Friday, February 14, 2014

Introducing the Vis Vires--Talia's Interstellar Ship

Happy Valentine's Day! Today I'm going to build on Wednesday's post and celebrate  my love for space travel. Well, I'm going to make it more personal anyway. Some of you may have seen my Facebook discussion about needing a name for "Jaron's Ship." Perhaps you even caught a blinding glimpse of the model I stomped into the snow in my backyard?

If not, today I'll fill you in on all the details.

Background
Talia and Landry inherited Jaron's interstellar ship when he died. The SEF (Space Exploration Foundation) studied it for two months (story time) and made enough discoveries to know they can't duplicate the propulsion system...yet. With this realization, they've relented to the greater need to gather data from Jaron's home world of Orek. The only way to get there is to use his ship of course.

Jaron called it The Revenge, but that doesn't fit Talia's mission and she doesn't want to keep calling it Jaron's ship. The sad thing is I didn't have any name suggestions for her. So, we did what any character and author do when they've hit the wall. We asked our Facebook friends. I tend to do this a lot, so if you haven't found my page, click the link below. You could very well find your ideas in my novels!

There were lots of great suggestions between my author page and the Fantasy & Sci-Fi Fans, Artists, Readers, Writers, Filmakers & Cosplayers group (yeah, super long name, but fun group!)

Here were some of my favorites:
The Keeta--a lovely sentimental suggestion from a reader!
Hope's Endeavor
Forager
Clarity
DreamChaser

All of them hold meaning for the current story and would have made great names. However, I kept returning to the suggestion of finding a word and then looking it up in another language. I'm sure someone will give me grief about using Latin on a planet Not Earth, but *shrugs*. I chose the word Strength and Vis Vires is what came up. I like the way it looks, the way it sounds (I'm probably saying it wrong--Vis Veer-es?) and most importantly all the things it represents.
  • Strength of what they've already overcome
  • Strength in unity is what they wish for their people
  • Talia and Landry are seeking to strengthen their relationship
  • This mission will strengthen their powers as well as the resolve to use them (Talia especially)
  • They will need all their strength to overcome what's waiting for them when they return home after the mission
There are probably others, but there you go.

Now, since my scanner isn't working, I've put together the Main Level floorplan using MS Paint. It has some frustrating limitations, but you'll get the idea. It's color coded for the new paint scheme too. 

Landry wanted Talia to feel at home so he commissioned the ship to be personalized with more earth tone colors. The floors and walls are the deeper color, while the ceilings and all accents are cream. I got the color design idea from this photo I found and pinned to my pinterest board for SFK.

Although it looks like a big ship when placed in my backyard, the actual rooms are small and would feel cramped very quickly once you get the necessary furniture inside. Even the most basic furniture.

Do you ever go into this much detail when crafting your stories? Or am I just desperate to procrastinate the revisions?

4 comments:

  1. Oh cool name. You know I love me some Latin.
    I spend way too much time on names and meanings when I should be creating storyline. The trick is balancing the two.

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  2. It takes me less than five minutes to name a character or object. That may or may not be a good thing.
    You really went for some details. I know the basic layout for the ship in my manuscript right now, but that's about it.

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  3. I totally go into this much detail! I If a lot of action takes place in a house, I'll often try to find a picture that looks the house I imagine and then draw a floor plan. And in the case of my scifi, I found a cool pic of a ship (which I named the Parula) and then had to draw the floor plan for that, figure out how many people it could hold, where the different areas of the ship were located...yeah, I go all out, so I completely get it :)

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  4. This makes me think of the Doctor Who episode where they end up in Pompeii and Donna tries some Latin on them but to them it comes out as English (as the TARDIS translates their speech for them). I wonder what Latin is for Talia and her people.

    Yes, I try to go into that sort of detail. I created a calendar for one of my novels. A whole different calendar. And I like to map out worlds as well. My sketches aren't as nice as yours, though.

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