Does your fantasy novel or fictional world need its own constructed language (conlang)? The answer is both yes and no. A constructed language gives your world more depth; however it might not be necessary to construct a full fictional language.

Developing and perfecting an original language can take a lot of time. On top of that, some conlang enthusiasts frown on developing a language modeled after the Latin and Greek systems. Therefore, crafting something unique is going to take a lot of research, practice and brainstorming.

If you’re writing a novel, and want to get it done, spending time fully constructing a language, its script and grammar is going to take precious time away from novel development. Not to mention, if this isn’t an area of love or interest, the tedium could fully take you away from your project.

Instead, we propose a strategy to help you develop elements of your language and write your novel concurrently. This strategy has worked for us, and parts of it come from a very helpful book by Mark Rosenfelder called the “Language Construction Kit*.” Even if you don’t plan to write a full language, we highly recommend you checking out this book along with some of his others.

Language Construction For Your Novel – The Quick Process

1. Start your novel – You have probably already begun your novel, which is great. Don’t overthink the language process. Just start.
2. Know why you need a constructed language (conlang) -Sometimes it adds to the story to have foreign phrases in dialog. Or it helps with spells and magic. Maybe it’s just to help with name generation. But knowing why will help you understand how deep you actually need to go.
3. Build a basic lexicon (list of translated words – To help you do this, here is a list of commonly used English words. Skip the articles and prepositions. But because this isn’t very robust, here are a few other word groups to consider building a translatable list for:
   • Colors
   • People words (man, woman, boy, girl)
   • Familial words (mother, father, grandmother…)
   • Geological formations (lake, river, mountains…)
   • Parts of the body (arm, leg, face…)

After the basics, circle back to that why in step 2. If you’re needing the language for spells – then get the words for that into your lexicon. If you’re needing it for a specific dialog that you already know is coming up – add those words to your lexicon. If it’s for naming -well use step 4 for that.

4. Continue building your conlang lexicon as you write – Your base lexicon is going to really help you get started, but as you keep writing, you might find a need for other words. Keep your lexicon handy, and add to it as you need it. For instance, if you’re using Google Docs to write your novel, have a “lexicon” section in your document that’s accessible through the outline view. You can easily click over, add a word or look up a word.

5. Don’t go overboard, and don’t overthink – Your first priority is to write your novel. But it can be easy to get carried away on the language side of things. When that starts to happen, just remind yourself not to overthink it.

6. Do not use everything in your lexicon – You might be tempted to use a lot of the words in your lexicon. But that isn’t going to be necessary. Too much constructed language in your novel will pull the readers away from your story. If your reader is having to do too much contextual translation, they lose that feeling of being incorporated into the story. We have more information about when to use a constructed name and how far to take it in our ultimate guide to naming.

7. Sayings rather than a different language can go further and deeply engage your reader – Incorporating your characters’ native languages into reasonable parts of your story adds a lot of dimension. But sayings and figures of speech can really give your character – character. Not only that, but it can sometimes make the reader feel more part of your world. One trick when doing this is to give it context on the first use. You could be up front about it – something like “My people have a saying ____,” and then later the one who heard this saying starts using it.

Recommended Conlang Books

Mark Rosenfelder is one of the go-to experts on this subject. One of the best places to start is his language construction kit. However, we will list some of his other books here as well. They might be good inspiration as you go forward.

1. The Language Construction Kit*
2. Advanced Language Construction*
3. The Conlanger’s Lexipedia*
4. The Syntax Construction Kit*

*Please note, items listed with an asterisk contain affiliate links. These do not make the products cost more. But this website does receive a very very small commission. This commission helps the website continue to build out and provide even more resources.