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negrekWith my first drafts, the goal is to simply to get all the words in the story out on the page somewhere, without regard for order or logical progression. The goal of the second draft is to get everything in the correct order, remove anything extraneous, and generally finalize the structure of the narrative. The primary the task here would be to take the "second beginning" of the story, which accounted for the things I'd added as I was writing my way through the first draft, and glue it onto the top of the story where it belonged. But I'd want to keep whatever pieces I really liked out of the original opening, too! Because I often write out of order and it's not uncommon for me to have multiple versions of the same scene--whether because I wanted to try different things or simply because I enjoyed it a lot and wanted to write it a second or third time for fun--having to do this sort of merge operation is extremely common for me in editing. I hate it!
The other major task for this draft was to get rid of the terrible names. I normally don't think a great deal about character names and go with what I think sounds nice, but as kyeugh likes to name characters in a period- and setting-appropriate fashion, I was going to need to do a bit of research to pull this off. As far as I can tell, there isn't a consensus on what languages the Nazca spoke; Quechua seems to be most commonly cited, with Aymara being another possibility, as well as potentially some dead languages. There's a huge diversity of languages in Peru, and the Nazca civilization lasted for hundreds of years, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were a number of different languages a member of the culture might plausibly speak, perhaps depending on the specific time period they came from.
In the end I decided to look to Quechua for my names. Out of all the options, it's the one I could find the most information on, and even then there isn't a great deal on the internet--I ran into problems even Googling names off lists to try and confirm that they were actually names given to real, actual people. It's especially wild considering that Quechua isn't even a language as such, but rather a language family, with over a dozen dialects and millions of speakers alive today. Nevertheless, I was lucky to be able to find a few articles delving into Quechuan people and place names, and while I have no idea if the assortment I've selected make any sense together (i.e. whether they even come from the same dialect), they do at least seem to be valid names, at least in some time, at least in some place.
Nina was the first potential name to catch my eye, although I resisted it pretty fiercely; as a name that's common in present-day English-speaking regions, and which is also used in multiple other cultural traditions, I thought it would feel out of place. Ultimately, though, I liked the sound of it too much, and nothing else seemed to fit quite right, so "Nina" our narrator would be. It means "fire" in Quechua, so it could hardly be more appropriate for a volcarona keeper.
Chukilla was, in turn, the first name to jump out at me from among the male names, and I pretty much settled it on it immediately. Meaning "golden ray"/"golden light," I thought it was a fun little play on Chukilla's placeholder name of "Joffrey." Finally, "Dirac" (fucking Dirac), our extremely background character, got renamed to Achiq, or "bright."
I also needed a name for the city! Quechua is an agglutinating language, and a very regular one at that, for which I can only be extremely grateful. With the help of some Peruvian place name guides and a Quechua dictionary, I was able to construct what I hope is at least a reasonable name for the city. And so welcome... to Moth Place.
With those aspects settled, I was ready to go back in and try to stich everything together into something that would at least make sense. I also massaged a couple places I thought the first draft was lacking, addressing the kinds of thoughts that, of course, only come to me once I've already written everything down or am in the process of writing some later section of the story. This is the draft with the most dramatic edits; mostly getting everything in order and making sense, but with some tiny hints of imitation as well. Full commentary here!
The other major task for this draft was to get rid of the terrible names. I normally don't think a great deal about character names and go with what I think sounds nice, but as kyeugh likes to name characters in a period- and setting-appropriate fashion, I was going to need to do a bit of research to pull this off. As far as I can tell, there isn't a consensus on what languages the Nazca spoke; Quechua seems to be most commonly cited, with Aymara being another possibility, as well as potentially some dead languages. There's a huge diversity of languages in Peru, and the Nazca civilization lasted for hundreds of years, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were a number of different languages a member of the culture might plausibly speak, perhaps depending on the specific time period they came from.
In the end I decided to look to Quechua for my names. Out of all the options, it's the one I could find the most information on, and even then there isn't a great deal on the internet--I ran into problems even Googling names off lists to try and confirm that they were actually names given to real, actual people. It's especially wild considering that Quechua isn't even a language as such, but rather a language family, with over a dozen dialects and millions of speakers alive today. Nevertheless, I was lucky to be able to find a few articles delving into Quechuan people and place names, and while I have no idea if the assortment I've selected make any sense together (i.e. whether they even come from the same dialect), they do at least seem to be valid names, at least in some time, at least in some place.
Nina was the first potential name to catch my eye, although I resisted it pretty fiercely; as a name that's common in present-day English-speaking regions, and which is also used in multiple other cultural traditions, I thought it would feel out of place. Ultimately, though, I liked the sound of it too much, and nothing else seemed to fit quite right, so "Nina" our narrator would be. It means "fire" in Quechua, so it could hardly be more appropriate for a volcarona keeper.
Chukilla was, in turn, the first name to jump out at me from among the male names, and I pretty much settled it on it immediately. Meaning "golden ray"/"golden light," I thought it was a fun little play on Chukilla's placeholder name of "Joffrey." Finally, "Dirac" (fucking Dirac), our extremely background character, got renamed to Achiq, or "bright."
I also needed a name for the city! Quechua is an agglutinating language, and a very regular one at that, for which I can only be extremely grateful. With the help of some Peruvian place name guides and a Quechua dictionary, I was able to construct what I hope is at least a reasonable name for the city. And so welcome... to Moth Place.
With those aspects settled, I was ready to go back in and try to stich everything together into something that would at least make sense. I also massaged a couple places I thought the first draft was lacking, addressing the kinds of thoughts that, of course, only come to me once I've already written everything down or am in the process of writing some later section of the story. This is the draft with the most dramatic edits; mostly getting everything in order and making sense, but with some tiny hints of imitation as well. Full commentary here!
