The Unique Conundrum
I am having a nice afternoon of Yogi Raspberry Leaf Tea, sleeping cats and novel writing. However, during this wonderful afternoon, I have run into an issue with my story.
My story has almost nothing in common with Harry Potter except for very general things. My novel is in the young adult genre, and some of the characters in my story cast spells. They are not strictly magicians, but they can and do cast magical spells. That is where the similarity ends. To me, that means that my story and J.K. Rowling’s story have little to nothing in common.
So today, when I ran into the first spell-casting scene, I was stalled when I realized my idea on spell-casting needs to be reworked. I wanted my characters to speak something aloud when casting a spell, and I planned on the use of Latin words. My first spell needed to be “to hide” or “to conceal.” Well, I stopped short when I realized the word I needed was “Abscondo” which sounds distinctly Harry Potterish.
When I decided to use Latin words for spells, Harry Potter was the furthest thing from my mind. It was completely unintentional. I did not set out to write anything remotely similar to Harry Potter nor do I want anyone who reads this to assume I did. I also just don’t want to sound like a Harry Potter novel. So, now I’m desperately trying to come up with a new method of spell-casting. Right now, I’m stuck.
It isn’t easy trying to come up with your own story when so many ideas have already been done. I’m not even trying to win “The Most Unique Novel Award” either. I’m just trying to write my own story with elements that don’t immediately cause the reader to think of another story. I’m realizing now it’s not that easy to accomplish.
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Comments
Have you thought about maybe using a different language base? Gaelic or Russian or something from the non-romance languages (because all the romance languages have their base in Latin). For instance, in Irish, conceal is ‘folaím’ (per the http://www.englishirishdictionary.com/ - translate and scroll down to the ‘imperative’ section). Might work for you. Just a thought. You can translate English into darn near every language somewhere on the web. Gotta love technology. =oD
Thanks for the suggestion! I was actually going through some translators last night, trying to find a different language. Nothing really stood out to me. I think I’m liking the Irish though.
I’ve actually come up with something a little different for some of my spell-casters, but I do still need a language for the others. I’m going to look into the Irish a bit more.
B.E has got a good point - only thing is, gaelic is reminiscent of elvish sounding words, at least in my opinion. German and Russian and Slavic are very harsh sounding.
A friend of mine ran into a similar problem trying to come up with spell sounding phrases when he was writing a script for a comic book - he ended up using words from english and rearranging the syllables (eg. levitate = vita tele) and it actually read quite well.
Hopefully there’s something out there that will work for you.
Maybe Esperanto? hehe
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