What I want to talk about, however, is the interesting concept the book brings up, which is “eugraphic” languages. Taken from euphonic, a eugraphic language is one that is pleasant to the reader or writer, and one of the things this book left my wondering is what types of written language would be most eugraphic to people with dyslexia more severe than mine. (I have a tendancy to muddle letters once or twice a sentence, but I correct as I type, and it’s not a huge disability for me in any way)

Initially I wondered at the possibility of a latin alphabet where each combination of letters was a word- so “an” and “na” would be considered the same. But this struck me as too difficult to recognise easily for less severely dyslexic people, and frankly, far too redundant, so I started considering logographic language.

Many asian languages use logograms to some extent, (with the notable exception of Korean, which uses a relatively modern alphabet so incredibly phonetic it would be nightmarishly cacographic for people with severe dyslexia) and they are essentially pictures and icons that represent a visual concept abstractly in much the same way that words like “poof!” represent sounds. From that starting point, I’ve come up with a “grammar” for my own runewriting system in the Worldcrystals series that would likely be considered quite eugraphic to any person with dyslexia. The idea is simple:

Each rune is based off a horizontal line, either crossing it, deforming it, or interrupting it. If you’re writing left-to-right, (the script can be written in any direction) two-rune words would be on either side of a vertical line. Three-rune words would form a (normally equilateral) triangle, four-rune words a square, and so on. Likely you would have fifty to a hundred runes in order to reduce the complexity of shapes needed down to nothing more than say, six sides. And by putting each “letter” of a word on a side of a uniform shape, we can easily express the concept that the order doesn’t matter, while still providing a recognisable whole with multiple valid “spellings”, where the sides are combined in a different order.

Prepositions and post-positions would be handled as directional two-rune words. For instance, the word “then” would point to the right if you used it as in English, or you could flip it around and it would suddenly mean “earlier”. Likewise, the word for “because” could be flipped around to become something a bit like the verb “causes”.

Another advantage of using geometric logograms is that you can extend binary conjunctions and disjunctions to trinary or quaternary ones. For instance, I outlined a vertical line with a rectangle to mean and- but you could just as easily use a triangle-within-a-triangle, branching the other words or clauses off in three directions, to express a sentence saying “x and y and z”. If you really wanted, in such a logographic language you could write a run-on sentence that’s twisted into a ring!

There are such wonderful ideas in Spellwright, it was quite nice to just let one of them grab me and delve into eugraphy and how it could effect things in my own work. I’m looking forward immensely to Spellbound’s release in New Zealand, and seeing if quaternary thoughts, or eugraphy, or language prime have any interesting places to go in the rest of the trilogy!

Hopefully when I finish my current studies (I’m working and studying part-time at the moment, hence why I’ve not been blogging or talking books and writing since last year) I’ll have a bit more time to put back into building on my writing. I have lots of books to talk about still, (from Terry Pratchett to Brandon Sanderson. I’ve also read Side Jobs, finished the Dark Tower, and read everything Brent Weeks has published so far) so hopefully when I can spare an hour I’ll do some more book reviewing, and maybe even get down to deconstructing things at a more technical level too.

It might be a month or two before I’m ready to start launching, and from there I’ll probably sit back and see how I keep up with the project so that I can have a schedule ready before I start promoting it. I’ll post both on a seperate blog and as a podcast, once I’ve sorted out what I’m doing there.

The three main characters thus far are known as “Insight”, “Shorty”, and “Arsonist”. Those are their super-identities, of course. You’ll have to sit tight to see what they’re called when they’re hobnobbing with their business associates at Wayne Enterprises*, or slogging through journalistic obscurity at the Daily Planet*.

I’m also saving myself research and setting the serial in my current hometown of Wellington, New Zealand. Everyone who’s always wanted a story covering southern hemisphere superheroes, your prayers have been answered!

*These locations will not actually be in the story, sorry. Underpowered will be a completely original work of fiction, although as it’s set in the near future, the characters will certainly know of Batman and Superman and perhaps even other superheroes. I have definite plans to work in a character who either read a lot of comics or watched a lot of superhero series, so there should be some meta-humour for those that want it.

Changes is a great example of how to keep a long series fresh. Jim changed things up with the typical life changes, family revelations, backstory reveals, and all those other tricks we use to keep people interested in a series.

Changes went a step further. It’s completely rebooted the series’ dynamic. As we find out on the first page, Harry is looking for a daughter he only just learned he has, and he goes through some tremendous losses in his attempt to make her safe. This is the kind of book we need more in fantasy- the plot-changing twists and turns follow their own theme. (the title telegraphs that there’s a theme behind the changes, but doesn’t give you a clue at all)

I’m not going to say we should all beat our characters up in exactly the way that Harry gets it in this book, but we should definitely consider having Huge Game Changers™ like this in the middle of a fantasy series. If the Dresden Files were a trilogy, this would be the second book that not only improved on the first one, but really kicked its ass.

If I can do half this well I’ll be gushing with pride.

This is fine though, it gives me something to flex the revision muscles. Currently the document is sitting at about 35,000 words, not counting the appendices that are probably more for my own reference at the moment. The plot is beginning to take shape, (those 35,000 words are stretched through a lot of scenes, and include some of the outlining in areas where I haven’t written enough to establish what’s going on) and it looks like it will be readable at the very least, which is exciting. It still very clearly needs test reading sometime to see if it resonates with my potential audience, and I need to resolve whether any of the scenes near the beginning make a strong enough opener. Right now I open by establishing the narrator and setting up some things for the series because it’s just sorted into chronological order.

Otherwise, I’ve been brainstorming a series of short stories in a universe I’m referring to mentally as Ouroboros. As the nickname suggests, it involves time travel- more specifically, it’s about a time-travel war between a distopian world government and a bunch of rebellious historians and scientists who invent time travel. So I have some plans to write about historians playing at being secret agents, mock Back to the Future while explaining that time travel paradoxes don’t really exist, and so on. I think hopefully the geeks-as-spies in a civil war thing should keep the time travel fresh for this universe, and I’m hoping I can use it for some cool short stories.

Firstly: Oh my god, what a great read. Without getting into spoilers, the plotline for Rand, and Egwene’s struggle, and finding out exactly what was going on with Verin Sedai are simply full of win. The plotting here is so spot-on that more and more I can’t understand the perspective of fans who were, presented with preview chapters, trying to nitpick what was written by Sanderson and what by Jordan. It might help that I was familiar with and liked both authors before coming to this book, but there is simply too much right here to justify anyone doubting that Brandon can get this project over the finish line. Hopefully everyone who liked the series has given him a chance to prove that.

Secondly: Brandon stayed true to and made good on his promise to make this a Wheel of Time book, but not try to pretend to be Jordan. There were short chapters here that Jordan would never have published- he favoured long threadlike chapters that he wove together slowly. There are names that don’t quite sound the same as others in the Wheel of Time universe. But nothing that doesn’t work. There is nothing that makes this a bad story. Every time I felt I was going to be thrown out of the story because events had twisted away from my expectations, Brandon recovered me by showing me that it was just good tension and plotting that left me guessing. I was feeling as if I was about to be thrown out of the story because the events were fulfilling promises in unexpected ways, which is exactly what any author worth their salt would do- it’s just that the twists are getting much bigger now that the series is wrapping up, so the tension was good enough that it had me questioning if what I was guessing would even happen. And of course, in those cases, it didn’t.

The rules that Wheel of Time characters follow- that revelations are dramatic, that secrets are important, that the genders feel mutually incomprehensible to each other, that earning trust is hard- it’s all still there. Nobody acts wrong. All the characters have their same motivations, and the new ones we discover make perfect sense. There were even things that had eluded me in previous novels that I picked up in this book, because Sanderson got into the character’s heads a bit more, rather than telegraphing their feelings with body language or reactionary thoughts, and leaving the motivations behind them undescribed. The advantage of being near the end of the series! It all builds properly on everything that came before it, and it fits so deliciously in. There is no “McDune” problem here, not that I had expected to find one, but I was surprised to find that I didn’t have time to worry once I had a chance to sit down with the book. I was too busy wanting to get back at the next chapter when I needed to break from reading.

There are a few parts where you can tell we’re going at what for Jordan would have been breakneck pace. A lot more seems to happen “off-camera” than generally happened in the middle of the series, (There was certainly a lot of off-camera action at the beginning, however. This is still within the bounds of how The Wheel Of Time was written) and, as earlier, the chapter structure seems a little bit different from other Wheel of Time books. That’s as much as I really want to say that skirts comparing Jordan and Sanderson; I’m not going to spoil the experience of the rest of this series by trying to figure out in much detail what’s changed since Knife of Dreams, and the things I’ve mentioned are small changes of focus that any author could choose to make during their own series. The awesome lingering reminders of the Mat/Tuon relationship and the fast pacing are both still there from Knife of Dreams, which frankly, would have been enough for me on its own.

The Aes Sedai acted like Aes Sedai. Perrin was appropriately torn. Mat was a rascal with a heart of gold. And that’s all you’re getting without spoilers. There was, however, a small amount of Brandon’s tendency to do a lot in his endings, but this wasn’t the usual traffic jam that he wields at the end of a book, tying everything up neatly in parallel. There was still the usual serene close of Wheel of Time books, with the usual relaxed room to ponder just exactly what is coming next.

The novel excited me. I didn’t want to put it down. (I managed, however, when I had to get off the bus. Somehow.) If you were still on the fence, I simply want to say this: The pattern is in good hands. Brandon’s earned the trust that Harriet put in him, and then some.

I’m also about 10% through my first “skeleton” draft where I put all the basics in place. I do this while outlining because it helps me discover where the plot needs to go. Once I’m through the skeleton draft I’ll be working on the first version I post online- so we’re 10% there already. In an earlier post I mentioned I’d start posting drafts after I outlined- this skeleton draft I’m talking about is what I was referring to as the outline, and you wouldn’t really want to read it, as it’s more designed to get things out of my head and on to paper than it is to entertain. I should probably have been more specific, but as people say in German: “so ist das Leben”. (I’m too lazy to type the french)

I’m writing enough that I’m now starting to get heavily opinionated on writing¹, and I’m starting to take this out on the comments threads for Writing Excuses. (If you don’t listen to Writing Excuses yet and you write or script anything, you need to start. Not only do I think it’s awesome, I’ve followed it since before it had seasons, and it also won a parsec award for being a sock-rocking podcast.)

If you’re interested in hearing my opinions on how I write or how other people should write, check out the comment threads with me. The latest is on writing emotions and managing your emotions as a writer.

¹That is, I’m writing enough that I’d actually like to get published some day. I’m still not writing as much as I’d need to to make a living from my writing, which is something I’m working on.

As per earlier posts, I’m promising to retain the e-book rights to Dreamspace so I can continue to make it available for free online.

I’m currently something like 33-50% through the outline, and have passed the 10,000 word mark. I’m expecting this book to have many drafts before I consider it finished, so it’s initial release to the web will be in a decidedly “alpha” format.

Oh, and as a final thought for those interested in the setting: Dreamspace is set in a roughly Victorian society in terms of social progress and technology, features feudalistic politics, “school of magic” themes, introduces three magic systems, and features gunpowder in the form of slow-loading rifles and cannons. Those of you who like swords and sorcery only and dislike gunpowder have been appropriately warned!

It’s a fantasy, but unlike the A Beginning Of Magic universe, there’s no science-fiction crossover. (The universe could be said to be a fantasy-western crossover in that it involves interstellar colonisation, frontiers, and as Ian Banks calls them, “out-of-context problems” or first encounter situations. But there aren’t cowboy hats or pistol fights, so I’m never going to pitch it that way) The universe features faster-than-light travel, (but not the book) and I’m tentatively calling it the Worldcrystals universe. The initial book features four hard-fantasy magic systems, three of which are “foundational” to the wider universe. Can’t spoil much more about the world-building, as I don’t know what else I’m embargoing until after the book is finished. (I haven’t decided if I’m going to do a big reveal about the wider universe or not, as this world is “special” within the universe)

The plot of the story is half “magical school is much more frustrating than I expected it to be” and it twists to its other half at the climax point, which is “what might happen after the hero wins the day and kills the villain?”. I’m not done here so I don’t want to say too much more, as I’ve not really started outlining in earnest, just done discovery writing on a few chapters.

The book is narrated in first-person by a main character, and in third person from our narrator’s perspective for two other characters. Trying to differentiate the narrative and the dialogue has really helped me with a better sense of “voice” for my characters, so whether or not this book ends up being good, I’ll have learned a lot from it.