Habits and Traits 21: Made Up Rules for Made Up Words in Made Up Sci-Fi/Fantasy Worlds
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For those who don't know me, my name is Brian and I work for a literary agent. I posted an AMA a while back and then started this series to try to help authors around r/writing out. I'm calling it habits & traits because, well, in my humble opinion these are things that will help you become a more successful writer. I post these every Tuesday and Thursday morning, usually prior to 12:00pm Central Time.
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Habits & Traits #21 - Made Up Words in Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Todays question comes to us from u/kingpoiuy who asked -
How do I explain non-real things without explicitly telling the reader what they are and taking the reader out of the world? Currently I would simply say it and expect to let the reader figure it out from context, but sometimes it feels clumsy.
Should I be building out entire scenes that are specifically meant to introduce these units of measurement smoothly before the reader comes across them later?
What. A. Question.
The very first thing I thought when I got this question was how us writers can do some funny things in our heads when we write books. You see, for a writer, long before words hit a page, an idea is floating around in our head. We dance with the idea, take it to dinner, we try to understand what makes that idea tick and we romance it a little. And when it comes time to tie the knot (that is, to start actually writing) we've already had all sorts of experiences with this idea. It's a funny thought, isn't it? When someone picks up that final version of your book, that's a marriage years in the making. There are some battle wounds. There are some scars. You know that idea's flaws and strengths. You see all of it, but the reader, they are just beginning that journey, flirting from afar.
Sometimes when we write, we forget this. We forget that we are perpetually ahead of our readers. And being ahead, it can give us wonderful foresight into how to lead a reader by the hand and make them fall in love. Or it can be very bad. We can forget what made us love our idea and we can start people in altogether the wrong place.
This happens all too often. When a writer tries to throw you into a world, often they forget what made them love the world in the first place. They miss all the romance and the feelings of newness, and they go right to the meat and potatoes, all that fleshing out of their ideas that came later. You can tell, usually, when a writer is heading down this path. If you ask that writer about their book, they can talk for hours about it. They'll tell you details that aren't yet relevant to you.
Say for instance, you have two people in a book who hate one another and one kills the other one. And this murder starts a city-wide hunt for the murderer which leads to your hero getting falsely accused. But there's a problem. Why does the murder happen in the first place? So you decide perhaps it was a hate crime between two culturally different people. But why do these two cultures not get along? You need a history -- a reason for them to hate each other. And so you develop one. The king of culture A stole the princess from culture B a hundred years prior. And your story has nothing to do with this backstory. But it influences parts of characters interactions. Do you see the rabbit hole? Now if someone asked me what this book was about, I could tell them all about why the murder happens that triggers everything, and about the history of culture A and culture B, but that's not what my book is about. At that point, my conversation is going to end swiftly -- most likely out of pure confusion. This prospective reader, they're not asking me how I solved all the various intricate problems in my book. They're asking me what my book is about. And it's about a main character who gets falsely accused.
Writers - be careful with this. Remember why you loved your book before it was even a book. Remember what part of the idea particularly seduced you. Make sure you put THAT foot forward for your readers first. Don't forget to do that.
Now, I've gotta tell you -- I may not be the ideal fantasy reader. I'm all about escapist fiction, but I tend to lean towards escapist material that has some pretty solid roots in things I can understand. I loved the Game of Thrones books (and have been biting my nails waiting for Winds of Winter for too long with the rest of you) and I really enjoyed The Kingkiller Chronicles (I feel there's a trend here with unfinished series and no end in sight). But some fantasy series delve too deep too quick and it ends up feeling like taking a roller coaster ride without being strapped in. For some people, they want that ride. They want to get out of this world as fast as humanly possible and get into all the things that make a world real to them. They want to learn new words and new languages and have new things thrown at them as fast as possible. But I would argue these individuals don't constitute a majority of fantasy readers. Perhaps I'm wrong. And if you don't agree, throw out this post.
My theory in writing books has a lot to do with my theory of selling books. I like to move to the middle. I try to appeal to the average reader who maybe reads 2 sci-fi or fantasy books a year but spends time reading legal thrillers or cozy mysteries. I like appealing to the widest base possible. Isn't that all of our goal, after all? To be widely read?
The point of all of this is to tell you how I read fantasy -- in all my heartlessness. Because I am a heartless reader when it comes to fantasy.
So without further ado, here comes Brian's three made up rules for made up things:
Rule Number 1: You get 3 made up words per 20 pages
Okay, so maybe I don't actually count. But if your story sounds like this -- I'm out.
"In the city of Eldorath there was a therapin who had twelve children. Hoxy and Moxy were the two most devastatingly beautiful of the children, and under the order of Kaldrobian, they were the first to be ritualistically sacrificed."
I'm overdoing it, I know. That's 5 made up words in one paragraph. But you get the idea. If the point of reading a high fantasy book or a sci-fi book is for escaping the real world, adding a bunch of words that you've made up in a short period of time is a good way to remind your reader they're reading a book. And you don't want them to remember that. You want them to read, to get caught up in the story. You don't want them to be confused, or to struggle to follow what is happening.
Listen, we'll get to where Eldorath is later, and we'll talk about a therapin later, and we'll talk about the order of Kaldrobian and how they ritualistically sacrifice kids into volcanoes to serve the god Plogbar later. Let's stick to simplicity. Remember, all of these names of things came after you fell in love with your idea and you realized you needed to name all these things. What got you to love your idea first? Don't confuse us in the first few pages. Give us clarity. Establish your setting and why we should relate to it, then throw us out of the plane. When reading a book becomes work, where I have to write down the definitions of things just to follow what is happening, well then you've lost me.
Rule Number 2: If it Ain't New or Important, Don't Explain It
So you've got a group of space explorers who use thera-fuel made out of asteroid bits and water? And they put their thera-fuel into a Hydrogodroid engine? And then they can travel faster than the speed of light? Great! Tell me all about it, but ONLY if it is central to your plot.
If you're just developing your own names for things that already have names and people already conceptually understand (like my Hydrogodroid which is essentially just a warp drive, or like a teleporter, or a time machine) then don't tell me all about it. Just create a scene where the engineer of the Hydrogodroid breaks it down in Laymen's terms for that idiot newbie engineer --
"It's a warp drive, idiot. Okay? Are we done? You put the go-go juice in the warp drive and it goes."
Rule Number 3: I'm no idiot, and I'm no genius
When it comes to new words, a lot of it comes down to feel. You need to choose your battles. In high fantasy, a lot of times a new word to describe the main enemy can be cool to just throw in and not explain -- because the explanation comes later. It's sort of like a --
Hey, remember those Humdrums we talked about that hide in the mountains and eat brains? Yeah, we'll get there. Oh shoot, we need to go to the mountains to retrieve something? Hope we don't run into any Humdrums...
In those cases, less is more. Game of Thrones did it brilliantly in Old Nan's stories. Spiders the size of horses? Giants? Zombies but they're called White Walkers? Oh dang. This is gonna be good.
You want to leave your reader with half-an-understanding about the stuff that is coming later. Give them the simple explanation that doesn't really fully explain it. Leave them wanting more. But when it comes to the things that are goal-driven (like the hydro-fuel with asteroid bits I talked about above) go into it more when it drives character actions. You don't need to tell us everything about thera-fuel. It doesn't need to be all in one place and it doesn't need to be extensive, but tell me what it is and why it's important. And tell me why only certain asteroid dust works. That way when we're flying into the Z-sector where there are a lot of juicy asteroids with mountain landscapes and space-alien Humdrums, I'll know why they don't just go somewhere safer. And I'll know why Esteban regrettably got his helmet torn off and his brains eaten.
Okay, I feel like that wasn't very clear. But hopefully you get the point. The things to think about with made up words are not overwhelming or confusing your reader, understanding when to use intrigue instead of telling everything, and understanding when you need to tell everything so readers can make sense of character motives.
Now go write some words -- and beware of Humdrums.
Posted Oct 25, 2016, 2:33 PM UTC · edited