Part of me wants to shift the entirety of Magical Fantasy Adventure Land into the normal world instead of splitting it into a separate realm.
Part of me is still annoyed that this fucker still doesn’t have a proper title. Or at least something that sounds better as a place holder.
it’s called Mafalia. that’s your world’s name. ‘MAH-FAR-lee-uh’.
That actually sounds really good as a world name. I’m curious to know where that came from?
it’s the acronym. “Magical Fantasy Adventure Land”-ia becomes MaFAL-ia: Mafalia.
i always find if you need a placeholder name for something, write it out and make up an acronym, adding and removing letters or vowels if need be.
for example:
- “The House Where Clio Fell in Love With Him”
“T
heHouseWhereClioFellinLoveWithHim”- “THoWeCliFiLWH”
- “ThrowecliFiLWH”
- “ThrowecliffiLWH”
- “Throwecliff
iLWH”- “Throwecliffe”
- “Thrawecliffe”
hence ‘the house where Clio fell in love with him’ becomes ‘Thrawecliffe House’. what’s a ‘thraw’? i don’t know. is it on a cliff? maybe; that’s an author’s preogative.
suddenly the name of the house itself throws up new questions which an author in answering goes off down a rabbit hole of worldbuilding.
Holy fuck. That is absolutely amazing advice.
Thank you so much!!!!!
As someone who regularly smashes words together for humorous purposes, I’m appalled I’ve never thought to use it in my writing. Bless you.
good advice
My favourite example of this is Dragon Age. The setting is called Thedas, which comes from calling it “the Dragon Age setting” in development!
The Dragon Age Setting
The DAS
ThedasThe D&D game that my boyfriend is currently running is based in a city called Isan, which is an acronym for “I Suck At Naming”.
Icrabic (Ick-Ray-Bick). ICRBC. I Cannot Reach Because Cat. I’m serious, I renamed a city because I couldn’t reach my notes because Zoan was on top of me. Players haven’t realized that I actually renamed the city to match yet.