To the Game of Thrones Fans, a Question:

[fenderlove]

I haven't had a chance to read A Song of Fire and Ice yet. I bought it, and I hope that the end of the semester will finally give me time to read it. I have a question that came to mind today while I was doing a bit of writing... Do the people of Westeros have names for the days of the week? If so, what are they?

It seems like George R. R. Martin has done a very good job of world-building (I watched the clip about the religions of GOT on YouTube and was very impressed-- Thanks, shipperx, for linking it a while back!), and I just started thinking about what it takes to build a world from the ground up. I pondered J. R. R. Tolkien for a while too. How do you even name things? How do the people of that world mark the hours? What do they call the months of the year? Do they even have a twelve month cycle? It's astoundingly complex to even begin to try to do. I think sometimes it's easier, in a way, to base things in a half-normal reality setting, like J. K. Rowling or C. S. Lewis. As I was taking a few moments to write in-between my office hours and class, I began to realize that I wish I could be one of these initial-s'appeler'd fantasy writers. I need better initials first... or, you know, actually write something fit for publication. XD

Comments

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I think extensive world building is tricky business. Many people do it, but very few do it well. It always makes me think of this XKCD http://xkcd.com/483/

When it is done well like with Tolkien or Martin it's great, but it's also really rare. It needs to really matter to you I think. If you just make up words from the top of your head, they come out stupid, but if you have a real connection to language it makes sense to expand in that direction. For Martin I think all those names he gives the knights (the late Lord Frey and so on) are what he really loves and is good at.

Tolkien was a linguist, he build the world around the language. Making up languages was his hobby, so he does it more convincingly than any other author since.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

I really love creating names and places, and I could see how it could get overdone. I don't think I would ever go so far as to create a language though. That is beyond my stamina.