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I've been working on an idea which involved inventing a placename as location for a large amount of the action. This is something that I have been playing with for quite a while and recently revisited.
I just looked up the name I came up with on the Internet, just out of interest and found that it is an archaic version of a valley not more than a stone's throw from where a seldom lamented ex-boyfriend of many years grew up.
The wierd thing is, it took me quite some searching to find this out and I'm oddly freaked. It isn't a common name, nor a big town and I can't remember ever talking to him about the place. I can't remember a single reference to it.
I know the mind is a strange thing and the information could have been shelved away in there somewhere without my realising it. It's still very odd.
Not that I won't use the name or anything as its a perfect name and I'm not using the same sort of setting or anything.
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I had a similar thing happen to me. But it was with my plot device. I thought I came up with an original item that I "invented" myself. But it is founded in myth and legend already. I had no idea, even originally googled it too, but no luck. I am not going to change it, but now I have a cool solid base of legend to tie my story into. One of the people in my writing class came upon the reference for me, Thanks Kickle! I say use the "real life tie-in to your advantage. It lends some solid credibility to your fiction.
Posts: 471 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Sorta happened to me, once me and my friend came up with the same name for two unrelated things in different storys. Mine was a ship his was a valley. but it turned out the name was the place that they tested the first Nuke.
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Many summers ago, while hiking through a local park, well off the beaten path, my brother, hubby and I were discussing ideas for X-files episodes. We were trying to guess at ideas that had never been used before and we came up with three specific ideas. 1. Mulder and Scully explore a haunted house. 2. Mulder and Scully are called to a crime scene where they discover mummified bodies. Later they find out the bodies are their own. 3. Mulder and Scully explore an Indian burial ground.
The weird part is that two of those ideas were used in one of the episodes the very next season. The episode is called Christmas Ghosts. In it they explore a haunted house, and they find bodies that are their own.
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The name of a place in my WIP is Scarp. Its a ridge with an old crumbling fortress wall near the top. Of course once I looked it up:
Scarp n 1: a long steep slope or cliff at the edge of a plateau or ridge; usually formed by erosion. 2: a steep artificial slope in front of a fortification.
I couldn't help but wonder whether it was already floating around somewhere in my subconcious.
But also notice how the names you choose influence the way the character or place develops in the story.
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Perhaps, fundamental to language there is some sort of logic to how you phonetically name something... so it was coincidence that someone of those that initially coined the word and yourself now went through a similar process of developing a word for it :P
Posts: 46 | Registered: May 2003
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My favorite word from Balderdash is definitely "kaybidit" (sp). What is a kaybidit? Why, it's a sheep with a square piece cut from the edge of its ear. Obviously.
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