One thing that gets tricky about writing secondary-world fantasy set in the past is figuring out what to do about language. Since the story takes place in another world, you know the characters aren’t speaking modern English, so the author can be seen as translating the whole story so that people in our world today can read it. But how strict should that translation be? Do you go all-in and truly translate it into modern English, or do you try to keep some flavor of the time period the secondary world is based on?

For instance, the word “okay.” It didn’t come into use in our world until the 1800s, and only came into really common use in the 20th century. When I read that word in a fantasy novel set in a pre-modern setting, it throws me out of the story. And yet, if we’re going by the “it’s all being translated, anyway” idea, why not translate their word of agreement to “okay”? I don’t have an answer for this. I just try to avoid using it unless I’m writing contemporary works set in our world. Katie and Lexie say “okay,” Verity does not, and the heroine I’m currently writing doesn’t.

Then there are the things where the truth sounds wrong. For instance, “hello” is more modern than “hi.” “Hello” didn’t come into use until the 1800s when it was introduced as the way to greet people on the telephone. “Hi” dates to the middle ages and comes from an Old English word, “hy.” The Norwegian word is “hei,” and since there’s a lot of crossover between old Norse and Old English, I’m sure they’re related. But if I wrote a character in the 1600s saying “hi,” it would sound wrong and “hello” may sound right. The way I understand it, “hy” was more about getting attention than it was a greeting the way we say “hi” now.

The other tricky thing is common words that come from proper names. Like “sandwich,” which is named for a person. Can you use that term in a world where there was no Earl of Sandwich? An ottoman is named for the Ottoman Empire, which doesn’t exist in a secondary world. Does that fall under the “it’s all a translation” rule, or do you have to find another word? It’s really hard to find something else to call a sandwich without it getting awkward. The Norwegian word is smørbrød, which seems to translate literally to “butter bread,” and that doesn’t really say “sandwich” to me. And then there’s the metaphorical use of it, saying something is “sandwiched” between two other things.

Or there are words that come from technologies that don’t exist in that world. I had to stop myself from using the term “sidetracked” when my character was distracted because if there are no railroads, there shouldn’t be any concept of being sidetracked. I did once read a book set in a pre-industrial secondary world in which a character who was hiding out talked about staying under the radar, and I can’t believe the editor let that one go because that concept would have been totally foreign to the characters and I don’t think even the “it’s all a translation” idea works there.

Another issue is keeping the flavor of the language. If you’re basing your secondary world on, say, the early 17th century, you wouldn’t want to write your whole book in the style of the King James Bible if you want modern readers to actually be able to get through it. But you also wouldn’t want to translate it into language that’s too modern and casual. Your scheming prince saying, “LOL!” when something bad happens to his enemies would break the spell.

I once read an essay by someone who was a grand master in the field of fantasy complaining about a new author’s book that she thought sounded too modern and mundane (this author went on to be in the grand master category, but she was a young first-time author at the time the essay was written, so I think singling her out like that was a tacky move on the part of the more established author). She took a scene from the book in which a pair of noblemen who’d just left a council meeting were discussing the events and showed how she could change them to politicians who’d left a committee meeting by only changing the specific references. At the time I read that essay, I hadn’t read the grand master and was a fan of the newer author, so it made me mad, but even now as a reasonably experienced author, I think the grandmaster was wrong.

If you’re taking the “translated from that secondary world language for modern readers” approach, you’d stick with language that would be appropriate for the modern equivalent of the people depicted in the story. In that case, members of the royal council would equate to members of Congress, and therefore the fact that you could change the character names and titles and change “palace steps” to “Capitol steps” would be a sign that the author did it right. Where you’d have problems would be if you could change them to student council members and palace steps to school steps and it still works. Then your language might be too casual for a high fantasy.

I don’t think you need a lot of “hark” and “prithee” type language, but I think you can go too far the other way. There’s an author I’ve read recently whose characters and stories are great, but his use of language keeps taking me out of the story because he’ll have a medieval-equivalent chieftain say something like, “Okay, guys, we’ve gotta pull together on this.” Then again, that would possibly be the equivalent of a CEO in our world, and some of them do talk like that.

I don’t really have any firm answers. I just have to go by what feels right for the story, something that gives the flavor of another time and place but that’s still readable. I try to have “invisible” writing, where you don’t really notice the words. The words inject the story into your head, and you experience it that way without feeling so much like you’re reading. Part of that is using language that doesn’t draw attention to itself and that feels like a natural part of the story. I think for the book I’m working on, that will mean finding something else to call a sandwich, not letting a character get sidetracked and nobody saying “hello” or “okay.” Another author might make different decisions.

I’m still plugging away at the book I’ve been working on. I’ve passed what should be the halfway point, based on my targeted word count, but I’m not yet really at the midpoint of the story. Either this book is going to be a lot longer than I planned, the “midpoint” event is actually going to be at the 3/4 mark, or I’m going to have to do a lot of editing. Possibly all of the above.

I’m going to try not to worry about that for now. I’m going to just keep writing and then I’ll know after the first draft is done what I need to do in the second draft — if I’ll need all the setup scenes, if the subplots I set up early in the book will actually come to fruition or if I can cut that setup, if there’s stuff I can trim. Or I can reconsider some things and pull back to just one or two points of view and let the readers have the same amount of knowledge as the main character does instead of showing what’s really going on through other perspectives.

I feel like the book is starting to hit its stride. I’m enjoying the main characters, and the humor is starting to really come out. I hadn’t thought of this book as a comedy, but it’s got more funny stuff than I expected. I just can’t seem to help myself. But funny is good. It’s part of what I’m known for. In fact, it’s kind of a relief that funny stuff started showing up.

This book seems to be coming more slowly than usual. I’m spending the usual amount of time writing every day, but have fewer words than I usually get from that amount of time. And yet I’m also spending a lot of time planning each scene before I write it. I guess I’m having trouble translating those ideas into actual words.

I’m planning to have at least two books in this series written before I start worrying about publication, so I have no idea when it will make its way out into the world. It will depend on whether things speed up and how much revising I have to do, and then whether I can use my planned book 2 or if something else will come up. So I’ll just keep writing and see what happens.

At the end of last week, I’d reached the 1/4 of the book point, if this one is going to be the length my fantasy books usually are, and I felt like I’d only barely started to really get into the story. I wondered if the pacing was all off and this book was off to a slow start, so I reread what I’d written so far.

That reminded me that writing pace is not the same as reading pace. It had taken me weeks to write that much, and I read it in about an hour and a half—and that wasn’t even normal reading speed. I was trying not to edit as I read, but when you see a typo, you have to deal with it immediately because you might not notice it again. What feels slow as a writer because it takes you days or weeks to write may feel fast for a reader. In fact, I find that the fast-paced, action-packed scenes are the slowest to write.

I’m still not entirely sure what I think about this book. It reminds me of the meme showing a beautiful oil painting of a horse as “the book in my head” and a child’s stick-figure drawing of a horse as “the book when I try to write it.” The weird thing with this one is that the story is pretty much playing out according to what was in my head. The scenes are all there. And yet they’re somehow lacking. I think part of it is that the book in my head was like a movie trailer. I wasn’t necessarily seeing the whole scenes. I was seeing the highlights, the key moments. It skipped the parts that are necessary for getting to those moments or for getting from those moments to the next key moments.

Then there’s the fact that as I write, the book becomes even more vivid in my head, so there’s a huge disconnect with what I can put on the page. I’m bad about not getting much description in during the first draft, but even in a final draft it’s impossible to fully describe every little detail of what’s in my head. It would be a boring book if I did. The trick is figuring out exactly what needs to be described and finding ways to fit that in so that it’s not an obvious chunk of description, and even then, what’s on the page can never be as vivid as what’s in my head because it requires putting images and sensations into words.

This book is a bit different for me because it has multiple viewpoints, and each of those viewpoint characters has his or her own story. The stories will eventually meet up and mesh in the main plot, but I have to get them started separately and get them all to the main plot. If I were only dealing with one viewpoint character, like in most of my books, then the story would have moved a lot more quickly, and I’d be long past the point of the main character “crossing the threshold” into the main part of the story. But since I also have to set up the subplots with the other characters, it’s taking longer than I’m used to. I think that there’s some tension in seeing how those subplots are coming together to create a situation that’s going to hit the main character like a truck. We can see the disaster she’s heading for, but she has no idea when we’re just in her viewpoint, so it feels like her story is only just starting, but we know from seeing all the other stuff that she’s in for some trouble. I suspect this book may be a bit longer, as well.

And then there’s realizing what I’m writing. In my head, I saw it as epic fantasy, but it’s really more of a courtly intrigue and comedy of manners story. There aren’t any quests or battle scenes, just scheming and plotting and trying to cope with new situations. Part of my brain is going “this isn’t very exciting,” and I’m reminding myself that this isn’t an action-packed story.

I’m sure I’ll do some trimming in later drafts. There are some concepts I’ve had characters explain multiple times, since there are multiple people who need explanations, but the reader doesn’t need all those explanations, and I can maybe replace one or two with something like “he explained how it worked” and then move on. But then I’ll probably also be adding description and detail, so the length won’t change all that much.

I’ve made a start on the new book. It was a little slower than I’d hoped to get going, but that was mostly because I made an abrupt change in plans just before I started writing.

I’m adding something new to my process with this book. I’m journaling the book as I write it. I’ve been journaling for a few years. I sit at the table after breakfast in the morning with a cup of tea and do a bit of a brain dump, just getting all those swirling thoughts out of my head. A few months ago, I read an article about how doing that in the evening helps with sleep, so I switched journaling times, and it did seem to help with those random thoughts that wake me up during the night. But I really like that time sitting at the table in the morning. It’s not so much procrastination as it is enjoying that time, but it was delaying my work day. I read another article about journaling your book, doing some freewriting by hand before you start your writing day, hashing out your thoughts about the book. I’ve been doing brainstorming that way, and then as I prepared to start writing, on Monday morning I journaled about the scene I was going to write.

It seems to have worked pretty well because I had a burst of insight. I had two events happening independently, but I realized that the event in the first scene should actually cause the event of the next scene, but then that involved reworking a couple of scenes and even cutting a planned scene. So I spent more than an hour working all that out before I sat down and got to work.

I’m having the usual feeling of the perfect, wonderful book in my head being like a child’s stick figure drawing once I start writing. I’ve had to go back and put in some things I’d planned and forgot. I’ll need to add more description and emotion, as usual. I can picture the settings, but I can’t seem to find places to really set the stage because I’m too focused on what the characters are doing and saying.

But I can do that in the next draft. Right now, I’m getting the action down, and it’s fun having all these insights that make the story stronger, even if they do require rethinking things. Just this morning, that journaling gave me the solution to a problem I was struggling with. I was trying to figure out who should be present for a scene. Either way, there were benefits but also potential problems, and the solution came to me as I wrote about my dilemma.

I think I’ve done about all the prep work I can possibly do, so on Monday I will start writing this book. It’s both exciting and scary. I’ve been thinking about this story for more than two years. I spent much of that time doing research reading and some brainstorming, then started the serious character and plot work around the beginning of this year. Now I think anything else I do will just be procrastination, and not the good kind that allows me to develop the story in more depth.

One way that I know it’s time to start writing is that I’ve been dreaming this story. I’ve had dreams in the past that give me ideas that fit into this book or this series, but the other night I was dreaming actual scenes that I’d already plotted. In some of the dream, I was seeing the “movie” and hearing the narration of the book, but in some of it I was one of the characters. I did try to insert an additional (and unnecessary) character in one of the dreams, but otherwise, it was right out of my notes.

Which means I know at least the first three scenes to write, so I should get off to a good start.

Today and this weekend I’m trying to get my life ready for it to get taken over by writing. I’m taking care of errands, getting groceries, doing housework and laundry, and I hope to make a couple of meals that will provide me with plenty of leftovers so I won’t have to do a lot of cooking. I’m bad about going all-or-nothing when I get into a book, so I get nothing else done while I’m writing. I’m going to try for a bit more work/life balance, but I want to take advantage of the surge of initial enthusiasm. I’m aiming for a relaxing and restful Sunday so I’ll be ready to dive in.

So, very soon I will actually meet these characters on the page as the story goes from thought to actual words. This is where those writing exercises to find the voice help because I’ve “met” the characters outside the text of the actual book, and that makes it a little less momentous to start writing them. Even so, writing those first words after all the preparation is a bit like standing at the top of a steep ski slope, ready to fling yourself down a mountain.

I’m in the “putting it all together” phase of my writing preparation. I’ve got the world built. I’ve got my major characters and their relationships to each other figured out. I’ve got the plot outlined, which has led to new characters being created. I’ve got a rough skeleton of possible scenes, with some more developed than others.

The main thing I need to do now is find the “voice” for this book. It’s going to have multiple viewpoints, so I think it will be written in third person, which is unusual for me. I love first person narration, but it just won’t work with this story. So I need to find the narrative voice for each character’s viewpoint. I do that by doing some freewriting exercises, just picking some random event that’s probably not going to end up in the book and writing how that scene might be told from that character’s perspective. I use scenes that won’t end up in the book so that I won’t feel stuck with that scene the way it is. I can play with style until I find what I like and then not have to worry about editing that scene to fit into the final story.

I also need to drill into specifics for the settings that I’m likely to need for the scenes I have planned. What, precisely, does it look like? What colors are there in these rooms, is there carpet on the floors, what does the place smell like, etc. Once I get started writing the story, I don’t think about these things, and I find the details are more likely to find their way in to the book if I’ve planned them in advance and worked them into my mental movie. When I haven’t pictured the settings, the scenes tend to take place in a void in my head, and it’s harder to figure out the details and add them later.

There’s going to be a lot of daydreaming this week because a lot of this comes from just imagining. I’m fine tuning my mental movie.

I’ll be doing more intense development of the first few scenes, too. I had a big breakthrough yesterday with the opening scene when I figured out what was really going on, and that turned the scene on its head and set up something great for later in the story. I love it when things like that happen.

I’m still working on plotting, so I thought I’d talk a little more about the process there. Plotting is one of my weaknesses and always has been, so I have to work extra hard on it. My early attempts at writing all failed because I’d come up with characters and interesting situations for them to be in that were full of potential conflicts—and then had no idea where to go from there. I was good at coming up with people who could do things and situations in which things could happen, but couldn’t come up with actual, specific things to happen to create a story. Because my situations were so fleshed out, I thought that meant the story would be obvious and would come easily, and then I’d start writing, get about three chapters, and have no idea what should happen next.

Some people are lucky enough to be able to plot instinctively. They just start writing a scene, have it end with some kind of consequence that propels the action to the next scene, and so forth, and it all falls together. I am not that kind of writer. I need some kind of structure or framework to give me an idea for things that can happen, and from there I can fill in specific scenes.

There are a lot of story structure charts out there, and most of them boil down to different ways of saying the same thing (for Western/European culture-based storytelling—there are non-Western story structures that are very different). There’s the three-act structure, the story circle, the plot snowflake, Save the Cat, the Hero’s Journey, the Heroine’s Journey, and a bunch of others. Just about every writing book has its own story structure chart or worksheet that labels the different steps in a plot. Some are better suited or even designed for a certain kind of story. Some speak better to some writers than to others.

Which one do I use? All of them!

I do find that some structures work better with some stories, but it’s hard to tell which one will click into place until I try it. I have a binder full of these worksheets that I save from workshops or from notes I take while reading a book on writing, and when I’m plotting a book, I’ll work through them. I find that there’s usually one method that really suits each book, and I use that for my core plotting, but going through each one makes me look at my story from multiple angles and gives me different ideas for scenes. For instance, I’d gone through about four different plot outlines for this book, but then this morning I got out my Save the Cat book, and that story outline has already helped me flesh out some blanks that were in my outline because there are Save the Cat story beats that fall between the turning points in the other outlines I was using. It’s given me some good ideas for scenes.

One other thing I do is outline the plot for both the protagonist and the antagonist. After I’ve got a good outline for the hero, I turn it around and pretend the villain is the main character, outlining the book from that character’s perspective. That’s a good way to figure out what the villains are up to, even when they’re offstage and working in the background. Then I know what the villains’ plans might be and what the hero will have to react to. Some of the structures are better suited to this than others. The ones that focus on character transformation don’t work too well, unless you’re going to redeem your villain. Or, I suppose you could have the opportunities for realization and transformation that the character doesn’t take.

I might also do some brief outlines for the secondary characters whose actions might affect the plot or who have a subplot of their own. The book I’m working on now is going to have multiple viewpoints, so I need to plot the stories of the various viewpoint characters and then weave that into the main plot.

You don’t have to get too obsessive with structure. It’s a framework to hang scenes upon, so don’t twist your story around to slavishly adhere to some plot structure worksheet if your story doesn’t fit. You may not hit all the beats of every structure. However, if you find that your story doesn’t fit anything and you’re missing most of the major beats or turning points, you might need to develop your story or your characters a little more.

I like screenplay structures, but keep in mind that screenplay structure is different from novel structure, so you’re not going to hit the page numbers they do or even the proportions. The difference in the storytelling media means it takes a different amount of pages to tell the same story visually as opposed to in text. For instance, a movie can convey visually in a second or two what it might take paragraphs or pages to describe in a novel. There are also more “rules” for writing in Hollywood than there are for novels. Movie studios expect a particular structure, with events happening at certain points within a movie, and publishers just care about whether a novel is interesting all the way through. So, don’t get too hung up on all the advice in screenwriting books.

I also find that my outline may or may not hold up as I write. I may discover things along the way and change my mind, but that may also have something to do with the fact that I let myself get vague about events later in the book. With this book that I’m putting a lot more development effort into, it may be different.

I’ve wrapped up the character development phase for this book (except for characters who come up as I plot or write) and have moved on toward plotting. When it comes to the plotting (planning the book before writing it) vs. “pantsing” (writing by the seat of the pants, making it up as you go) debate, I generally end up being both, the worst of both worlds.

I have to have a general sense of the plot before I can write. I at least need to know the major turning points. But most of the time, I don’t really know what the book is actually about until I’ve written it, and once I get close to the ending, I realize I have no idea where it’s actually going because what I thought was an outline was way too vague. Then I have to do extensive revisions to mold the resulting mess into something resembling a story.

I’m trying to do something different with this book and do some extensive outlining. One thing I’ve realized might be my problem is that my outline is more about ideas than scenes, which means there’s nothing concrete or specific. The final confrontation is usually just “final confrontation” in my outline. I may have a sense of what’s going on emotionally with the characters in this scene and what choices they’ll have to make, but I don’t know where it happens, exactly how it happens, how they get there, what it looks like. The farther I am from the beginning, the worse it is. I usually have about the first three or four chapters planned in detail. I have scenes worked out, even bits of dialogue. Then once I’m really into the actual story, beyond the setup, I have a few events. Closer to the end, it’s more vague concepts.

When I started the plotting process on this book, it was exactly like that. I thought I had a lot of detail, but all I really had in any concrete form was the setup. It went vague at the first turning point. So, I started with the ending—what does the final confrontation look like? I worked that out, and then went to the previous scene, to see how we were getting to that final confrontation. I’ve also worked out how the midpoint scene will go. I’ve still got gaps, but it helps to have those big scenes planned. When I’m writing and hit a big point without knowing what will happen, I often go with the first thing that comes to mind, so I get something obvious or trite. Thinking about it ahead of time is giving me a chance to go deeper. It also means I know what I’m going to need to set up earlier in the story.

I’m spending this week doing heavy-duty plot brainstorming, then I’ll put my outline aside over the weekend and come back to it next week to see if I can add to it or improve it. I’m getting really close to the actual writing part, but I’m forcing myself not to get too impatient.