Film News: Dreamworks and David Heyman

Film News: Screenwriter Chris Kyle to Draft Shadow and Bone

Shadow and Bone Playlist (UK title: The Gathering Dark)

Mini Character Playlists

“The Big Idea”: The Inspiration behind Shadow and Bone

Style Schism: The Look & Feel of Shadow and Bone

Interview with Keith Thompson (the artist behind Ravka’s map)

What Does a Kefta Look Like? 

How Shadow and Bone Got Its Title

Tongue Twister: The Perils and Pleasures of Creating the Ravkan Language

More on Language

Genre Friction: Just What Is Tsarpunk? (extensive interview on worldbuilding)

On Writing

Sticks and Stones: My Approach to Worldbuilding Basics

Let the Right One In (Choosing Critique Partners and Getting the Most from Them) 

Advice on First Drafts

When Life Interferes with Process

Choosing Your Ideas

The Dreams of Youth (On not giving up)

Resources for Finding An Agent

My Journey to Publication (Includes querying tips)

Plots, Schemes, and Teenage Dreams

Fun Stuff

The Appeal of the Badboy

Trailer vs. Trailer: Snow White and the Huntsman vs. Mirror, Mirror

New York Valentine and a Visit to the Russian Tea Room

Meeting George R. R. Martin

Why I Write YA: My Response to Slate

Dia de los Muertos: Hollywood Forever and Halloween Makeup Tips

On Sucker Punch and the Hero’s Journey

On Highlander

One of the biggest challenges in building the Ravkan world was language. As one glance at the map will tell you, Ravka isn’t Russia, so it didn’t make sense to simply transcribe Russian (though it would have made life easier). And even if I had, for non-speakers, Russian is an incredibly opaque language. Because we don’t share an alphabet, very few words have any resonance for a western reader. Still, the world of Shadow and Bone was clearly inspired by Russia and I didn’t want to violate the reader’s sense of place by throwing some random language into the text. My goal was to use language to reinforce the reader’s experience of the world rather than undermine it.

Root Down

One of the first problems I came across was the Darkling’s title. Because so much fantasy is set in Medieval England, I didn’t want anyone running around saying, “Yes, m’lord” in Ravka. In Russian, “yes, sir” or “yes, m’lord” would be something like moi gospodin—again, meaningless for a non-Russian speaker. I wanted something that belonged wholly to Ravka, but that would evoke something for the reader. I took the root word “sovereign” and added a Russian suffix. The Darkling’s title became moi soverennyi. Generally, I think most readers skim over italics. (I often do!) But you never know what the eye may pick up and if someone does want to look more closely, I’ve given them something to find.

I used a similar strategy with Poliznaya (the town where Mal and Alina took their military training), starting with the root “polis” for city—which also gives a nice echo of “police.” This was also the way I approached the names of the Grisha Orders: Corporalki, Etherealki, and Materialki.

Nothing to See Here

There were moments in the story where I decided it was okay to let the language be opaque. When Alina is studying Grisha theory, she comes across the concepts of odinakovost (thisness) and etovost (thatness)—which are actually based on haecceity and quiddity. She doesn’t understand them at this point in the story, so in that moment I like that the reader is grappling with the word as Alina grapples with the ideas.

Reality Bites

In a very few instances, I used real Russian words. Sometimes they were simple and obvious, like “tsar,” which is obvious in its meaning to any reader. But some were a bit more complicated.

The Grisha: I chose the name Grisha for the magical elite because it is the Russian diminutive of Gregory which means “watchful” and derives from the biblical Grigori (which a lot of paranormal fans will recognize from fallen angel tales). It also evokes the word “geisha,” which reinforces the sense of beauty, secrecy, and the elite.

Kvas: Kvas is, in fact, a semi-fermented beverage popular in Russia, but in Shadow and Bone it’s an obvious stand-in for vodka. For me, “vodka” places us instantly in our world and time. It’s simply too common. Kvas, however, maintains immersion in the world, but has the advantage of visually evoking the word “vodka”—there’s no real leap for the reader to make. (Also, this is YA. I suspect a lot more flags would have been raised if I’d had a bunch of teenagers sitting around drinking Stoli.)

Otkazat’sya: “The abandoned.” This is the word Grisha use to refer to people unable to practice the Small Science. In Russian, this is a verb form and not a noun. But because I liked the look and sound of the word, I adopted the “‘sya” suffix for other constructions later in the series. The verb itself can mean “to abandon,” but it has other meanings as well, an ambiguity that comes into play in the story.

Merzost: This word doesn’t actually appear in Shadow and Bone, but it does show up in the next book and my short story, “The Witch of Duva.” This is the Russian word for abomination, but it’s the Ravkan word for both abomination and magic.

Again, I don’t know if readers will pick up on things like this or care about them, but it was a way for me to add another layer of meaning to the story for anyone who wants to go looking.

Truth in Fiction

Let’s be honest: I chose to use Russia as my inspiration, but my goal was never authenticity. As I mentioned above, it would have been far easier to bring on a Russian translator and simply have him or her transcribe words and dialogue. Deciding not to go this route meant agonizing over much smaller decisions—from how to construct a plural  (“Corporalki” over “Corporalniki”) to whether or not Ravkan surnames should be gendered (Starkov” over “Starkova”).

The fact that there are guns in the Grisha Trilogy and that its cultural references are not drawn from Medieval Europe seems to cause some confusion, but Shadow and Bone is high fantasy—not historical fantasy or alternate history—and Ravka is not Russia. For me, using Russian wouldn’t have felt true to the world.

Writing high fantasy, every choice is a bit of a gamble. We take something familiar, put our own spin on it, and hope the risk will reward the reader’s experience. There were days when naming that fifteenth town or figuring out what to call a character who I knew I was going to kill off just a few pages later made me want to down a few shots of very real vodka. But how many people get to build a world and then invite others into it? Sure it’s a gamble, but it does leave a girl feeling lucky.

Expanded Map from Siege and Storm

(click to enlarge)

 Quail Roasted in Honey

 “The food was less alien than I’d expected, the kind of food we’d eaten on feast days at Keramzin: sweet pea porridge, quail roasted in honey, and fresh figs. I found I was hungrier than I’d ever been and had to resist picking up my plate to lick it.”

4 quails (whole)

2 tbsp + ¼ tsp extra virgin olive oil

2 tbsp orange juice (best fresh)

2 tablespoons honey 2 garlic cloves (crushed)

4 sprigs of thyme (about 1 ½ tbsp)

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Lightly drizzle a small roasting pan with olive oil (about ¼ tsp) and place the 4 quails breast side up. Rub them with 1 tbsp of olive oil, and season to taste (1/4 tsp salt and 1/8 tsp pepper). Set aside.

Combine remaining ingredients and brush quails with half of the mixture.

Place in oven for 10 minutes, brush with remaining mixture, and return to the oven (rotate the pan from its original position to allow even roasting) for 10-15 more minutes (until bird golden brown/ perfectly cooked).

[The roasted quails are served with buttery potatoes and eggplant caviar.]

Butterweek Almond Cake

“Butter week had been the best time at the orphanage, when classes had all but stopped so that we could clean the house and help with the baking. Duke Keramsov had always timed his return from Os Alta to coincide with it. We would ride out in the dom cart, and he would stop at every farm to drink kvas and pass out cakes and candies. Sitting beside the Duke, waving to the cheering villagers, we’d felt almost like nobility ourselves.” 

1 cup almond powder (or almond meal)

¼ cup sugar 7 tbsp butter (softened)

5 drops of Orange Blossom water (orange extract) 1-2 sheets puff pastry

Combine the almond powder, the sugar, and the butter until you obtain a paste.

Lay puff pastry flat, place almond paste in its center following an invisible line (about 1 inch diameter). Bring the ends of the puff pastry together and close tightly. Turn over (to hide the seam) and shape as a circle. Decorate with pieces of leftover dough. Brush with an egg wash (1 beaten egg) to give the cake a golden color.

Place in a 350 degree-oven for 35 minutes.

Visit my pinterest for more Tsarpunk and Grisha inspiration.

Watch a video of some of the images that inspired the creation of Ravka: