Random Writing Tips – Chill on the weird words

 

I know, you don’t want the epic heroes in your fantasy story just drinking mead and eating roast boar.  You want to show the reader that this isn’t just people at a Renaissance Faire, so they drink regilum, the drink of the gods, while eating roasted glarthen.  Of course, the servants bring the roast glarthen out on a large silver platter, that they set on the table before the heroes who have spent the day swinging swords from horseback.

Years ago, I started a novel that was set a century or so after a nuclear war plunged the world into a nuclear winter.  And I figured that in that time, the language would change.  Survival was more important than spelling, after all.  One of the things I came up with, was that “parka” became “paka.” I thought I was pretty smart.  The critique group I showed this to kept marking it as a typo, or left comments like, “Are we supposed to know what this is?”

I was reminded of all this recently when I watched a show that, in like the first five minutes had introduced six random weird words.  It was based on a book series and I’m sure all these words and their meanings were worked into the story, but for someone who had never heard of the books and was just checking out this show, those first few minutes were rather confusing.  Which can be very bad.  Instead of focusing on who the characters were and how they interacted, I’m just wondering, What are they even talking about?  Fortunately, for this show those six were basically the only weird words of the series.  And for some reason, they decided to introduce them all right at the beginning.

Now, I’m not against weird words.  I remember one time a writing group was going over one of my short stories, and this lady – who didn’t read science fiction – was confused by my use of the term “blaster,” and when it was explained to her it was like, a “ray gun,” asked, “Couldn’t you just call it a gun?”

Weird words in fantasy or science fiction show the reader that the story isn’t set in the world we live in.  That can be a powerful element in a story.  But like all powerful elements, if you overuse, or misuse them, they can blow up your story.

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Image from Pixabay.