Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: A branch cracked from the path that wound slightly downward and to the left. The rhythmic thud of footfall slowly grew and a sliver of torchlight flickered between the dark tangle of branches. A horse whinnied, straining to see. Zodak finally spotted a figure, then a second and a third. As the group approached, Zodak could make out a cloaked rider sitting aside, a stately black horse with a coat that shimmered in the moonlight. Affixed to the horses head was a black iron headpiece like a skull.
Two, no, three men trudged beside the rider, brandishing weapons and carrying torches. Zodak's heart stopped.
Behind the four men ghosted. At the edge of the torchlight loomed two hulking shapes. They stood as tall as two soldiers and moved like men underwater, their huge frames towering over the others.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Boss.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: The short man let out a gasp.
Zodak had heard ancient stories of giants, 60, 70, 80 measures tall, tossing horse carts as a child might toss blocks. These grotesque beasts were something different altogether. They were wrapped in tattered black and gray from neck to toe with full sized swords dangling like whittling knives from thick belts that crossed their massive chests and waists.
Knotted hair hung like swamp vines.
Behind the giants came two more men. As they approached, Zodak beheld the full group for the first time. He had thought the scarred man and his companions grimy, yet these men were twice as filthy and wretched. The men on foot wore tattered black jackets, each more ragged than the next. Their faces were tattooed with strange markings, and rings and chains hung from noses and ears. A sour odor seeped into the glen ahead of the procession.
Something is terribly wrong.
[00:02:07] Speaker C: Hello and welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Worldcraft Club, a show for writers, game masters and other storytellers who want to create rich, immersive settings for their audience to get lost in time and time again. I am your host, James, and I am not recording today live from Seth's dungeon but rather via the magic of the Internet. I have brought in some guests, so I'm going to go ahead and get you all to introduce yourselves real quick. Max? Who are you?
[00:02:36] Speaker D: Hey, thanks so much for having us, James. My name is Max Moyer. I'm an epic fantasy author. I have released a novella called Throneborn and just released first novel, full length debut epic fantasy called Zodak the last Shielder.
[00:02:54] Speaker C: Yes. Which is what brings us here today with y'all having released the audiobook out now. We'll provide details in the description. And Eli, you're here as well.
[00:03:04] Speaker E: I'm Max's little brother. My name is Eli, and I'm kind of a bit of a tag along for Max's project. It's something that we've been doing a lot together in years past.
I weaned us both of the delusion of wanting to ever create an audiobook again, having created our first audiobook together, which was an exciting adventure in and of itself, and I think may have ticked somewhere on the success mark on my end. I hope we'll see, but I'm also really happy to be here. So co conspirator with Max.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: Excellent. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for coming. And, Dallin.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm an audiobook narrator, and I narrated Zodak the last shielder, and that was.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: That's a huge cast.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: There are, like, 50, 60 different voices that we had to go into. It's a big, big story, big world.
[00:04:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: And this is just book one.
[00:04:06] Speaker C: Well, it's interesting to me because, like, you're gonna get that very. That varied list of cast members. And there's also. So I have a little experience listening to audiobooks. I tend to do nonfiction rather than fiction, but one of the things I find, at least in the fiction that I listen to, is some people want to do voices and characters, and other people seem to prefer to just sort of read. So I take it you're more from the camp of wanting to sort of really grapple with the voices and the different dialects, accents, and other features in a character.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So there are a couple of things that I try to follow. There's just kind of an unspoken rule or maybe just kind of adherence that people stick to, the further removed from reality a story is the kind of more grandiose the voices are. And so when I'm listening to a thriller or something like that, it'll be a little bit more grounded. Like, a lot of rom coms are often also a little more grounded.
Just things that could happen next door kind of thing. And then if it's something in space or something with dragons or set in some other fantastic setting, or if it's like a children's book, then typically the voices get bigger and bigger.
But that being said, even in nonfiction, which is about as grounded and real as it gets, you're still voicing a person. Right. There's somebody who wrote these words. There is a.
There's a sense in which you're still playing a character, even when you are just narrating. So it's kind of a mix of not character and always playing a character.
[00:05:50] Speaker D: If we take a step back. One step, please.
I'll just give you a little bit of the run up. And partly to brag on Dallin, but also to the question you're talking about.
I'm new to this. This is all new territory. But the process we follow to find a narrator is through ACX, which is the audible matching platform for narrators and authors. And I finally closed it after having 70 auditions. So the man on this screen beat out 69 others. But to your point, going into that, I had to decide what I wanted the narrator to sound like. There were some who didn't do accents, who would just sort of read in an attractive sounding voice, you know, and others who would go really into character. And so sifting through all of those different narrators and matching it to the book and to how we wanted to present the book by audio was a huge part of the process before we even hit go on choosing a narrator.
[00:06:55] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that makes sense as well.
I think it's hard as an author to escape reading your work in your own head, with your own voice. You have a sense of what you're going to do and in the sense that you're handing it off to another artist to kind of put their vision on it to an extent. Right. There's back and forth, but I feel like there's got to be that sort of trust relationship there, recognizing that the person you're choosing is going to treat your work with the sort of. Like the sort of they have that certain Genesis qua, that vibe. They catch the vibe of your work, what the French call a certain. I don't know what. And it's, I think, just finding that has got to be incredibly tricky. And then again, like, developing that trust. So does it sound the way it did in your head or has, like, do you feel like Dallin's added something that has changed things, just kind of move things around for you?
[00:07:57] Speaker D: I have been struck a number of times in this process by how much it feels like a new artwork in some ways.
And I think I made a comment, Dal, and say, I'll get you files and hopefully you can listen to it. I think my comment was, I will listen to you. Read my book any time of any day. It is the best high there is. It's a story I love, and I created. And hearing this amazing voice, I went into that audiobook process thinking I would get three or four auditions and would ultimately choose to do it myself. And I was disabused of that notion very quickly. And so I do think it is it takes on a new aspect of performance, for sure, with someone like Dallin reading and incorporating his own vision. So, yes, parts of it sound exactly how I had hoped and envisioned, other parts different and often in a new expression, a new creation that. That I really like.
[00:09:00] Speaker C: Yeah. So did you find in the process then? Because I know y'all did a lot of really rich and deep world building. Did you find that your languages, accents and dialects evolved over the time of producing the audiobook?
[00:09:15] Speaker D: It evolved. Sounds too slow.
[00:09:17] Speaker E: Yeah, for sure.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Bent into place.
[00:09:22] Speaker D: Well, so one thing you don't think about, Eli and I have been creating this world since we were kids, and we have chronologies and we have important things that happen in people, but what we haven't had to do and was a totally new muscle. This is why I say it wasn't sort of slow. Evolution was all of a sudden, we need to give these people some differentiating sound. And Dallin actually kind of helped us walk through that on a specific call where Eli and I sat down and sort of thought through what would the dialect sound like if we were forced to make them sound a specific way, which now we were.
[00:09:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
Was the goal differentiation between characters, or was there a separation of cultures or sort of a world building y sort of cluster aspect to it?
[00:10:11] Speaker E: I think it was a mix of trying to serve Dallan well so that he had something to go off of as well as consistency, some bar for consistency across the world now and in future iterations, so that we had some reference point of what people from a general place might sound like without getting to. Without getting stuck or being hyper specific. I don't know, maybe we were pretty specific, but yeah.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Whereas I really benefit from lots of specificity in character design, in accent choices and that kind of thing. And so I'd say a lot of it was more world building in our initial conversation, and then we had several touch points since then. I would send batches of character voices at a time as I was recording different chunks of chapters just so that we could get the review process kind of going smoothly. And so a lot of this book takes place in a specific region of Yidwein. And so a lot of the characters have a very similar accent. And then there are some departures from that, but the majority of them are sharing an accent or have very subtle variations because they're from very similar locales. And so character voices and character like tempo, rhythms and that kind of stuff was, I think, a separate conversation from establishing people from this corner of Yidwiyin. Speak with this kind of an accent or dialect. And so that was mostly what the first call was. And then character voice specifics were kind of worked out throughout the rest of recording.
[00:12:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:05] Speaker D: And I will also say part of this is a nod to Dallin and his skill and ability to flip between a Welsh to a british to a scottish pro without missing a beat. Like, it's pretty amazing. Not everybody would have the ability to do that.
[00:12:21] Speaker E: Well, that's what I was gonna say, is engaging a professional. And I don't.
I wasn't combing through the 70 auditions. And so I don't, frankly, know where you rank in the world. You know, in the gritty, you know, narrator eat narrator world of voice actors. But I was really taken with that professionalism because not only switching between accents, it's like, what kind of irish accent? And so, you know, a recent thing, it's like, well, more Dublin or Belfast or Kilkenny or Cork, and giving us examples, and we're like, that one. Put a little cork.
Not because you don't have an opinion, but because you would never have the vocabulary or anything to distinguish it, but you do have ears, and you can tell what you like and don't like, but with a professional, not only can do you have the consistency, but you sort of have the menu, in a sense, a very studied kind of. Yeah. That skill set of being able to choose between those things.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: Y'all were looking for a narrator, and you got a linguist. And, like, that. That kind of. But that's interesting, right? Because, like, depending. Like, so it depends. One of the things that we harp on, it's like. It's like the free bingo square in every world. In every Worldcraft club discussion is like, world builders tend to make what they want to make, right? Like, if you're Frank Herbert, you're going to spend a lot of time talking about ecology, fanatical religions and politics and being so high that you're scared. That's like. That's all dune like is, right? Like, there's lots of stuff he didn't want to talk about. In fact, he was like, you know what? Don't want to talk about computers. There was a war. No computers. We're done. Like. And you don't do Sci-Fi without computers unless you're Frank Herbert and you're writing the Sci-Fi you know, it's like, it's. How do you get to do that? But then you'll get other folks who have just, like, a deep interest in language, and they'll want to separate all of that out. And, like, you know, it's, it's, people write what they want to write. Even very well built worlds are going to have holes in them. So I guess, like, in this, what I'm kind of hearing is, and I know that, Eli, you also have a love of languages, but, like, that sort of depth of, like, let's parse out, like, these accents really specifically, because it's just gotta be an absolutely fascinating process, because you're inviting another creative who can turn up into your world and kind of go like, oh, this sounds like you're going for a little more of this. You're like, I had never thought of that. And that kind of leans towards that. This is really an adaptation, kind of, like, view of audiobooks, which I don't think a lot of people think that. It's like, I think most folks think if you're gonna get the audiobook, it's like, I would like someone who is fluent in the language I'm writing in to then read it into a mic. You know what I mean? It just in the terms, in the terms of the thought that I think a lot of people put into it.
[00:15:28] Speaker E: He doesn't talk English.
[00:15:30] Speaker D: Well, I think there is that sort of narrator, too. Like, I think I heard a Jeremy Irons book or something where he just read the whole thing in his cool Jeremy iron accent. Like, there was no, which is pretty great, too.
Which is still, which is great. It's like, okay. But it's a very different output. Yeah, I mean, I thought Dallin was british for, like, the first, I don't know, few weeks we worked together.
[00:15:53] Speaker C: No, I really like that. Yeah, no, that's, that's fascinating. Yeah.
[00:15:57] Speaker E: To me, it feels a little bit like what happens in filmmaking. Not that I'm very versed in that, but, like, when you get a crew, like, a film comes to life because you have the, the costumer, you know, the person who comes in and you're like, okay. The setting is like the late 17 hundreds in whatever, this place, Portugal. And they're like, okay. And they come in with patterns and textures and different kinds of knickers and socks and, you know, and that's their thing. They're supposed to. And with a film, you have that with music and sound and, you know, all the visual and the, all of it said, you know, you have so many people. This is like taking that one step, kind of like going from just the text to bringing in one person, and you could probably bring in more, in more ways who would come in with their own set of questions, their own set of insights and professional skills. And then you have a bigger, more in depth production.
[00:16:54] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. You get something richer from it because you're adding another element to that. So, Dallin, where did you land in Ireland with some of the accents that you chose? Like, how did you zero in on what they wanted, sort of as a consultant in this as well.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: So I just sent them a few takes with different accents, and then they said, I want this one. And so then I started narrating on that one. So that's perfect.
[00:17:24] Speaker C: Yeah, just give them. Give them a smorgasbord and go pick which one you want. Did you find yourself ever needing to mix or throw a little bit of axe in there? Was it like, hey, I like that Belfast, but just a twist of cork in there, you know? Or was there anything like that?
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
So there's one character in the book, Miss Fulba. She's a schoolteacher who comes to the little rural town of lan, and she tries to teach.
And the families are all really superstitious and kind of anti government, and they don't believe in magic. So kind of superstitious, but not. So.
They're really reluctant.
And so as we were working on her voice in the audition process, I initially read her as Welsh just to kind of demonstrate that there was range, that we had options. And then we kind of talked a little bit about maybe sending the accent a little further north. So then I sent them a couple of different scottish accents, and then we landed on something that's a little bit more.
It's kind of like a mix of standard, more contemporary art piece. So not quite the posh stuff that you see in Jane Austen adaptations, that kind of thing, but a little bit more contemporary. What a lot of Americans consider British is received pronunciation or rpg, and that has a little spectrum within it as well. And so we kind of took that and then added in a little bit of. Kind of like an irish lilt or maybe a little touch of a scottish brogue, maybe a couple of touched or dentalized r's here and there.
And so we kind of. She especially became somebody that we really had to fine tune just because we wanted to make sure that she sounded distinct, but also was relatable and also was intelligent and educated, but also was foreign, definitely not from the town kind of a thing. So she's a good example of that, where it's not really a specific regionality that you would be able to point on a globe and find that's where she's from kind of a thing.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: I like that. I heard this the other day that they apparently re recorded all of Mike Myers dialogue in Shrek to give him a scottish accent.
Right.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: He was initially canadian. Yeah.
[00:20:03] Speaker C: And they wanted something that had warmth and rage, and so it's like. And it's interesting, like, you know, like, he was just kind of like, no, we need to do it this way. And they gave it a shot, and it was not cheap, but they redid the whole thing. And that's how we landed with Shrek that we know and love today. And a lot of that was based on those sort of perceptions of those different accents and that lilt that added sort of that warmth and that sort of humility to the character while also kind of giving him that sort of capacity to raise his voice in a way that still felt sort of warm and, like, it was. It was tricky, you know? And I imagine, like, you want to.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Show kids that he's scary but not scare the children.
[00:20:49] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
And Scottish was the accent they landed on.
[00:20:55] Speaker D: Well, and we've had those conversations, too, where I have the feeling like, well, I know she's kind, and I know she's insightful, but she's also studied and comes from this different place. What should we do now? We've had those conversations, too, and just lining up the character I know them to be with, the expression of that is part of the challenge. It's fascinating.
[00:21:19] Speaker E: And it's also like, you don't know what you don't. No. Or what you haven't put words to, because we're all consumers of media, and we've all heard all sorts of accents and stories and movies, and so we have a kind of an automatic or innate gut level, sort of like wine tasting. It's like, oh, yeah, that tasted really good. But unless you learn how to talk about it, all you're saying is, oh, that one was, like, really good. That one, it was just. And so. And so Dallin is sort of like the school marm here, kind of teaching, at least me for sure. Like, oh, I didn't really think about how many different ones there are in the world. They're sort of like good guy british and bad guy british, but what else is there? And.
[00:22:04] Speaker D: Yeah, so these are auditory sommelier.
[00:22:06] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, that's 100% right, though. Like, that's the thing that, like, it's. It requires a level of, like, self reflection that I think is kind of hard to like, because it was. What was it? The Muppets? I may have an evil english accent, but I'm a Muppet after all, in the movie. Like, it was just like, it was so good and it's like. But they're right on. It's like you get these sorts of innate sort of perceptions that you get and sort of a vibe that you catch from that. And it's fascinating to sort of have to whip up a cocktail of an accent or dialect that you want in order to. It changes the perception of the character. And so here your world building meets your story. One of the things that we ran into with this podcast is I remember when me and Seth started this out, we were like, we're here to talk about world building because we hate single biome planets and we want a forum to yell about it. And so we did that, and then we were like, this isn't helping. And one of the things Seth would always say is we're not talking about story. We're talking about world building really specifically. But as we kind of went on and on, we kind of went like, you know, it's kind of just everything sort of gets very wobbly in the middle, and the world building needs to kind of reflect into the story, and the story needs to, in a lot of ways, give a picture of a broader world, and it's like there's matching in there. I just think that's fascinating.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Well, wasn't that some advice that CS Lewis used to get Tolkien to write? Right. Like Tolkien was just this world building nerd, and he just kept coming up with new languages and histories and stuff. But he didn't have a, he didn't have a plot. And Cs Lewis told him something to the effect of, if you really want your world to really develop, then you need to come up with a story, and it's not going to grow or make a lot of sense until you have some kind of way to experience it. So I think that's true of even the kind of foundations of fantasy writers.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: You're 100% right.
We often ask if you're building a world building element, write a short story about it and just give it a try. See if it's stories and see if it actually out. But yeah, Tolkien was dragged kicking and screaming into writing an actual story about it. And it kind of shows a little bit because he's heavy on the world building. But, like, there's like, it's. It can be a tough read. Like, I think. I think, like, the Hobbit is really fun to read to kids. Like, because it's a great kids book. But, like, Tolkien, I almost recommend watching the movies first to give yourself, like, oh, I know there's an exciting bit coming, so you can deal with the lengthy description of the 50 years they hang out drinking in the shire before anything happens, like in the books or the whole Tom bombadil sequence.
[00:24:49] Speaker E: Just a little personal therapy on that. I'm in the third book, reading it aloud to my two boys.
[00:24:54] Speaker C: Oh.
[00:24:54] Speaker E: And it's like. And I know it's such a good story, but I'm like, are we doing this tonight, kids?
[00:25:00] Speaker B: And they're like, yeah, dad, let's keep reading.
[00:25:04] Speaker E: It's like we're in the third book.
Everything's about to happen, and it's like, we want to, but anyway, so just affirming that impulse that, like, maybe reading the trilogy out loud is anyway so well.
[00:25:18] Speaker D: And the other thing we have to keep in mind, too, is, well, it's a jumping off point. So one thing we talked about a little bit was, well, you might not want to go overboard on that character because I think the whole next book is going to be where he's from.
So if we do a really tough, you know, icelandic accent or something, you know, crazy, and then the whole next book takes place in that city, well, maybe we've bitten off more than we can chew, but not more than Dallin can cheer, I'm sure, but down looks.
[00:25:49] Speaker C: Like he can chew a lot from what I'm hearing, but, like, it's projecting from the diaphragm. No, I think that's a really good point as well. It's actually going to ask, are you finding yourself sort of getting into those binds where now you're going through your first book, you've got a series that you're going through, and you have this sense of like, okay, we have to now create more people with a northern english accent with a couple of R's that are from this region of Scotland and, like, a touch of Irish. And it's like, now that is the regional accent. And now not only do I have to make that accent, but I have to make it for this family of characters, or, you know what I mean? So all has to sound like a little bit different, but trying to do.
[00:26:37] Speaker D: That accent, it's a good question. And one of the things we talked about was you may have people in the same region from different social strata that have different ways of speaking. And I think the short answer is, at least my short answer would be like, we're not going to overthink it.
[00:26:55] Speaker C: That's not a bad answer.
[00:26:57] Speaker D: Now, we did sit down. And this is the call we had where Eli and I sat down and created the dialects of Yidwean and color coded a map with, you know, what, generally each, each region should sound like for.
[00:27:10] Speaker E: For voiceover, not, not for, like.
Like it wasn't a language map of Yidwin.
[00:27:19] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:27:19] Speaker E: Hard for me to keep separate in my mind a little bit, but it was like.
But, but was fun for me too.
Yeah. So. So we, we sort of, like, pick these.
I would call them accent kind of gravitational clusters. Yeah.
But then, thinking, like, Max started writing back into it. So he wanted one area to sort of trend. Turkic.
Turkic languages, maybe not Turkish proper, but, you know, with those. And so then he's writing, and then I start to see it because I live in an area that has turkic speakers, like turkish influence letters. So he has a list up of names or words. I don't know exactly how you did it, Max, to be influenced by some of the sounds, letters and so on for that region. So that would, I think, mesh with what we're trying to do with the accent. Is that right, Max?
[00:28:21] Speaker D: Yeah, that's right. And then also just to give a different feel so they would have, they speak the common tongue, so not speaking a different language, but they have, like, a smattering of different words that. Yes, we're Turkish inspired and the names are sort of, we draw from that language group. And it's not just, you know, what's the word, you know, for candle in Turkish? It's not quite that. It's an extrapolation, but I wanted to give a different feeling than the primary city where most of the action happens in Zodak.
That did feel separate, did feel different without either for me or the reader, it being an obstacle because I'm not Tolkien. I can't go create a whole bunch of full languages top to bottom. That's not in me.
[00:29:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:09] Speaker E: But I just read yesterday about speaking of Frank Herbert. He definitely drew from Arabic for a lot of his stuff. Like, Muaddib is related to the word for teacher, or the land is called Zen Sunni, where you're like, ooh. And he ended up, like, Zen Buddhist in his life. So, like, his personal talk about his, his personal interest, and it was just in, like, probably five or ten key things to tip us off, to give the flavor, to give the direction without. I am now building a lexical system. You know, it's enough.
[00:29:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: And it was interesting. I just went and saw Dune two with my, with my wife and my parents just Wednesday.
[00:29:52] Speaker E: It's coming soon.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Sorry. And so then we were, of course, reading up on all the stuff and my dad stumbled across an article talking about how in the film they make a conscious choice not to inform the language of the Fremen by Arabic. Except for the words that Frank Herbert kind of railroaded them into Arabic for, which was just a weird, interesting choice. The author of the article thought it was a bad choice on the filmmaker's part.
And then, like, the quisatz Haderach. That is a transliteration of, I think, a Hebrew word that means roughly like, the narrow path. And so this Bene Gesserit cult that has this one person, this one guy, that's gonna be the quizzatz Haderach. Right? Like, it's really interesting that it's purposeful in Herbert's work to make you.
It's meant to evoke that kind of tie.
[00:30:54] Speaker C: I so delighted this went to dune. This makes me so happy. So this is like. Again, just like a free square on my bingo card. It's like, all. Yeah, that's fascinating. And I mean, it's.
Yeah, sorry.
That's amazing.
Dune is a complex series. And, like, it's.
I think, really, it's tricky, especially to, like, talk through it now because it's like, it was in the sixties. I think he wrote it. Like, apparently Tolkien read it and did not care for it, I think in early manuscripts. But then again, most publishers didn't care for it. It was published by somebody who, like, was. Was making auto manuals before they made Dune. So, like, that was who he persuaded to, like, release the book. It's just. It's a. It's a. It's a lot. You know?
[00:31:46] Speaker E: That's a lot.
[00:31:47] Speaker C: I think somebody. Yeah, well, I think somebody described the book as 95% overthinking social situations and 5% being so high you're scared was pretty much like, the entirety of Dune. And I was like, that's such a good. Such an apt description. But I think what kind of makes me think about this is, like, accents, like dialects. Language is such an important part of a person's sense of identity and self. And, like, it is.
You know, it's even, like, modern. Like, you look back through first example that comes in my head is all of these, like, massive, like, basically dictators who would say, like, we need to expand to this country. We need this country because they speak our heart language and they're basically our people. Is like, a very strong line of argument that goes throughout history is the sense of just, like, we are one. As a people, because we speak the same language. And, you know, they say, like, England and America, two countries separated by a common language. And, like, it's just. It's interesting to see how. How those languages and dialects even develop. Even, like, it's fascinating to me as well in the US in the way that they're. That it takes a long time for accents to change meaningfully in the US, like, driving, but, like, in the UK, you drive around the corner and the other town will have, like, a different accent than the one before.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: And there are new accents developing all the time. There have been a couple of studies done recently that have shown that the prevalence of social media and video content, specifically, like, on TikTok and with Instagram reels, is creating a new american english dialect, particularly among young women.
And so they're. Yeah, because they're spending so much time on these social media platforms that their language is being informed by people and by people on the platform.
[00:33:38] Speaker E: It's amazing.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: So it's really interesting right there.
[00:33:41] Speaker E: Well, it's. Sorry.
[00:33:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
The thing that's wild, though, is I'm hearing more canadian accent creep into, like, people say instead of boat, they'll say about. They say about. Or, like, without, instead of without. And, like, I've just been noticing that in people that I would not normally have expected it to drift over as much from. So part of my background is I'm a sort of a vague third culture kid. I grew up, um, a little bit Australia, a little bit Arkansas, a little bit California, a little bit Cornwall, and, um, now Pennsylvania. Yeah. And it. But. But all of those countries were English speaking. But one of the things I found is, like, I'm not quite english enough for Americans. I'm not quite american enough for english people. And, like, it's. If people will notice things in my accents, and usually if people are well traveled, they'll hear me say something and go, you're not from here. And, like, but it's a really. It has. It has to be somebody who would know, like, I would say, like, where's that to? As opposed to where is, you know, like, I remember I was in Hershey park, local theme park here, and I came up and said, hey, where's the Ferris wheel to? And they were like, what? For, like, a while, I was like, what are you saying? And I was just really. I was really confused. I was like, where is it to?
But, so it was. But they're hearing it in an american accent, so they're not primed and ready to, like, hear it. So it's like, this accents thing, I think just absolutely fascinates me. But I think we've actually kind of rounded on, like, you're trying to develop a world, write a story about it, right?
Is there validity to some extent of saying, like, if you really want to work on the dialects in your story, like, read it out loud, you know, like, is. Is there, like, validity in that, in that product in some ways? Because, like, I kind of wonder about it. Cause it's, you know, you say, I want to develop this. Write the story if you want to. If you want to develop costumes, like, layout and lay out an act or a scene, but played, if you're like, really, if you've got the time and the inclination or you just have access to a studio or something and you're kind of like, messing with stuff, like, go mess around in the costume area for a while. Like, see if you. If that's something you want to develop, you know? Like, do you think there's validity in some ways in saying, like, hey, you know, take a little of your dialogue and just experiment with it for a minute and see. Did you find that this process enriched your world in a way that made you think about it differently? I guess would be the actual question. I circled to, I think so.
[00:36:18] Speaker D: I mean, and I thought you were in a slightly different place, which is, I always read my story out loud at some point just because you have to. I mean, both because it's the fun of sharing it, but also you just hear it so differently when you read it out loud. And again, I don't know, four weeks ago, five, maybe more now, when I started this process and was planning to end up with myself narrating, I came out with. When I would read it out loud dramatically with different voices, it was different, but I also had a limited set of tools. So that's, again, why I think. I think when you hand it over to someone like Dallin, he is an artist who's bringing a new layer onto it and, yeah, a new flavor for it.
[00:37:04] Speaker E: Well, I would be interested to know what you said, dallin, because I'm not in the driver's seat or the front row. With Max's process of turning this into an audiobook, I'm participating it. But I don't think you can just bring an accent, and you're not saying this, max, necessarily, but I don't think you could just bring an accent in only after the fact. Like, it seems like there's something to writing in an accent or dialect, which is also a challenge because we've probably all read things where, like, you lost me, I can't read this because it's too accent y or it's too colloquial. You're trying for something, but it's too much. And I've definitely erred there. But it's because on the writing side, it's like, these guys sound different or feel different. Do people try and use the voice or the accent? Dallin, have you had to just, like, make things happen that can't only be done from that end? Or maybe it can. I don't know. Do you know what I'm asking?
[00:38:06] Speaker B: So I'm not totally sure if I understand the question, but my experience has been that creating an accent or creating some kind of a dialect or something has to come from some cultural foundation, right?
So if a person is, for example, like an immigrant and they're not speaking a language as their first language, then their accent is going to be. Is going to be informed by how long they've been living in an area, right. If they were raised in the country that they immigrated to or if theyre a new visitor, there are other things also that are more specific to a person.
Like their general temperament will inform how well they speak and how they speak.
Their level of education will inform that.
And so I think that. I think that an accent is not something that, yeah, you can't really just throw it on top, but I think that there is kind of a middle ground where you don't have to go full Tolkien, but you also don't want to just kind of throw it on at the end and say, oh, yeah, this person just happens to also be that.
[00:39:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Like JK Rowling recently has said things like, oh, yeah, Hermione was black. Right. Or like that kind of thing. Right.
Or could be. Right. And so now she's played black in the Broadway shows.
But the idea I remember. I don't remember where I saw it, but there was some other creative who said that if you really want to have something that feels like really rich world building, hint at it throughout your story, and you don't have to give really in depth world building stuff. Right. Like, if you do a little workshop of a scene in a play, to go back to the costume design analogy, you can kind of lay out a little snapshot. And that's something that we see a lot in film that is set in fantastic settings. Right, where you kind of show don't tell, you don't have to go into extreme depth.
The guy that was giving this idea out, he said, have somebody who doesn't really know a whole lot about the history of the world try to explain why things are right. So there are no computers in Dune. Have some dude who's like, oh, yeah, I think it was something happened way back a long time ago, and then he gets interrupted because he has to go somewhere or something. And that little hint just makes you feel like there's so much more.
And so it kind of leaves room for the readers or for the. However you're going to consume this, right. Readers, listeners, viewers, to kind of fill in the gaps. And that lets them kind of attach and enliven the story and the world in kind of their own specific way. And they can then kind of bridge the gaps themselves and develop this strong connection to the story real quick on.
[00:41:27] Speaker D: That point to pull it back to the kind of craft of writing.
And I think it's what Dallin was talking about.
I hear from my editor from time to time, you're doing too much on the dialect. Like, you're spelling out the dialect too much instead. Like, we have a character, you just read it recently, Dal, and he spoke in a sing songy voice. And there are a couple hints on how he speaks, rather than trying to translate that into words on a page, which I do both in the book, there are a couple characters that.
That do present very specifically in words that aren't quite English, in how they're speaking, that force you into reading that kind of dialect. But other characters, again, to Dallin's point of, like, show don't tell, describes generally how they come across or the reaction or how their voice in, you know, the tone may change without having to kind of cram in a dialect.
[00:42:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And I'm sorry that we actually lost you because, dude, you were on a tear. Like, that was like, honestly, if you could distill a lot of the stuff that we've been finding in the podcast, the more we talk to creators, the more that idea of just like, just a little goes a long way with world building. And it seems like even with the. With the accents, you know, you're talking about like, you're giving them like a little drop in the ocean there, but you've got a depth of their education, their culture, where they come from, their background. There's a lot that you can throw into the performance of that character. And so I think we're kind of. We're wrapping up now. We've been. We're 45 minutes in, guys, on our 25 minutes recording. This is just exceptional. I really appreciate y'all coming. But the most important question is, where can we find your stuff? Where can we get the book, and where can we get the fabulous absolutely.
[00:43:27] Speaker D: The audiobook is going to be on Amazon. It's on audible.
That's also where the ebook and paper and back and hardcover will all be available on Amazon. It's the easiest place. They're also available elsewhere, but the audible will be the only place that has the audiobook.
[00:43:46] Speaker C: After my talk with these guys, I think there's a key takeaway that I.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: Want y'all to lift from this.
[00:43:51] Speaker C: Bringing on collaborators can bring on different perspectives to what you're doing. Dallin supported the project by bringing his expertise with language and dialects. This moved the project forward by interrogating Max and Elis content through this lens. It even led to them producing a really cool map that indicated the flow of accents through their setting. In Yidwian, who do you know that could bring this sort of perspective into your setting and enhance it as a result? If you want to write with a community that has a breadth of expertise and will offer this sort of constructive feedback to make your world richer, join us on the discord. There will be a link in the show notes, and speaking of links in the show notes, be sure to pick up your copy of Zodak, the last shielder on Amazon where they have the audiobook available as well. I can say it was an absolute pleasure to talk with these guys again. For Eli, Max, and Dallin, I'm James, and this has been another episode of the Worldcraft Club podcast. Thank you so much for.
