Glenn Curry asked Brian Staveley:

my second question, do you use your word craft to "enhance the flavor" of a fantasy novel when other authors wouldn't use such words. the "dead poets society" of very sad vs. morose. I'm reading darker shade of magic and the story is good but the vocabulary is not as far reaching as yours?

Brian Staveley There are a lot of possible approaches to a given passage of prose, and while some are clearly crappy, there's never one that is clearly the best. An extensive vocab list can be a flaw just as easily as a strength, especially if it's deployed for its own sake, rather than the sake of the character. In my case, this answer gets a little complicated, but the question of vocabulary comes down to the psychology of the POV character. Just pulling something out of my ass, a word like "remediate" fits in Adare's chapters because it fits in her consciousness. That's the thing about third-person free indirect style -- the line between the narrator's lexicon and syntax is constantly blurring with that of the POV character's lexicon and syntax. Coming back to "remediate" -- it wouldn't work in Kaden's POV. This isn't to say that I don't screw these sorts of things up, but it's the ideal I'm shooting for. I've got a blog post sort of about this, actually. I'll link to it below. Hope that's at least a little bit clear!

https://bstaveley.wordpress.com/2013/...

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