an entire video on linguistic ecosystems!! thank you ❤️❤️ i fell in love with the idea when you briefly talked about it a few years back and immediately used it in one of my best poems to date... it was even published & won the poetry award from that magazine. your advice has been so helpful and i'm ecstatic to have a video devoted to this! thanks again
This was just as educational as usual. 5:07 That one was a code being cracked for me: letting the words do the work. I sometimes forget that readers cannot read my mind. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are my bread and butter. But prepositions are my tuna casserole: I fill up a surprising amount of space with staging. Whenever I lose track of a character in a scene's first draft, I just stage the scene again in the next paragraph. This leaves Editing Adam with plenty of confusion at times, but nothing we can't handle.
I swear to Christ I feel guilty not paying BIG money for this person’s INCREDIBLE ability to introduce concepts I always SAW but always assumed was just wishy-washy vibes-y “you either know it or you don’t” stuff.
@@ShaelinWrites ABSOLUTELY. I literally stopped in the middle of a deep dive on a tv show that ended 10 years ago, the second I saw this show up in my feed. I’ve watched it 10 times now, taking notes..
Hey Shaelin! I love your videos, and I just wanted to thank you for sharing your knowledge with all of us ♥ I need to preface this by specifying that I really don't want to come off as pedantic or pretentious. That being said, as someone who studied Linguistics and is used to people's misunderstanding of what it is, I would offer as slight correction to your newly-coined term: LEXICAL ECOSYSTEMS🌿 Hopefully as a writer, you may appreciate the specificity 😅 Linguistics is essentially a meta-analysis of language and its structure. It includes the study of morphology, syntax, phonetics and semantics. It's descriptive and *never* prescriptive. Linguists largely ignore written language. It has very little to do with word choice or English specifically, and much less about literature. However, this is such a common misconception that it's become sort of a meme in the field. Professors typically start the first lecture of the Intro to Linguistics course by stating this outright. What you talk about in this video falls neatly under the lexicon of a language, in my opinion, hence my suggestion. I sincerely hope this helps! It can be hard not to come off as aggressive through anonymous online comments.
This was my favourite point in your 10 tips for writing a short story video and it absolutely blew my mind that this is actually a thing! Loved hearing about it more detail. You really are a master of this art and I really hope I will improve my skill over time with this!
Its okay to be excited and enthusiastic about your own work, and taking the opportunity to use it as an example. You dont need the disclaimer. I think everyone here enjoys your personal writing mixed in with empirical theory, i do, anyway
Great video. Even though i write fanfics and webnovels, which don't put too much emphasis on word choices, I liked your video as it gave me some tools to explore further in my fantasy worlds and words.❤
Thanks for this video! I wonder if for a novel it would be possible to use two contrasting ecosystems to suggest the differences between two characters and the worlds they inhabit? (Perhaps one is an interloper to the world of the protagonist). Or, I may have the concept all muddled?!
I rlly need to implement this more into my writing, but it's so hard bc whenever i try to think of specific words that fit the tone and voice my mind goes blank and i just default to using the more obvious words. Word choice in general is smth i need to practice more.
@juliab3326 yeah, usually I'll just write down something even if it's not good just to have smth to work with, then later come back and spend like two hours looking for better words lol
Thank you so much for that. This is a facet of writing that can so easily be forgotten as plot issues tend to steal an author's attention. If I may offer some advice in return, I felt like you were in a hurry, as if you had to finish this post within a short time span. It's particularly notable when you read your word choices but also the pace throughout felt relentless like jogging on a treadmill. If you stop to take a breath now and then, the gentle and natural pause gives viewers a chance to catch up. We are having a moment of quality time together. Imagine we were having a conversation over dinner. I like the section headings, the title text. That did a lot to help distinguish the different parts. Thank you again. You've given me so many helpful bits of advice over the years. I know I'm a better writer because of you.
I learn so much from you Shaelin!!!! Every time!! I'm a sucker for good prose but my own has never been very good, so this advice is super helpful. Trying to apply it in a short story I'm submitting to a competition. Thank you, this entire concept is so fun!
I believe I asked this question the last time you brought this up, which I think was the very first time you ever did in a video. I think you even answered my question but I forget so I’ll ask here: did you decide on those words in each respective list before you wrote the story, or were they words you noticed in retrospect?
I don't build the linguistic ecosystem before writing since that would be *very* hard to incorporate - it's more that I have an understanding of the vibe I want to create and as I write, I choose words that fit into that. I normally wouldn't make a list of all the words building the linguistic ecosystem after writing a story, that was just for the sake of the example. So it's not something I plan in advance or only notice in retrospect, it's how I'm selecting the word choice while drafting.
Like how my 11 year old paladin kept calling her angel patrons pixies since she was raised by people who dont consider Angel's but only fae (since getting last rites and being secretly resurrected by her uncle's 'druid' friend)
Interesting, that your protagonist has never seen a river or most animals. Blake never saw the sea until his maturity according to Peter Ackroyd. Peter Tyson's *Madagascar - The Eighth Continent* & John Gimlette's *The Gardens of Mars - Madagascar An Island Story* may help world building. Also, Colin Thubron's *The Amur River - Between Russia & China* & Robin Noble's *Under the Radiant Hill - Life & Land in the Remotest Highlands*. Fiona Sampson's *Walking the Starlit Wood* is about the England. Philip Ball's *The Water Kingdom* traces Chinese characters with rivers.
It's quite rare, but it would be a situation where the narrator of the story is someone other than the protagonist. You most often see this in omniscient POV, or stories where there is some kind of framing device. One of the most famous examples would be The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, where the story is narrated by death. Another great example is A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, where Lemony Snicket is a fictionalized author and the frame of the story is that he's telling the story after the fact, despite not being the main character and not present for the events of the series.
I'm actually not sure if it's the official craft term haha, I think normally we'd use more specific terms (omniscient narrator, witness narrator, etc) depending on the case, but I usually just lump all of those together as external narrators.
I like your channel, please keep it up! E.B. White said something like "Most readers are in trouble half of the time." He continued on to say, in effect, that a writer's duty is to remove even the slightest of bumps strewn along the reader's path. So, here's the thing, this 74-year-old writer found a reference ambiguity in the first sentence of your first example: Are the ditzies, et al. the ones that are paying attention, or are they the ones everybody is paying attention to? As it is, the reader might be lead either way. I hope you take this picking of a modest nit in the cheerful spirit with which it is offered. Ciao!
Hi Ms. Bishop - a Great THANK YOU for this video - YOU are the Neon Sign in the sky shouting to me that I'll NEVER be a decent writer... Yet I'm very interested in writing BEST Selling LOVE Stories for Netflix/Big Screen adaptation. Please kindly make a video or two talking about the Love Story Genre (like what kind of plot/setting(s) would makes a story mesmerizing for 90%+ teenagers and the older audience) and how to write EZ screenplay for easy video/movie adaptation - assuming I myself would be the producer. I have some cozy feelings or emotional ideas that I'd like to express through a love story - but I don't know the most word-efficient way to do so, nor do I have any concrete details/plot to invoke such feelings in my audience - I need help! Please don't forget to recommend some good references for beginners. Thanks in advance for helping me to cross out one more item in my bucket list!
Yeah well, all this is obvious. If you're writing a realistic and simple Story, that uses a straight-forward "Сказ" style, a Heavy Fantasy Opus, a sweet Romantic Poetic Fantasy, or a laughing satirical absurd comedy, *of course* you'll be using a _VERY_ different vocabulary for each; also if your straight-forward realistic Story takes place in 19th Century Poland, 1980's Israeli city, or contemporary Texan small town, it shall essentially use _very_ different wording and style.
Love this concept and the term "linguistic ecosystem"! Great examples, too. Thanks for sharing! :)
an entire video on linguistic ecosystems!! thank you ❤️❤️ i fell in love with the idea when you briefly talked about it a few years back and immediately used it in one of my best poems to date... it was even published & won the poetry award from that magazine. your advice has been so helpful and i'm ecstatic to have a video devoted to this! thanks again
Ahh that’s amazing about your poem💛💛
Your understanding of storytelling is so advanced and well-articulated > goals ❤
This was just as educational as usual.
5:07 That one was a code being cracked for me: letting the words do the work. I sometimes forget that readers cannot read my mind.
Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are my bread and butter. But prepositions are my tuna casserole: I fill up a surprising amount of space with staging. Whenever I lose track of a character in a scene's first draft, I just stage the scene again in the next paragraph. This leaves Editing Adam with plenty of confusion at times, but nothing we can't handle.
As someone who also adores paying attention to word choice--huge fan of your advice on specificity!--this video is a TREAT
This whole topic is like being treated to a steak dinner.
I swear to Christ I feel guilty not paying BIG money for this person’s INCREDIBLE ability to introduce concepts I always SAW but always assumed was just wishy-washy vibes-y “you either know it or you don’t” stuff.
Said perfectly
the video we were all waiting for is HEREEE!! 🙏🏻✨🌱
omg I had no idea anyone was actually waiting for a video on this topic haha
@@ShaelinWrites ABSOLUTELY. I literally stopped in the middle of a deep dive on a tv show that ended 10 years ago, the second I saw this show up in my feed.
I’ve watched it 10 times now, taking notes..
@@ShaelinWrites ive been trying to make a few of my own since watching your videos!! i’m so glad you made a video about it :)
hearing that people actually?? use writing theories I come up with??? my heart🥺
@@ShaelinWrites can’t wait to see more of your own writing theories in future videos if you make any! 🤍🫶
knowledge of this concept is something i didn’t know i have been missing!!! i love it!!! you are brilliant, thank you 🤍✨
Wow, that's delivering the goods. Love the name you gave it too.
Thankyou thankyou thankyou so so much for this video. You're such a blessing on this field
Oot, but lately your video covers have been so great-looking. Whoever makes them is a design genius.
Thank you, I make them!!
Hey Shaelin! I love your videos, and I just wanted to thank you for sharing your knowledge with all of us ♥
I need to preface this by specifying that I really don't want to come off as pedantic or pretentious.
That being said, as someone who studied Linguistics and is used to people's misunderstanding of what it is, I would offer as slight correction to your newly-coined term:
LEXICAL ECOSYSTEMS🌿
Hopefully as a writer, you may appreciate the specificity 😅 Linguistics is essentially a meta-analysis of language and its structure. It includes the study of morphology, syntax, phonetics and semantics. It's descriptive and *never* prescriptive. Linguists largely ignore written language. It has very little to do with word choice or English specifically, and much less about literature. However, this is such a common misconception that it's become sort of a meme in the field. Professors typically start the first lecture of the Intro to Linguistics course by stating this outright. What you talk about in this video falls neatly under the lexicon of a language, in my opinion, hence my suggestion.
I sincerely hope this helps! It can be hard not to come off as aggressive through anonymous online comments.
Omg I had no idea (never studied linguistics haha, but I guess that's obvious from my faux pas) but this makes a lot of sense!!
YES I have been waiting for this video. 😍😍😍
This was my favourite point in your 10 tips for writing a short story video and it absolutely blew my mind that this is actually a thing! Loved hearing about it more detail. You really are a master of this art and I really hope I will improve my skill over time with this!
So useful! At this point you're basically my writing masterclass.
Maggie Stiefvater does atmosphere & linguistic ecosystems really well too, I think.
This is so, so helpful and interesting. Thank you very much!
Its okay to be excited and enthusiastic about your own work, and taking the opportunity to use it as an example. You dont need the disclaimer.
I think everyone here enjoys your personal writing mixed in with empirical theory, i do, anyway
Thanks you so much, Shaelin! I really love your channel
Great video. Even though i write fanfics and webnovels, which don't put too much emphasis on word choices, I liked your video as it gave me some tools to explore further in my fantasy worlds and words.❤
This is a great video!! Thanks for making this!
As someone who's watched quite a bit of your videos (very helpful !!) :Finally, your ultimate geek out vid 😂😂😂
Interesting and definitely useful.
Thanks for this video! I wonder if for a novel it would be possible to use two contrasting ecosystems to suggest the differences between two characters and the worlds they inhabit? (Perhaps one is an interloper to the world of the protagonist). Or, I may have the concept all muddled?!
im not an expert but i think thatd work. id read something like that
I feel like that will emphasize the differences more and would highlight the impact of a distinct ecosystem
the way this is my favourite topic
Thank you for this. 🙏🏼😌
I rlly need to implement this more into my writing, but it's so hard bc whenever i try to think of specific words that fit the tone and voice my mind goes blank and i just default to using the more obvious words. Word choice in general is smth i need to practice more.
@juliab3326 yeah, usually I'll just write down something even if it's not good just to have smth to work with, then later come back and spend like two hours looking for better words lol
I should dedicate a gratitude message to you in my novel ❤
Thank you so much for that. This is a facet of writing that can so easily be forgotten as plot issues tend to steal an author's attention.
If I may offer some advice in return, I felt like you were in a hurry, as if you had to finish this post within a short time span. It's particularly notable when you read your word choices but also the pace throughout felt relentless like jogging on a treadmill. If you stop to take a breath now and then, the gentle and natural pause gives viewers a chance to catch up. We are having a moment of quality time together. Imagine we were having a conversation over dinner.
I like the section headings, the title text. That did a lot to help distinguish the different parts.
Thank you again. You've given me so many helpful bits of advice over the years. I know I'm a better writer because of you.
I learn so much from you Shaelin!!!! Every time!! I'm a sucker for good prose but my own has never been very good, so this advice is super helpful. Trying to apply it in a short story I'm submitting to a competition. Thank you, this entire concept is so fun!
I believe I asked this question the last time you brought this up, which I think was the very first time you ever did in a video. I think you even answered my question but I forget so I’ll ask here: did you decide on those words in each respective list before you wrote the story, or were they words you noticed in retrospect?
I don't build the linguistic ecosystem before writing since that would be *very* hard to incorporate - it's more that I have an understanding of the vibe I want to create and as I write, I choose words that fit into that. I normally wouldn't make a list of all the words building the linguistic ecosystem after writing a story, that was just for the sake of the example. So it's not something I plan in advance or only notice in retrospect, it's how I'm selecting the word choice while drafting.
You're an amazing teacher. Jealous of your future students already.
When I write, this is probably the element I most focus on … especially during the editing process, both word choice and rhythm.
Wow I love the comparison to ecosystems. Like ecology makes sense, "voice" is vague af
Also, I sat this all the time but it really feels like I’m getting away with something here, getting all this good stuff for free. 👀
Like how my 11 year old paladin kept calling her angel patrons pixies since she was raised by people who dont consider Angel's but only fae (since getting last rites and being secretly resurrected by her uncle's 'druid' friend)
Interesting, that your protagonist has never seen a river or most animals. Blake never saw the sea until his maturity according to Peter Ackroyd.
Peter Tyson's *Madagascar - The Eighth Continent* & John Gimlette's *The Gardens of Mars - Madagascar An Island Story* may help world building.
Also, Colin Thubron's *The Amur River - Between Russia & China* & Robin Noble's *Under the Radiant Hill - Life & Land in the Remotest Highlands*.
Fiona Sampson's *Walking the Starlit Wood* is about the England. Philip Ball's *The Water Kingdom* traces Chinese characters with rivers.
All these books appeared recently in paperback.
You mentioned an "external narrator" - what is that? I don't think I've heard that term before.
It's quite rare, but it would be a situation where the narrator of the story is someone other than the protagonist. You most often see this in omniscient POV, or stories where there is some kind of framing device. One of the most famous examples would be The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, where the story is narrated by death. Another great example is A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, where Lemony Snicket is a fictionalized author and the frame of the story is that he's telling the story after the fact, despite not being the main character and not present for the events of the series.
@@ShaelinWrites Thanks. I've read both Book Thief and Series of UE and didn't realize that was the term for those narrators, but that makes sense.
I'm actually not sure if it's the official craft term haha, I think normally we'd use more specific terms (omniscient narrator, witness narrator, etc) depending on the case, but I usually just lump all of those together as external narrators.
I like your channel, please keep it up! E.B. White said something like "Most readers are in trouble half of the time." He continued on to say, in effect, that a writer's duty is to remove even the slightest of bumps strewn along the reader's path. So, here's the thing, this 74-year-old writer found a reference ambiguity in the first sentence of your first example: Are the ditzies, et al. the ones that are paying attention, or are they the ones everybody is paying attention to? As it is, the reader might be lead either way. I hope you take this picking of a modest nit in the cheerful spirit with which it is offered. Ciao!
I see an owl on the shelves behind you, but no bishop. Hmm.
Hi Ms. Bishop - a Great THANK YOU for this video - YOU are the Neon Sign in the sky shouting to me that I'll NEVER be a decent writer...
Yet I'm very interested in writing BEST Selling LOVE Stories for Netflix/Big Screen adaptation.
Please kindly make a video or two talking about the Love Story Genre (like what kind of plot/setting(s) would makes a story mesmerizing for 90%+ teenagers and the older audience) and how to write EZ screenplay for easy video/movie adaptation - assuming I myself would be the producer.
I have some cozy feelings or emotional ideas that I'd like to express through a love story - but I don't know the most word-efficient way to do so, nor do I have any concrete details/plot to invoke such feelings in my audience - I need help! Please don't forget to recommend some good references for beginners.
Thanks in advance for helping me to cross out one more item in my bucket list!
it feels like she's talking about tone... and calling it voice
Yeah well, all this is obvious.
If you're writing a realistic and simple Story, that uses a straight-forward "Сказ" style, a Heavy Fantasy Opus, a sweet Romantic Poetic Fantasy, or a laughing satirical absurd comedy, *of course* you'll be using a _VERY_ different vocabulary for each; also if your straight-forward realistic Story takes place in 19th Century Poland, 1980's Israeli city, or contemporary Texan small town, it shall essentially use _very_ different wording and style.
So let's discuss the real deal. Will you ever again consider growing your hair as it was before or not?
That is none of your business
Thank you ❤
the fuck? this is what I'm trying to learn and understand now, and this video pops up. That's strange... and awesome, I guess.
I like your user lol