Author | Joseph L. Selby

Words and Games

June 1, 2011

The topic of custom words in fantasy has come up in a variety of places I visit lately (Book Country, et al.), and while I don’t hold it against people who choose to have names for months other than January-December, I find it a distraction and a lot of work for very little return. So I keep it simple. Seconds are seconds. Months are months. And so on.

What I found today is that I’m not as complacent about games. I made a chess reference in my fantasy manuscript and it brought me to a screeching halt. The metaphor is perfect for the situation, but I have trouble accepting that chess as we know it would have occurred in that setting in the same capacity. But choosing a name unique to the setting erodes the metaphor. I may dump the metaphor all together and ignore the problem. It’s curious, though, that I’d be okay with measurements but not games.

What I absolutely won’t do is use idioms or reference fairy tales or other key phrases that were told to us in our childhood that we continue to use today (no old lady in the shoe or anything like that). As a reader, that kind of thing pulls me right out of a story, so I will not do it as a writer. It may be inconsistent, but I don’t care. 🙂

Joseph L. Selby

storycraft, wip it, writethink, writing

4 responses to “Words and Games”

Joe

June 1, 2011

Elizabeth Bear calls this the "moss troll" problem, for reasons I can't remotely remember now. But a huge number of our words come from very specific cultures or events (like "crusade" for example), and they wouldn't have any antecedents in a fantasy world.

I think your approach is good–work with existing words and concepts when they keep things from being cumbersome, and work with something else all the rest of the time.

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Ted Cross

June 1, 2011

I had the opposite problem, in that it was perfectly logical that there would be chess in my fantasy novel (since Russian scientists had arrived on the world from Earth), but since I had no POV characters who knew about the scientists, I had no means of explaining to the readers why it was perfectly logical for there to be chess, so I just dropped it.

BTW, the critters on Book Country really pissed me off, so I left that place.

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Elizabeth Poole

June 1, 2011

See, I am right there with you. I think that culture specific words and phrases need to go, unless it's a word that makes things less cumbersome to explain. Your definition of cumbersome might vary, but I tend to keep titles like king, prince, duke and measurements, but change everything else.

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Joseph L. Selby

June 3, 2011

Thanks Joe, and welcome!

@Ted, are you introducing the chess portion in your sf intro so that lines up or just leaving it to the readers to figure out on their own?

@Liz, I keep peerage titles as well, but sometimes mix them up based on culture. I use count and not earl. At one point I even considered using comte but it didn't fit. Other stories that are less rigid I may come up with different titles (in Reliarach everyone seems to be a minister of something)

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Words and Games

4 responses to “Words and Games”

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