Behind the Eyes: Language and Art in Fantasy

We wrote about this briefly last week in our post "Songs and Stories: Writing Culture in Fantasy", but there's so much more to say. So here's a few more insights into giving your world some extra timbre. Writing language and art into your fictional world just got easier.

If you want a little extra help with your worldbuilding, take a look at our other posts on our page. Or head on over to our YouTube channel, the Red Quills, to enjoy some of our video tutorials.

This time, we've added language into the mix with the arts. It's an expression of our thoughts and feelings, after all: when you're writing a world, the how of expressing ourselves is just as important as the why.

Languages and their Origins

Myths and legends the world over have their explanation for different languages, all of them intriguing. In the fantasy genre, language is of particular importance. After all, when Tolkien wrote his genre-defining works of Middle-Earth, he did so partly to find a function for his homemade languages.

Outside of the fantasy fiction world of novels and television, role-playing games and other immersion media have taken a different route. Generally, the rule of thumb tends to be that different races speak different languages. The why of this tends to be glossed over or ignored.

So here are some few questions and insights to help you develop yours. Remember that not all of us are Tolkienian scholars. We don't need to create an entire language. But having different language and explaining them are two completely separate tasks.

• What was the origin of language? Many creation myths, including Tolkien's, have the origin of language in the primordial times before civilisation. Often they are the direct outcome of the intervention of deities or powerful beings. But if your race (or races) began somewhere, they would have all spoken the same language.
• What are your linguistic areas? The next, more complicated question. If ethnic groups have split or migrated, their languages would change from the original. Often it will take two or three centuries of isolation or different environment for real change to be seen. In English, the language this post was originally written in, you can see changes like this from Old English, Middle English, to Modern English. If you need inspiration, look up Chauncer, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth.
• What are the merged or common languages? You can see this, for example, in the history of Europe. Greek once dominated the Mediterranean as the lingua franka, and then Latin, and then French and English. They took words, borrowed words, changed words. Merchants and diplomats and scholars had to speak these languages. But generally the commoners would not have spoken them, or would have spoken them as a second language. (This can make things complicated in a fantasy world where you need the reader to understand what's happening, but its true in history.)

The Histories of Art

As mentioned, we did explore this topic in our blog post last week, but there is more to say. Our topic this week is creating cultures in your fantasy world, and so we'll be focusing on that for this post. Writing language and arts requires you to understand not just what the individual would enjoy, but what changes from culture to culture.

It's also worth noting that these artistic outlets would change over time. Once, improvised performances were all the rage on the streets of Renaissance Italy. They called it Commedia dell'Arte. Now, improv is generally looked down upon. Sad, but true.

So we're not just going to look at what people do to make art, but how it has changed over time in your world:

• What are the traditional arts? You will see these all the time in history and fantasy. Arts for festivals or holy days, generally dances or plays or songs that are passed down from one generation to another. They have to start somewhere, and generally have a lot to do with the cultural identity of the people in question.
• What are the contemporary arts? Ask yourself "What do the old people complain about in the big cities?" There will be something. It's not a new situation for the older generations to complain about the young. It's a tale as old as civilisation. Graffiti, street performance, vulgar plays and songs - they're as timeless as the human race. But there's always some new fad.
• Who are the famous artists? What are the famous works? I mentioned Chauncer before, the famous author of The Canterbury Tales. Many don't know who he is now, but once his name was on par with Shakespeare. Stories like Le Mort d'Arthur, poets like Sappho, pre-historians like Herodotus or Thucydides. There are some in every age, and the nobility and intelligencia will always speak of the 'old masters' as if they are better than the new.

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Just a short post today, and - as always - there is so much more to say. But I hope this is helpful. If you have any questions at all, or want to share any ideas that you have been working on for language and art in your world, please comment below!