When right might be wrong
Often when I write and, I assume when other writers write, I'm faced with the choice of using the 'right' word or term, when the 'wrong' word or term is more common. There is also the issue of British v. American English words and terms. For instance, if I want to sell into the US market, and who doesn't, should I be replacing all my 'hells' with 'hecks', all my 'Gods' with 'Goshes', and all my 's's' with 'z's'?
My Deep Fantasy series, Angel Caste, has an Australian protagonist who, like many Australians, swears a lot. She doesn't use the f-word or the c-word but lots of shits, bloody's and arseholes (not the US assholes - which makes me think of donkeys). These are pretty common in the Australian vernacular, and I've avoided curses that are pretty common in US English (as far as I can tell from my visits to the US, US literature, and movies).
Even without the whole British/US English thing, there are words and terms in broad use, that are at variance to their dictionary definitions, even bearing in mind part of the wonder of language is its dynamism and malleability. This came up when I named two prominent features in my Angel Caste series: the four twisting mountains and the large pillars of crystal in Ezam Fold.
I was originally going to call the blue, red, green, and white twisting mountains Spiralai, until I checked the meaning of spiral. In common usage, you hear it said that 'people spiral into a pit of despair', or that things 'spiral out of control'. There is a clear sense of movement up or down, however, a spiral is flat. Viewed from above or below, it would look like a coiled snake, and from the side, it would be the width of the snake's body. In contrast, a helix twists up or down, so veiwed from the side, it would look like a cone, either pointing up or down. So, the four twisted mountains in Angel Caste became Helixai, but even as I named them, I wondered whether it really mattered.
Then I had to name the large pillars of crystal scattered about Ezam Fold that test the angels in various ways. Sometimes in writing, you are gifted names, and I rarely argue with the gifter (the unconscious?) when this happens. For instance, I was gifted the name At (who appears in Book 2 of Angel Caste) and knew he was also called Mad At, because of his reckless behaviour, but it took me a bit longer to work out his full name (by searching baby name lists). But when I found it, I knew it was right. (Ataghan - meaning knife).
The name that immediately came to me for the crystals was stele, which actually means a stone pillar with inscriptions carved on it. Most people would probably think of Egyption stele, which are angular stone with a pointed tip. At the time I thought 'shard' would have been more accurate, but my heart had settled on stele, so stele it is. And in a way, they do bear messages, although their messages are communicated via resonance, not through written language.
In choosing words and terms, which might be new or at variance with common usage, my main considerations are that they don't reduce the story's accessibility to the reader, and that they add to the richness of the narrative and, as a Deep Fantasy writer, to the integrity of the secondary world I'm creating.
My Deep Fantasy series, Angel Caste, has an Australian protagonist who, like many Australians, swears a lot. She doesn't use the f-word or the c-word but lots of shits, bloody's and arseholes (not the US assholes - which makes me think of donkeys). These are pretty common in the Australian vernacular, and I've avoided curses that are pretty common in US English (as far as I can tell from my visits to the US, US literature, and movies).
Even without the whole British/US English thing, there are words and terms in broad use, that are at variance to their dictionary definitions, even bearing in mind part of the wonder of language is its dynamism and malleability. This came up when I named two prominent features in my Angel Caste series: the four twisting mountains and the large pillars of crystal in Ezam Fold.
I was originally going to call the blue, red, green, and white twisting mountains Spiralai, until I checked the meaning of spiral. In common usage, you hear it said that 'people spiral into a pit of despair', or that things 'spiral out of control'. There is a clear sense of movement up or down, however, a spiral is flat. Viewed from above or below, it would look like a coiled snake, and from the side, it would be the width of the snake's body. In contrast, a helix twists up or down, so veiwed from the side, it would look like a cone, either pointing up or down. So, the four twisted mountains in Angel Caste became Helixai, but even as I named them, I wondered whether it really mattered.
Then I had to name the large pillars of crystal scattered about Ezam Fold that test the angels in various ways. Sometimes in writing, you are gifted names, and I rarely argue with the gifter (the unconscious?) when this happens. For instance, I was gifted the name At (who appears in Book 2 of Angel Caste) and knew he was also called Mad At, because of his reckless behaviour, but it took me a bit longer to work out his full name (by searching baby name lists). But when I found it, I knew it was right. (Ataghan - meaning knife).
The name that immediately came to me for the crystals was stele, which actually means a stone pillar with inscriptions carved on it. Most people would probably think of Egyption stele, which are angular stone with a pointed tip. At the time I thought 'shard' would have been more accurate, but my heart had settled on stele, so stele it is. And in a way, they do bear messages, although their messages are communicated via resonance, not through written language.
In choosing words and terms, which might be new or at variance with common usage, my main considerations are that they don't reduce the story's accessibility to the reader, and that they add to the richness of the narrative and, as a Deep Fantasy writer, to the integrity of the secondary world I'm creating.
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