I have this character named Murky. For most of my characters say something like Awesome or Holy Jabba, but I have this character names Murky and Murky is the one character — I never knew anybody liked Murky.
I knew this kid would have the nickname Murky, I knew he would walk around saying stuky and then I’m writing and I’m like Murky’s words just pop into my head, he’s like this character that is forcing himself into existence. And he’s got so many crazy words that he says that kids suggested, you should write a Murky to English dictionary so we can figure out what he’s talking about.
So I was like, that’s a pretty good idea. So now I’ve got in the new book, there’s a whole chapter it’s how to translate what Murky says into English. And it turns out that almost everything he says either means awesome or not awesome. And one of the kids complains about it, they’re like, “Is that all he ever says is awesome?” And the other kids are like, “No.” The point is he doesn’t say awesome. He’s got his own language!