Too Many T's

I’ve recently started taking a writing workshop class with Gotham City Writers. It’s a fantastic space to learn the niche knowledge pertaining towards crafting a novel, and I’ve really appreciated the opportunity to take it. Only kicker: we each have to present our work. I told my neighbor that I had to present 5,000 words of my book to the class for them to critique, and he whistled. Yeah. In my opinion, talent and passion are secondary to the most important element of being a writer: having a thick skin. If you can’t go in front of a group of your peers (or, in my case, a group of successful adults with impressive jobs and fancy apartments) and present your work, you’re not ready. 

While my class had a lot of really helpful comments for how I could make certain scenes that weren’t quite working work, there was one Big Critique that everyone echoed: I have too many Ts. For the few friends and advisors who have had a chance to read my work, you’d probably agree with that complaint. I do have too many T’s. 

The problem arose from my goal of creating similar words that sound as if they came out of the same language, and feel different from others within the world. For example, I have three major cultures interacting with one another in this book: the Marins, the Tellurians, and the Samani. In order to make the words for each culture and language feel different, I tried incorporating different constructions. That’s where the problem of too many Ts came from. Everything related to the tellurians has a T at the beginning. 

There’s “tolart,” which means emperor; “terrant,” or empress; “totaainr,” which means supreme prince(ss) or heir; and “taainr,” which means prince(ss). Then there’s the names, Tania, the protagonist; Terrin, her father; Tara, her mother; Teler, Terrin’s advisor; and Talii, Tania’s tutor. You can see the problem. As my classmates pointed out, it became really difficult to tell one character apart from another. That is not a good thing. 

To be honest, I realized this was a problem a long time ago. I’m just emotionally attached to the names, as I came up with them almost six years ago and have held them close to my heart ever since. Frankly, Talii isn’t even a Tellurian, so he really should have a different name. Yet, which do I change? The titles (tolart, terrant, totaainr, and taainr) are meant to fit together linguistically, so it's obvious they come from the same etymological source. However, I want the names to have a similar connection, too. 

Frankly, my feelings about these elements don’t really matter, because the names aren’t working. “Kill your darlings” is a famous piece of writing advice, and one that I’m going to have to listen to. I’m not sure who’s going to get a new name, but a lot of them are. 

This is all to say that sharing your work with others is so important, regardless of the kind of work that you’re creating, in order to pinpoint your work’s weaknesses. When you’re emotionally attached to the project, that becomes really difficult, but you still have to do it. If you don’t, you might never realize that your work has way too many Ts.

(P.S. I didn't have a picture for this week, so here's a photo of my dog! His name is Percy, and, yes, he is named after Percy Jackson. )