reading for moss trolls
Jan. 7th, 2010 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatellirambling off of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sartorias 's post on language. . .
The original post was mrissa's observation that
sartorias 's post on language. . .The original post was mrissa's observation that
The advantage of writing urban fantasy or world-crossing fantasy is that when the sea serpent has eyes the color of NyQuil, you can say so rather than spending time trying to come up with settlement-era Icelandic-ish equivalent having something to do with moss-troll ichor.
which lead to truepenny 's discussion on the use of language in secondary worlds, which leads to discussion on avoiding the use.
Which is where it gets interesting.
Avoiding NyQuil is probably within the capacity of most writers. But do your archers fire arrows? Before guns? Does your hero have a strong suit? Before the invention of cheap paper, and so of playing cards, and so of bridge? Is something spartan in a world without Sparta? Is he an assassin in a world without the Assassins?
One trick that I found lies in your reading. I recommend reading lots and lots but for this trick, you have to read old books. Written in English, or translated into English so that the translation, not the work, is old.
You don't have to do anything special with them. Just read, and read, and read. Relentlessly. You're not trying to learn anything specific -- you're training your inner ear to recognize words as modern or of an older age. Plus turns of phrase, and metaphors. Or just getting experience with English that is not relentlessly modern. It does carry the danger of "speaking forsoothly" -- picking up archaic turns of phrase that don't help -- but it gives you a wider palette to pick from.
It helps to start with relatively recent works: move back from the early twentieth century into the Victorian, and earlier. This helps you pick up the vocabulary as you go, so you don't have to keep on going to the footnotes to figure out what Shakespeare was saying there.
Update: Humm. I forgot the warning. Okay, here's the warning: This will change the way you read forever.
Once you have trained your ear like this, you will not be able to turn it off just because you are reading someone else's works. This means you will be annoyed by other writers' tin-eared attempts to write about a culture that lack the concepts they are referring to.
The sacrifices we make for our art.
truepenny 's discussion on the use of language in secondary worlds, which leads to discussion on avoiding the use.Which is where it gets interesting.
Avoiding NyQuil is probably within the capacity of most writers. But do your archers fire arrows? Before guns? Does your hero have a strong suit? Before the invention of cheap paper, and so of playing cards, and so of bridge? Is something spartan in a world without Sparta? Is he an assassin in a world without the Assassins?
One trick that I found lies in your reading. I recommend reading lots and lots but for this trick, you have to read old books. Written in English, or translated into English so that the translation, not the work, is old.
You don't have to do anything special with them. Just read, and read, and read. Relentlessly. You're not trying to learn anything specific -- you're training your inner ear to recognize words as modern or of an older age. Plus turns of phrase, and metaphors. Or just getting experience with English that is not relentlessly modern. It does carry the danger of "speaking forsoothly" -- picking up archaic turns of phrase that don't help -- but it gives you a wider palette to pick from.
It helps to start with relatively recent works: move back from the early twentieth century into the Victorian, and earlier. This helps you pick up the vocabulary as you go, so you don't have to keep on going to the footnotes to figure out what Shakespeare was saying there.
Update: Humm. I forgot the warning. Okay, here's the warning: This will change the way you read forever.
Once you have trained your ear like this, you will not be able to turn it off just because you are reading someone else's works. This means you will be annoyed by other writers' tin-eared attempts to write about a culture that lack the concepts they are referring to.
The sacrifices we make for our art.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 03:52 am (UTC)^^; Not that any of that really has to do with the posts you linked to, which were also really fascinating!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-08 10:04 pm (UTC)I think of 'assassin' as someone who is either a professional/mercenary ('Assassins' Guild) or trained by some political group for a particular murder for political reasons. If that sort of thing is unheard of in the story-world, then I wouldn't use the word when writing in that world.
However if the story-world does have the concept, or some concept very like it, I'd go ahead and use the word, without worrying about whether the people of that world had ever heard of the Hashishim.
Otoh, 'China dishes' carries a distracting amount of this-world history, so even if the story-world had the same formula for making dishes, I'd find another word.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-09 01:03 am (UTC)