreading your dialogue and other text in your game.
1. Type all of your dialogue in a Word or Google or Open Office (or whatever software you want to use) document. Doing this will provide several advantages.
These programs check spelling, and also check (to a more limited degree) grammar. This alone can save you some big headaches. Add to this the fact that if all of your text is in one document, when you find a misspelled word, you can simply CTRL+H (in most programs) and replace it. This process is much more tedious in the editor. Granted, you will still have to go back and replace the text in your editor, but now you know (if you highlight it, or follow another tip below) where it was used, and can simply copy+paste the whole line or block of text. If you just have it in the editor, you better hope you remember every single event you used that word in...
You can add comments and tags to the text so you know where (i.e. which events) it was used. Decide to change the name of a location, guess what, now you can CTRL+F or CTRL+H and if you commented or tagged the text, you’ve got a reference of exactly which events use that name, so you don’t have to go searching through the editor, and risk missing some.
With everything in a document, you can make all of your text and dialogue available to someone, without them having to play your game. (I know, you want people to play your game, but stick with me here.) This means if they’re looking at your text to proofread it, it will take significantly less time as they don’t have to run to the next town to get the next section. Also, if there are branching options in the text, they don’t have to replay sections to see all of the options. And what if you don’t want them to know about part of your story, but really want someone to check out part of your text that is after the big surprise event? Ell with everything in a document, you simply copy the part you want to show them to a new document and send it along, no need to make edits to your game/demo. Your text gets reviewed, and your big plot twist stays secret.
2. After doing the above, put it to use! Have someone else review your text. Our brains easily correct small errors in spelling, grammar, etc. This is especially true when you’ve read something multiple times, and/or have a preconceived notion of what it should say. A fresh set of eyes can make a world of difference!
3. When looking at your text, and/or when someone else is proofreading it, don’t look just for spelling and grammar errors. You should always read through things to see how they “flow.†By this, I mean how does the line actually sound, whether aloud or in your head? Sometimes a sentence or dialogue is technically correct, but still just seems a bit off to people. This is usually an example of poor flow, and is probably most often fixed by simply reorganizing the sentence. A major point to keep in mind here, is commas. I’m a comma freak, I use them in ridiculous numbers, so you certainly don’t need to use as many as I do. However, remember that while a sentence may be grammatically correct without a comma, it might significantly change what that sentence actually means or conveys, and to a lesser degree, how well it flows.
4. I know we have a lot of members whose native language is something other than English. Of those members, many choose to make games in English, and use some sort of translator (e.g. Google Translate). Something I have found useful when using these types of tools, is to retranslate your translation, back to your native language. For example, I emailed a friend in Japan recently, and couldn’t remember how to say a few things in Japanese. Luckily, Google did know how, so over to Google Translate I went. I typed in what I wanted to say, and it gave me some Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana. Everything looked great, until I copied and pasted the Japanese text into another window and translated it to English. It turns out that the meaning I was going for wasn’t there. I reworded my original statement slightly, and repeated this process. This time, things translated back and forth perfectly. The point? Using this simple method can help you can’t some of those little errors that seem to pop up in translations. Of course, maybe you want those, I mean, who doesn’t like a “all your base are belong to us†line or two now and then.
Hopefully, if anyone besides me reads this, these simple tips help you out. Some of the above are significantly easier to implement early in development as opposed to later, but even if you’re almost done, you can use them going forward if you think they’ll make things easier.
Inevitably, as this is a post about proofreading, I have made some grammatical or other error above and am not going to follow my own advice and double-check this. Given that, I apologize for any errors that I’m simply too lazy to correct. This is just a blog post after all.
