Day 33 (1:03 In Extended Base 30/7) Of Re-writing My Novel

Hey! I'm David Peterson, and a few years ago, I wrote a book called Create Your Own Secret Language. It's a book that introduces middle grade readers to codes, ciphers, and elementary language creation. The age range is like 10-14, but skews a little bit older, as the work gets pretty complicated pretty quick. I think 12-13 is the best age range.

Anyway, I decided to look at the Amazon page for it a bit ago, and it's rated fairly well (4.5 at the moment), but there are some 1 star reviews, and I'm always curious about those. Usually they're way off, or thought the book was going to be something different (e.g. "This book doesn't teach you a thing about computer coding!"), but every so often there's some truth in there. (Oh, one not 1 star but lower rated review said they gave it to their 2nd grader, but they found it too complicated. I appreciate a review like that, because I am not at all surprised—I think it is too complicated for a 2nd grader—and I think a review like that is much more effective than a simple 10+ age range on the book.) The first 1 star rating I came to, though, was this:

Now calling a completely mild description of a teenage girl who has a crush on another girl controversial is something I take exception to, but I don't want to pile on this person. Instead I wanted to share how this section came to be in the book.

The book is essentially divided into four parts. The first three parts deal with different ciphers or codes that become more complicated, while the last part describes elementary language creation. The first three sections are each built around a message that the reader can decode, but with language creation, the possibilities are too numerous and too complicated, so there isn't an example to decode, or anything. It would've been too difficult.

For what the messages to decode are about, though, I could do, potentially, anything, so at first I thought to tie them into a world of anthropomorphic animals (an ongoing series of battles between cats and mice), with messages that are being intercepted and decoded. My editor rejected that. Then I redid it so that each section had an individual story that had to do with some famous work of literature. My editor rejected that as well. He explained that it needed to be something that was relevant to kids of the target age range. I was kind of at a loss, for a bit, but then I thought of a story of kids sending secret messages about their uncle who eats too many onions. I shared that, my editor loved it, and I was like, all right. I can do this.

The tough part for me in coming up with mini-stories to plan these coded messages around was coming up with a reason for them to be secret. That's the whole point of a code/cipher: A message you want to be sure no one else but the intended recipient can read in case the message is intercepted. With the first one, two kids are poking gentle fun at a family member, so they want to be sure no one else can read what they're writing. For the last one, a boy is confessing to a diary, because he feels bad that he allowed his cat to escape, but no one knows he did it (he does find the cat again). For the other, I was trying to think of plausible message-sending scenarios for a preteen/teen, and I thought of how we used to write notes in, honestly, 4th and 5th grade, but I aged it up a bit, and decided to have a story about a girl writing a note to her friend because she has a crush on another girl, and wants her friend's opinion/help.

Here's where the point of sharing this comes in. As I had originally written it, the girl's note to her friend was not just telling her friend about her crush, it was also a coming out note, and she was concerned what her parents would react poorly.

Anyway, I sent that off with the rest of my draft, and I got a bunch of comments back on the whole draft (as expected), but my editor also commented on that story, in particular. Specifically, he noted that not every LGBTQ+ story has to be a coming out story, the part about potential friction between her and her parents because of it was a little heavy for the book, and, in general, not every coming out story has to be traumatic.

That was all he said, but I immediately recognized the, in hindsight, obvious truth of all three points, and I was completely embarrassed. I changed it immediately, so that the story beats are that it's a crush, she's not sure if it'll be reciprocated, and she's also very busy with school and band and feels like this will be adding even more busy-ness to her daily life as a student/teen. Then I apologized for making such a blunder. My editor was very good about it—after all, that's what drafts and editors are for—and that was a relief, but I'm still embarrassed that I didn't think of it first.

But, of course, this is not my lived experience, not being a member of the LGBTQ+ community. This is the very reason why you have sensitivity readers—to provide a vantage point you're blind to. In this case, I was very fortunate to have an editor who was thinking ahead, and I'm very grateful that he was there to catch it. That editor, by the way, is Justin Krasner.

One reason I wanted to share this, though, is that while it always is a bit of a difficult thing to speak up, because there might be a negative reaction, sometimes there is no pushback at all. Indeed, sometimes the one being called out is grateful, because we all have blindspots due to our own lived experiences. You can't live every life. For that reason, your own experience will end up being valuable to someone at some point in time for no other reason than that you lived it and they didn't. And, by the by, this is also true for the present, because the lives we've lived cause us to see what's going on right before our eyes in different lights.

Anyway, this is a story that wouldn't have come out otherwise, so I wanted to be sure to let everyone know that Justin Krasner ensured that my book was a better book. An editor's job is often silent and thankless, so on Thanksgiving, I wanted to say thank you, Justin. <3

Some tips for using a few words to describe voices:

1. Tone Words: Use tone words to convey the emotional quality of a voice. For example, you can describe a voice as "melodic," "soothing," "sharp," "gentle," or "commanding" to give readers a sense of the tone.

2. Pitch and Range: Mention the pitch and range of the voice. Is it "deep," "high-pitched," "raspy," or "full-bodied"? This can provide insight into the character's age, gender, or emotional state.

3. Accent and Diction: Describe the character's accent or diction briefly to give a sense of their background or cultural influences. For instance, "British-accented," "Southern drawl," or "formal."

4. Volume: Mention the volume of the voice, whether it's "whispering," "booming," "murmuring," or "hushed."

5. Quality: Use terms like "velvet," "silken," "gravelly," "honeyed," or "crisp" to convey the texture or quality of the voice.

6. Rate of Speech: Describe how fast or slow the character speaks, using words like "rapid," "slurred," "measured," or "rambling."

7. Mood or Emotion: Indicate the mood or emotion carried by the voice. For example, a "quivering" voice may convey fear or anxiety, while a "warm" voice may express comfort and reassurance.

8. Resonance: Describe the resonance of the voice, such as "echoing," "nasal," "booming," or "tinny."

9. Timbre: Mention the timbre of the voice, using words like "rich," "thin," "clear," or "smoky."

10. Cadence: Highlight the rhythm or cadence of speech with descriptors like "staccato," "lilting," "rhythmic," or "halting."

11. Intonation: Convey the character's intonation by saying their voice is "sarcastic," "apologetic," "confident," or "questioning."

12. Vocal Characteristics: If applicable, mention unique vocal characteristics, like a "lisp," "stutter," "drawl," or "accented 'r'."

Day51 of rewriting my novel

University has gone back to session so I’ve had less (no) time to write, but what with American holidays, I’ve gotten a chance to increase my word count a little bit! Just figured I’d post an update.

remember everyone if you google [subject] wiki and the top result is from fandom, literally scroll down like, at all. if an independent wiki exists it will almost be the second result, and it will almost always be better than the fandom wiki. a shocking number of people seem to be unaware of this technique

Unorthodox Ship Tag

Open tag from @theverumproject

The rules: Post five overly specific ship dynamics for characters in your story.

Mind-reading, anxious, tall one and easygoing, head-empty-no-thoughts, short one. (Hota-Izi)

Easily-manipulated, loyal, lesbian train wreck and giant lava monster who can get down to her level. (Lozef-Tev).

Capable, sciencey, badass, magically unstable Princess and revolutionary leader with virtually no magic. (Tagif-Mostijv).

Literally pining for 900 years and the one who never realized it. (Lozef-Dolgof).

Socially well-versed older sister and awkward-but-friendly younger brother. (Tagif-Izi.) Open tag!

Dear Conlangers making A Priori, Naturalistic Languages...

Specifically those that use a protolanguage... please write down your sound changes before you copy-paste them! I've been struggling for several months to remember which sound changes happened from Old Ipol -> Modern Ipol and I cannot, for the life of me, find the file where I saved them. Please write them down I'm begging you.

Clickbait WIP Titles

A tag game from @ominous-feychild (but I'd seen this tag game go around for a little while now, so it was about time anyways.)

I'll do a couple titles a piece.

Meiste

🔥🔥🔥🔥 RICE FARMER BECOMES EMPEROR ❗❗❗❗AND GETS MAGICAL POWERS 🗣🗣🗣🗣 (⛔⛔NOT CLICKBAIT⛔⛔) (REAL)

😂😂😂STUPID ANTI-HERO SIDES WITH VILLAIN 📢📢📢 (GENUINELY THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA) 😂😂😂 (GETS HER SHIT WRECKED ON PAGE 112 😳😳😳) (COPS CALLED)

It Will Hurt: and There Will Be No Fire

😱😱😱VEGAN VAMPIRE ABUDUCTED ✋✋✋ (GONE WRONG) (ENDING WILL SHOCK YOU) 😳😳😳

🚀🚀🚀 SPIDER-VAMPIRE RESCUES ABDUCTED SISTER 😵😵😵 (REAL❗❗❗❗) (⛔⛔NOT CLICKBAIT⛔⛔)

These were surprisingly fun to make. Brings me back.

The Usual Suspects: @oldfashionedidiot @quillswriting

Paging: @foxgloves-garden

Day 21 (30 in base 7) of re-writing my novel.

Wow, three weeks and ~27,000 words. Time flies.

Today I added double my normal word count to Part Two. I finally started writing the Hero of Life into this nonsense.

I will also provide an Odapir translation for today, used in canon:

Omoi odáo o tavishy ko. Wá áso asiren omoi táotsoi ko. Ymaktaviji tá taviji umak.

The translation is "Arriving in Tavishy. Take care when exiting the train. Ymaktaviji is the next stop."

in retrospect the funniest of the reasons I was misdiagnosed as allistic (as in a guy who claimed to be a doctor specifically told my parents I'm not autistic I'm just weird) as a kid was that one of the main diagnostic things they use is seeing if you misinterpret figures of speech, and apparently they weren't prepared for the possibility of a child with a linguistics special interest giving them an infodump on the history and nuance of the idioms they're asking about