Post #130 July 16 2018

“A (New) Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures”

In this post, I hope to make the case that a good new word is worth a thousand pictures.  What do I mean by ‘new word’?  Any word that a writer makes up for the purpose of his story, a word not in any dictionary, but springing solely from the feverish mind of the author.

A word like kip’t.  What’s a kip’t, you may ask?  It’s an underwater powered sled, from the planet Seome, and from my series The Farpool Stories.  It’s how the Seomish get around at long distances across their oceanic world. 

Writers of fiction love to invent new words or phrases.  Every writer would love to invent something that winds up in the dictionary for all time.  But why are writers (especially science fiction writers) like this?  Why invent new words?  Don’t we have enough English language words as it is?  The Second Edition of the OED contains 171,476 words in current use and over 47,000 obsolete words.  Surely that’s enough for any would-be writer.

1. Writers invent new words for numerous reasons.  Here are some I could think of:
   1. To provide a sense of place.  Say your story is set in Germany.  Why not sprinkle in a few German words?  Or maybe it’s set on the oceanic world of Seome.  Use a few Seomish words or phrases.  But remember, a little goes a long way.  Which leads me to:
   2. To reveal character.  A good writer with any sense of dialogue will use certain words and phrases to describe a character and then have that character talk in a certain way.  Think Scarlett O’Hara.  Nobody would confuse her with the Joad family from Grapes of Wrath. Speakers of language invent words all the time.  Maybe the way a character mangles a certain word or phrase can provide some insight into that character’s makeup and background, even their upbringing.   It’s all part of making that character seem real to the reader.
   3. To imply a connection or trigger a certain reader response.  Perhaps your main character is a recent immigrant from Bangladesh.  Why not throw in a few Bangladeshi phrases or words or better yet, concoct a weird concoction of part English-part Bangladeshi words for them to say.  What does that say about the character?  Maybe this: they’re immigrants and they’re trying to adapt and learn the language but their past and their conditioning causes them to slip into the mother tongue when they’re mad, stressed, or in a hurry, etc. 
2. How many new words are needed?  This boils down to two questions: how much is enough and when should new words be used?
   1. How much is enough?  Using new and unfamiliar words should only be used to meet the conditions or needs indicated above.  A little goes a long way.  If your character is an immigrant from Germany or much of the story is set in Dusseldorf, sprinkle a few German words in the prose…an exclamation, say: Gott in Himmel!  You’re not writing the story in German (presumably) so one or two words a page ought to do it.  Otherwise, it becomes annoying and increasingly unreadable. 
   2. When should new words be used?  New words should always be used in context.  Otherwise, the reader is confused and disoriented and you’ll have to provide a dictionary, which sort of interrupts the flow and the enjoyment of reading the story.  New words should be used sparingly.  The whole purpose of using new or unfamiliar words is to give the reader a flavor of a new unknown place or to illuminate character. 
3. Do I need a whole new language (in other words, more than just a few words)?  If you’re writing science fiction and it’s set in the future or on other worlds, as many sf stories are, you may.  Here are some reasons to invent a whole new language (or enough to make the reader believe it’s a real culture).
   1. You have aliens
   2. You want to describe the culture in detail.  C.J. Cherryh does this very well, by the way.
   3. You want your story to be believable and consistent in its otherworldly setting. 
4. Here’s what I said in The Farpool about the Seomish language (I didn’t invent a language in its entirety…just enough to meet the conditions above):

The Language

Seomish is designed phonetically to carry well in a water medium. Hard, clicking consonants are common.  The ‘p’ or ‘puh’ sound, made by violent expulsion of air is also common.  Modulation of the voice stream, particularly at high frequencies (sounding much like a human whistle) produces the characteristic “wheeee” sound, which is a root of many words.  Translation from Seomish to human languages like English requires some inspired speculation, since so many Seomish phrases seem to be little more than grunts or groans, modulated in frequency and duration.

Most Seomish words are grouped according to several characteristics: (1) Who is speaking (the personal); (2) who is being spoken to (the indicative); (3) state of mind of the speaker (the conditional); (4) the kel-standing of the conversants (the intimant).

Each classification has a set of characteristic pre-consonants, to indicate the nature of the coming words, etc. Thus:

1. k’, kee, t’
2. tch, g, j, oot
3. m’, p’, puh’ (both anger, dislike, distaste, etc), sh, sz (both joyful)
4. each kel identifies itself with a unique set of capitalized consonants, like a vocal coat of arms.  Example: t’milee, or CHE’oray…Seomish  versus Timily or Chory…English.
    
   No question, inventing new words can be fun.  The key is not to overdo it.  Properly placed and in context, new words can give a reader an acute sense of a place and a people, that normal words of description might not.  In fact, a well-chosen new word can actually do the work of a paragraph or more, in highlighting character and place.  But remember, your readers are still human.  Your new words have to look and sound like something alien without actually being alien.  Therein lies the real art.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 23.  In this post, I want to describe how I evaluate story ideas and decide what ideas to expand and write about.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.