Language Clinic Testers Needed

By Holly Lisle

I’m going to need two (only two) wannabe language builders for the Create A Language Clinic book.

I think what I’ve written is clear and concise and easy to understand, and that anyone with a very basic knowledge of English will be able to use my instructions to create a working language. That’s what I think.

I may be wrong.

Therefore, I am looking for two writers who have never created a language before. The genre in which you write and your status as published or unpublished are not at issue. You can be an LARPG gamer, gamemaster, or game designer, an sf writer, a fantasy writer, a romance writer, a lit writer … it does not matter to me. What does matter is that you identify yourself as a writer, you want to learn how to create a language, and you agree to go through the whole book from start to finish and develop one complete language, from basic names all the way through to written systems.

And that you then report back to me with the results of your experiment. I’ll need to know:

  1. Which parts worked perfectly for you
  2. Places where you got lost
  3. Instructions that were clear, and those that were not
  4. Parts that you thought were fun (and why)
  5. Parts that you thought were boring (and why)
  6. Things that surprised you
  7. Things that you would have liked to find out, but didn’t
  8. Your overall impression

What you’ll get for completing all this:

A free copy of the print version of the finished book.
An acknowledgment in the book.
Possibly a cover quote.
My gratitude.

I’ll need a pretty quick turn-around. My estimate for the complete time it will take you to create an entire language, grammar, and written language using my system is five hours, not including reading the instructions. You might do it quicker than that. (I do.) You could take much longer if you developed a huge vocabulary, but I’m only asking for you to develop enough that you are satisfied you could use your language.

If you’re interested, tell me why here. I’ll pick two writers from a semi-random drawing—semi-random in that I’ll eliminate anyone who is clearly unqualified to do this before doing the drawing. Poor spelling and grammar will be my causes for elimination.

I’ll leave the entries open until the day I finish the manuscript, so the date this closes is uncertain. Entering sooner rather than later would be a good idea, if you’re interested.

Thanks very much for considering helping me out with this.

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