#allteeth

[writingquestionsanswered]

hi do you have any advice or tips on creating sayings and expressions in novels?

Creating Slang and Idioms for Imaginary Places

When your story is set in a real location, past or present, it's easy enough to research the slang and idioms that are/were popular in order to give your story some real world flavor. But what about when you're writing in an imagined place or time?

Any time you're making an imaginary place, one of the first things you should do is see if you can find a real world inspiration (or a few) that is similar to what you envision for your imaginary location. You don't have to model it exactly, but it can be a great way to get ideas about things like geography, climate, architecture, and even language.

So, let's say your story is set on an Earth-like planet in a time and place very similar to Victorian England. The first thing to do would be to look up the slang and idioms that were popular in 1800s England and use those as a guide. For example, "Gigglemug" was Victorian slang for a face that is always smiling. You could adopt that word and use it in your story, or you can come up with something similar but different, like "allteeth" or "pearly face." You can also look to your story's world for clues. Maybe robots are a big part of this world, so perhaps "grinnybot" was the nickname for a certain robot that was manufactured with a smiling face, and that evolved into slang for a person who smiles a lot.

You can do the same thing with idioms, using idioms that were popular in a time and place most similar to your story. Or, again, you can look at your story's world for clues. Sometimes, doing a little of both is helpful. "Got the morbs" was a Victorian saying meaning "going through a period of sadness." Maybe in your story's world, there's an intense period of darkness that lasts for three weeks every few months, wherein the only light comes from a distant blue star. So, an emotional period of darkness might be known as the "blue dots."

Happy writing!

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I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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[kbfoto]

I brought Bubba home for the weekend while @brolyndab goes to Indiana to see her best friend and niece. And he has had a very eventful last couple of days. Poor guy is tuckered out from running around the back yard with Jaxon and Dylan, and all my friends petting and playing with him. I think he likes it. He’s also not gone to the bathroom in the house a single time so far. #knockonwood 😭😅 He’s such a good, sweet, boy. 🐶😍❤️🙏🏻 Ps. We miss mom/ @brolyndab 😦🙈💯 #puppy #minpin #muttsofinstagram #minpinstagram #adorable #sleepypuppy #allteeth

[mccoytheartist]

L O L (Last One Laughing) ••• •• • 📸credit: @jrnadox #Lol #Smile #Style #AllTeeth #Fashion #Male #Model #BlackAndGold #Positivity #Motivation #HumpDay #HumpDayHumor #GumbyStyle #Chains #Tattoos #WhatTheyWant #HipularRecords #Music #Rapper #SanFrancisco #TheBay #BayArea #LastOneLaughing #HipHop #Photography #NaturalLight #BlackExcellence #Power #Gains #NewOrleans (at San Francisco, California)

[shaugahaga-blog]

All Teeth

Erin was always an odd little girl. Even by the age of five, folks could see she was strange. She didn’t seem too interested in making friends with other kids. She was to wrapped up in her own imagination. She could clearly see creatures and characters that no one else could. Her father joked about his imaginative daughter but as the years went on, he began to worry. He didn’t want her to go nuts like her mother did.

Erin was born in County Claire, Ireland in April 12, 1985. There were no complications for the first child of Sean and Maureen Dwyer. It was a small hospital. Maureen stayed in an adjacent room to the small nursery. The two rooms were separated by a large window. Maureen was grateful that she could keep an eye on her new born.

When Sean came to pick up his family in the morning, Maureen was in histerics.

“It took her! It took her!” She screamed over and over! Panicked, Sean ran into the nursery where he found little Erin smiling up at him. The hospital staff eventually gave Maureen a tranquilizer. She was never the same after that.

She would insist that the beautiful little girl living with them was an imposter. In her more lucid moments she would describe the horrible creature that crawled into the nursery. It had a human body but it wore no clothes over it’s grey skin. It had unnaturally long fingers and a face that was “all teeth”. She would describe the sack it dragged into it that was black as night. As if one could carve out a piece of the night and make it into a bag.

The beast simply stepped out of a shadow. Soon it was looming over her baby. She gasped and the creature’s head turned towards her. She saw a gaping hole where it’s face should be, filled with therethrough in various shapes and sizes. As soon as she gazed upon it she was frozen. She couldn’t move or speak. Or scream as she watched the horror reach into her baby’s crib, lift the child out, and place her into it’s sack.

When the creature withdrew it’s arm it was holding a new baby. This baby had the same great skin, the same long fingers, and the same horrid maw in place of a face. As the monster stepped back into the shadows Maureen began to scream. And scream.

Everyone knew this was nonsense, of course. The security footage of the night showed nothing out of the ordinary. But Maureen couldn’t accept that she was simply the victim of a nightmare. She never touched her daughter. She refused to acknowledge her at home. Eventually, Maureen tried to kill Erin.

Shortly after Erin’s third birthday, Sean felt Maureen leave his bed. He groggily got up to check on her. He found Maureen in Erin’s room with a pillow over Erin’s sleeping face. Sean saved Erin just in time. Maureen had to go away after that.

Erin loved her father Sean. By all accounts he was the only real friend she had. He would listen to her go on all day about the strange faeries and arrange folk she could see. But the kids in school were starting to make fun of her. Sean slowly became less and less encouraging of these fantasies until he would simply say,

“Erin, don’t tell lies.”

Erin caught on and stopped talking about her strange friends that no one could see. Eventually she stopped seeing them too. This was an immense relief to Sean. Around the age of ten, Erin began making friends at school and seemed to all a normal girl. Except when Sean would take pictures of her. Whenever Sean would shake a Polaroid photo, he could swear he saw a different face on his daughter through the developing image. A face that was all teeth.

The years went on. Erin made friends and good grades. She had forgotten about the strange folk she used to see. Until she slept. Her dreams were filled with horrors that felt bizarrely familiar to her. But morning would come and they would be forgotten again.

When Erin was fifteen, a new term had entered her and everyone else’s lexicon. “Y2k bug”. The kids in her school could talk of nothing else. Erin didn’t fully understand what it was. From what she could gather from other fifteen year old students, the year 2000 was going to bring some sort of global catastrophe. Some kids said it was the end of the world.

Erin was terrified. For some reason none of the other kids seemed as scared of the prospect of global annihilation as her and this upset her. started spending more time with her father. Sean didn’t know why his teenage daughter wanted to spend time with him all of the sudden but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. For months, every weekend was a father daughter excursion. Picnics, parks, and pony rides. It was a happy time.

On Christmas, Sean took his daughter ice skating. It was Erin’s first time. She fell a lot but she didn’t seem to mind. She had a smile on her face the whole time. Sean wanted to capture that smile so he took a picture.

When it developed he dropped his camera. The camera hit the ice with a loud crack.

“Da, are yeh ok?” Erin shouted.

Sean had already crumpled up the photo in his hands.

“Just slipped, love.” Sean called back. He picketed the photo. Later he threw it in his fire place. He could never let his daughter see that picture. A picture of a grey creature in his daughter’s clothes. Looking towards the camera with a face full of monstrous fangs.

Erin knew something happened out on the ice that night. The following week she felt her father withdraw from her. This broke her heart. The new year was coming and for reasons she didn’t understand, she couldn’t face the new year alone.

On the morning of new years eve, she saw footage on the news of people claiming the end of the world was here. She started to cry. This got Sean’s attention. He appeared next to her and hugged her. Erin felt herself enveloped in strength. Sean felt his strength melt away. The two were locked in a silent embrace for longer than either one could tell. Sean promised Erin he would be by her side until the new year arrived.

True to his word, the two spent the entire day together playing board games. But the clock marched the two of them closer and closer to midnight.

The TV was broadcasting the crowds gathered in Dublin. Sean held Erin’s hand as the countdown began.

“5…4…3…

"Da, I love yeh!” Erin squeezed nervously. Sean squeezed her hand.

“…1!”

The world went black. Erin looked around. The TV, her house, her father even the floor were all gone. She was surrounded by a tangible blackness.

“Da?”

“I’m here child.” Hissed an unfamiliar voice.

Erin spun around. From the darkness stepped a tall grey figure. It towered above Erin who only stood up to it’s navel. It’s gangly arms hung by it’s thighs. One of its massive hands held a black sack. But Erin didn’t notice any of this. All she saw was it’s face.

The head seemed like it was looking at her. It was hard to tell as the beast had no eyes. No ears. No nose. Only a mouth. A wide circle that nearly encompassed it’s entire head. Within this maw were rows of gums and rows of teeth that seemed to go on forever in an oblivion contained in one skull.

Erin immediately remembered. She remembered the fairies that use to play with her. She remembered the cranky headless dulluhuns that juggled their own blood. She remembered the small imps that told her dirty jokes. She felt no fear. She simply asked.

“What am I?”

“My daughter.” Answered her father. And Erin wept. She cried harder than she ever cried before.

“What happened?” She managed to sob.

“The world ended.” There was a long pause before he continued. “Not the end of the world of man, but the world of the Folk will not see the next century.”

“What am I?” Erin asked in a squeak.

“You are a changeling. We you were switched at birth with a human baby that I’ve kept in my sack for fifteen years.”

“You are not my father!” Erin shouted through her own disbelief.

“Look at your hands.” Responded the monster in a fatherly tone. Her hands her grey and long like his. She stood silently staring at her hands.

“Normally we would not have met till you were eighteen. You would have brought me the corpse of the man who raised you and we would have eaten him together.” The beast said casually.

“No!” Erin protested

“Yes” he said simply “you would have.”

“Then why?!” Erin screeched, “why am I meeting you now?!”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Because the world ended.”

Erin collapsed. “So, what happens now?”

Erin wasn’t sure, but she thought the face/hole smiled at her. “We come back. You…” He pointed at her, “will bring us back.”

He reached into his sack and pulled out Erin. The real Erin who was still an infant. “You have a choice. You can take this child and return it to it’s father, or you can kill the father and give us another century on earth. And not just changelings. The Pucas, the leprechauns, the banshees, and faeries of all kinds will return to the world of man. The fate of the Folk is in your hands.” Erin’s father spoke with gaining intensity until the infinite loops of teeth began to shake with fury. Erin didn’t have a chance to respond. In an instant she was sitting with Sean again. He was still holding her hand.

Her other arm held his baby. He turned his head towards her and a confused expression invaded his face.

“Erin, where did that baby come from?”

Erin didn’t answer. A ravenous hunger filled her belly. Sean’s apparent confusion turned to terror.

Erin’s hunger combatted her shame. She knew why her adopted father was frightened. She knew exactly what she looked like right now. She placed the child on the floor. She would save that for later.

After she bit her stepfather’s head off she saw them. The faeries, the sprites, the ogres and elementals. Her old friends. Her Folk. Finally she saw her father as he erupted from the remains of Sean. Together they ate Erin, and welcomed in a new millennium of magic.

[yuri-katsudom]

If you understand, you're too far gone

Yurreal Katsudaddy Binktop Nikejustdoit Salty Plijetski Otabear Allteeth

[mishivaous]

😀 #allteeth (at South Africa)

[gabriellelouise95]

I wish I could say this was me now but it’s a #tbt bc I’m sick as a dawggggg #allteeth #moonhead 👽🌚 (at Sheffield)

[kottagekupboard]

#nanuk thinks he is to big for naps. #lookatthatear #allteeth he is going to still be a big puppy here at #kottagekupboard (at Sandridge Park)

[amtrips84]

Saturday shenanigans. #saturdaymorningsbelikethis #saturdaymonring #selfie #amtripsphotography #friendsarefamily #friendsbelikethis #goofingaround #justforfun #frangipanilove #frangipaniflower #allteeth

[flynblkman]

My Phone may be broken,but I love you none the less Dad.Happy Fathers Day!!! Sometimes,We are All too a like!!!Photos of this such are Rare,especially of this Quality! Dad,Zachary,Nicholas,and... #AllTeeth #FamilyTradition

[harrowingp]

Smile. #allteeth #houseoftreasures #tufnellpark #london #catsitter (at Tufnell Park)

[mmakong]

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A post shared by Raymond Seraile (@dr.kong06)

Haha! 🔥🔥🔥 #swole #allteeth #getafterit #Repost @stringosalsa ・・・ #1879 was #fukin #siiik (at Dude Landia)

[adrianmorera]

Hey Jack! Smile for the camera! 🎥 😃🌟⭐️✨#pinkismasculine #jackrussellterrier #jackinmiami #smile #pink #smalldog #waitingformomanddadtogethome #cutedog #dog #helloworld🌎 #brown #allteeth

[jonishatasaki]

#tbt I thought I was so cute with my Gucci glasses.. 😅 #24hourfitnessdays #thebigchop #lookinglikehailah #allteeth

[jeremiahjahi]

This was fun...the question is will he make the final cut. The airdate is approaching. We shall see. KEEP MOVING FOLKS. #motivated #humble #instagram #facebook #twitter #playwrighting #culture #worldculture #nogames #africandiaspora #iwantitall #youmatter #valuematters #menwithstyle #weekday #menwithbeards #beardgangmatters #thestage #OMEGAPSIPHI1911 #cleanshaved #wig #allteeth #distinguishedgentleman #usmcveteran #atlmademe #brooklyntestedme #bookertwashingtonhighschool #atlantapublicschools https://www.instagram.com/p/Ce3N2RROnCH/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[luminecho]

Allteeth really said

Welcome to NightWing name generator

we got:

wanted criminals

anime eyes

warrior cats

the tea

head empty no thoughts

carrying the weight of your sins

war crimes

a dentist’s dream

me at 4 am

redundant redundancy

and me before i had to get a crown for my tooth