As I continue rewrites on “Don't Fireball the Neighbors,” I've made several tweaks to the plot and characters. One was the dragon's name.
The dragon has lived rent free in my head since I was thirteen and had run out of books with dragons to read aloud to my younger brother. I named him 'Celebramar' because it sounded like a high fantasy name and was easy to write in cursive.
The trouble was they way I write that name and the way I have said that name don't match.
This is not a unique problem in my life. Despite being an early reader, English was the ban of my school day. I had solid grammar and composition skills. My spelling skills on the other hand brought back lots of red ink.
I could read and recognize words. However, if you asked me to write out those same words five minutes later, you'd get back a mess. I passed several tests by single points and would write the lists until it was muscle memory. Spelling orally like you see in competitions was impossible.
I don't know if this is a brain issue or just confusion from growing up in a region were you can hear the word 'pecan' said three different ways in the same town. “Just sound it out” doesn't work for me, not in English.
The Latin classes in grade school and the Spanish classes in highschool complicated my issues. When I saw I word I didn't know, my poor brain would switch phonetic systems.
'Champagne' 'defenestrate' 'legumes' I knew what they all meant and how to use them. However, if I heard them on the street, I would have thought it was a different word with a similar meaning. Like 'cool' and 'cold.'
First time I tried to read out loud to some who was not my brother, I got repeatedly corrected by a child five years younger than me. Cimorene, Kazul, Gollum, Smaug – all the names were wrong.
Needless to say, creating original names runs into the same issue. The way someone reads a name's spelling don't always match how it sounded in my head. 'Leon' was short and safe. The same held for most of the characters name. The troublemakers were the dragons.
The current draft of "Don't Fireball the Neighbors has three dragons, each with a unique name. Madam Vircroc, the diplomatic liaison of the Dragon Nation. Mahgister Wodigee a dragon of few words and a short role in the plot. Finally, Celabramar the co-protagonist who is trying very hard not to start a diplomatic incident for the other two dragons to clean up.
The 'vir' in Vircroc's name was taken from Latin meaning green or living. However, Vir in English reads more like 'Vur' than 'Vear.' I let this be because it makes a fun growling noise.
Wodigee gained an extra 'ee' to avoid confusion on if the 'i' was long or short. Their title 'Mahgister' also gained an 'h' to make the first vowel sound good and breathy.
And of course, there's my dear problem child who started this all, Celabramar. It took listening to recording of myself, checking with my now grown little brother, and a page of scratched out combinations for me settle on the new spelling. 'Cele' to 'Cela.'
Over all, I am happy with these changes. However, one little issue remains.
My muscle memory has had years to program the old spellings. When writing 'Celabramar,' I regularly catch my self typing or moving through the pen loops of that second 'e.'
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