Writing made-up words

[sistermagpie]

I know a lot of you write fantasy. I tend to write stuff that's, as one person described it, AU rather than fantasy. I personally sometimes think of it as "magical" but not "magic" which just confuses people so I just say it to myself. I just mean that I never write anything that seems completely realistic, but magic doesn't exist there.



I just feel silly about it. Spells and things, potions--unless it's done for humor I just feel like I can't sell it unless I water down to the point where I feel like it's natural. Dexter's Laboratory, for instance, was basically magic but it was sold as fake science: a time machine, a body switching transporter, a Jeckyl & Hyde potion (yeah, it's potion, but supposedly scientific). I had no problem coming up with junk scientific principles for what Dexter was doing (okay, sometimes I got some help from the ingredients on the Windex bottle or whatever.) Right now I'm working on something with another fake mad scientist creation, in a pre-industrial world. There are lots of made-up details, but there's no sorcery. I can have stories about magic and maybe hints that magic could exist (like one book with this monkey that supposedly brought bad luck) but it's not witchcraft or magic that follows rules and people learn and master.

I don't know what my thing is about this--not that it's a problem, I mean, you write what you write. Some people can't help but write magic while it's just not my thing. But I was thinking about how I often feel as self-conscious about making up fake words as I do about spells. Like I'm doing this one thing where I wrote two pieces in this same universe. One had to set up this one aspect of the universe that was alternate to our own, and that required a lot of terms for things that didn't exist in our world. But no matter how many times I used them I would sometimes think, "Would anyone buy (meaning accept, not pay for) these words?"

Then, in the second story, there's a whole group of people from a made up country so they needed names and then I realized they even needed a bit of a language. I have never written a fake language before and have no idea if it works or not (though I'd better get used to it because in the thing I'm writing with my partner there's going to be another fake language that's occasionally got to be used). There seems to be an awful lot of dialogue in it, though only when I think it would be necessary--a sentence here or there, an exchange--because the main character doesn't understand it. It's just it's a little weird for me to have to make stuff up like that, particularly names, because I tend to be annoyed by fake names in fantasy books that just sound like...well, fake names in fantasy books. I prefer to be able to use weird names and words I just like the sound of, rather than putting together syllables.

I feel like when you hit upon the right word it should just click, and sometimes it does, but other times I suddenly get cold feet and worry about it.

Anyone have experience writing stuff like this? Do you do it naturally, etc.? Any things you came up with you particularly liked, for instance? Or that was particularly hard to come up with? How do you come up with completely foreign words?

Comments

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

I don't write fantasy. I wish I could, because I love reading it, but it's just not what comes out when I write. It's not a hang up on making up words or anything like that (in fact, I make up words pretty often), but it's more because I don't think I have enough imagination to invent a complete alternative universe, which tends to be necessary for fantasy stories. Also, my own issues tend to come out in whatever I write, whether I want it to or not. I'd like to be able to write a story that was all about imagined adventures, and purely escapist, but I just can't, because the stories always tend to develop in various creepy ways.

If I had to name a genre for my writing, I suppose I'd call it "magical realism", or "surrealism", or maybe even "psychological thriller". I to catch my characters very subjective reality, and the lines between what's real and what's not, are usually very blurred, often to the extent that you can't know what actually happens and what is symbollic, or goes on in the character's head. Dreams and supernatural elements are common, and sometimes I do make up worlds or creatures, but there is never any concrete magic, and they won't necessarily make sense.

For instance, one of the stories is about a woman in a mental institution who tells people she's from another world, which she describes vividly, but it's sort of up to the audience what they want to make of that, if they want to think she's just insane, or really from another world, or if the descriptions of the other world is sybollic of things she has lived through in this world, and what those things in that case might be, etc. Eh, I never finished that story, and it sounds very weird like this, but it's kind of typical for the stories I usually write.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

As for the coming up with foreign words question, that depends of the story, or maybe more, the characters. I used to make up a lot of stories as a child, and I often use them, the names I gave to different weird beings then, because they usually fit better than anything I could come up with today. ^^;

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I know just what you mean--and really, I've begun to just think it's cool whatever "comes out." Why is it that we don't always write what we read, after all? I remember my mother once, when I was in college, asking me why I always wrote "horror" stuff, and somebody said something I wrote in class reminded her of a horror movie, though it wasn't. Over the years I've figured out it's really more that everything is more fairy-tale-ish, which in itself is sort of like a horror movie, and that's what it was. But how strange that that is what comes out of me, rather than any other thing.

I love the kind of thing you're describing with your own stuff--I think when something makes sense to you, and you can communicate it to others, that's the best thing. Especially if it's kind of surreal.

[cleverthylacine]

The first thing I do when I'm not writing in a non-Earthish society is check to make sure there's not already a word for what I want to say, using google, occult books, google, asking people, etc. Rowling could have saved herself quite a bit of trouble if she had actually gone out and asked people if there were already words for some of the things she's made up words for. Quite often, there ARE words out there--and it's a simpler matter to explain them to the reader (this can usually be done in half a sentence) than it is to make up a word, particularly if you don't think you have an ear for etymology and languages.

Even in a non-Earthish society, you don't need to make up words that are not proper names. Your characters are speaking their own language on their own world, but you're translating it into English, so there's no need for you to say that they are "kezzing" instead of using telepathy. To do so is the equivalent of 'fangirl Japanese' where the writer only translates part of a sentence to show the reader that she knows some Japanese. Nobody except fangirls actually says "Oh my God, so kawaii!" Most people either say, "Hontou ni kawaii desu you!" or "That is so cute!"

It's only necessary to randomly drop foreign words into English dialogue when the characters are actually speaking English with the occasional foreign word, and generally, polyglots only do this with other polyglots. The rest of the time, when someone uses a foreign word in the middle of an English sentence, they're usually an ESL speaker who doesn't know the word.

I worry less about names in fantasy stories than I used to, because as an adult, I've come to realise that most languages have loanwords from other languages and that names migrate and change as cultures mix and separate. Think about the names of ten people you know--are they all from the same language originally? I pick up 'odd' names and unusual words in the course of my daily life and modify them, and consider cultural differences. Clearly, if you have three characters named !xing, Liumora, and Mevaldt, they're probably not all from the same culture or at least their ancestors weren't, but that doesn't mean you can't HAVE three characters named that in one story, it just means it's not a monoculture.

One of the biggest ways most fantasy stories ring false is the assumption of monoculture anyway.

[shaggirl.livejournal.com]

Rowling could have saved herself quite a bit of trouble if she had actually gone out and asked people if there were already words for some of the things she's made up words for.

I haven't noticed this. Can you give some examples?

Your characters are speaking their own language on their own world, but you're translating it into English, so there's no need for you to say that they are "kezzing" instead of using telepathy. To do so is the equivalent of 'fangirl Japanese' where the writer only translates part of a sentence to show the reader that she knows some Japanese.

There are some books and series (Farscape and Watership Down come immediately to mind) that are liberally sprinkled with "foreign" words and phrases and it works really well. I agree that in general it does not.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, the random switching of words! That does always sound strange to me--I'm glad I have a word for it now. These people are immigrants in a place where English is spoken, so it's more like there are times when they'd speak to each other or they have to speak to someone who doesn't speak English. Sometimes I'll just say they spoke, but if it's just a short exchange it seems more natural to put it (it probably seems like there's a lot more dialogue in it than there is just because for them to say one sentence I have to invent that many new words!). The only time they use a word in their own language it's for something we don't have a word for in English, like there's an instrument they play that has its own word, or a dish that they eat.

But yes, especially with the names it occurred to me that they shouldn't all sound the same because even in one language you don't want everyone to sound like robots with almost the same name (not to mention it's confusing...). I like looking up words for things I want to say in other languages to see if that gives me a hint. In my head I think their language sounds a bit like Japanese, though maybe that's just to my own ears.

p.s. When I wrote this I was hoping you would respond--you just seemed like you'd have a good perspective.

[gillieweed.livejournal.com]

Enervate.

Enervate just bugs the hell out of me.
Does the woman not even own a dictionary?

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I've been attempting to work up a proper fantasy for years, and one of the world-building details inherently involved is language. I used to make up entire lists of bizarre names and alphabetize them for later use. Now I look back on those lists, and they have the "bad Mary Sue fantasy" feel to them.

If I look at the issue coldly and logically then I end up farther away then I was when I started, because I begin to question everything. To make progress in this particular story I simply have to begin with an Earth-like system.

Of course, the bigger problem I have is that of developing a basis. Is this planet god/goddess-based, or not? If not, how is magic developed and sustained? Prophecies? All the little footnotes of fantasy have to be explored. Recently I've abandoned the god/goddess-based thought entirely, because I think it's much more challenging and interesting to write a fantasy world without them, where there are magic-based creatures, and crack!prophecies, and magic, but no quelling/directing force.

[aerden.livejournal.com]

I tend to 'ask' my characters how they do magic--or I simply observe how they do it as I write, and that is what I use to figure out the underpinnings of it--if that makes any sense to you. Logically, I ought to work out the magical system first, but I find that tedious, so I prefer to let the characters tell me how their world works. That has always seemed the better and more natural way to me, as a writer.

Chantal

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL--That's got to be every fantasy writer's fear, the Mary Sue name. I love that you decided to go for a non god/goddess world. Not that I mind it the other way, but I think you're right it's a big distinction to make. Maybe one of the biggest decisions you can make about your magic. That's one of the things some people don't really get about things like HP, that the magic is never described as coming from one thing or the other.

[pauraque]

Constructed languages are my other hobby, so I have no trouble with them. But ataniell93 is right -- when you're using a conlang in your fiction, less is usually more. Most readers are not the ones who enjoyed Tolkien's appendices more than the novels themselves.

And... Dexter's Laboratory? You wrote for that show?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ooh, excellent hobby.-) (How geeky am I--sure, some people would be impressed with rock-climbing or scuba diving. Give me some of those constructed languages!)

I definitely am trying to go for less-is-more and only write out something in the other language when it seems unnatural to do otherwise. It may turn out, in the end, that it felt like more than it was because for them to say three words means I have to make up three words, so it seems like more. Then I had to try to work out word placement, etc. so there's some consistency.

I wrote for the book series that was based on Dexter's Laboratory.:-)

[aerden.livejournal.com]

My username, Aerden, is a name I invented. I changed one letter from the name of a starship (the Aerfen) a Star Trek novel. Only after I had been using the name extensively for several years did I discover that it is an actual Dutch name.

I seem to be lucky enough to create unusual names easily. Often, I just use word parts from foreign languages and combine them with slightly different spellings to get the effect I want. I tend to use Latin vowel pronunciation. I also sometimes use a whole foreign (such as French for my Avriet story) as a basis from which to create words. I just create them as I need them. Sometimes, I find interesting 'words' from the grids of Word Search puzzles. Others just pop into my mind out of the blue. If I like them, I use them.

Chantal

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating it turned out to be a real name--I assumed it was. You sound like you're definitely a natural at this, liking to put syllables together etc. I worry when I start trying to come up with several words that they'll all sound the same...it sort of fascinates me when I think of speaking anything like gibberish, how sounds seem to desert me and I don't know how to do it. I suspect practice would help.

[hedda62.livejournal.com]

It's so funny to log on and read this because I was just thinking about writing a similar entry myself. I've just started reading a really well-crafted fantasy book (Lois Bujold's latest) and realized that while I love reading this sort of story, and recognize what a great challenge that kind of world-building would be to a writer, I just don't want to do it myself.

I know what you mean about spells and language and so forth, I think - again, with other people's work I can accept these inventions and love them, but I have trouble doing it myself. I love playing with language, but I'd rather play with languages that already exist, and the same goes for technologies and history. Fake science, sure, but not magic. I found even when I was writing HP fanfic I'd tone down the magic or steal it away temporarily. But it's great that there's room for everybody's approaches.

Good luck with your fake language, anyway. :)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

And I love that you wind up toning down the magic in HP. I've found that's often a really big part of any fanfic author's style in HP is how they use the magic. Probably plenty of people are like you and they don't use it much. Other people are always having people use spells for everything. Someone else is maybe more interested in magical objects instead of spells. Or sometimes people will come up with a background for it that Rowling doesn't, like it comes from the earth or the universe. Or then again they'll use types of magic not in canon, like wards or rituals. And then Rowling has her own use of it that is consistent throughout the series in its way.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

I've also gone the route of the language being translated, so not needing too many other-language words. The one story that's got me stymied does involve the potential for both names and borrowed words from another country/language. As well as words that have remained the same, place names or older personal names, while the language evolved to what they have now. Most of these are of a religious nature.

And the hardest thing is finding names for Deities. Something that can't be found by perusing texts on ancient Egypt, for instance (Abidos is a decent name for a Deity, don't you think?). I get so disappoined when I find a potential Deity name as someone's username! I want something original while not embarrassing some poor soul whose name just happens to fit with my own refining of the dark circles in my brain.

Hmph. Now I'm restless again. I really need to get back to, and refine, that world.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hee! Abidos is a great name for a deity!

It really gets me to thinking when I start about where these names come from. Like for me I had so much trouble coming up with a name for the country. I was looking through my atlas and all the names of countries started to seem so random. Did I was it to be a --stan country or an --aria, or a --land? And what was up with Turkey?

I thought about it this weekend when I watched "Hero" and it seemed to be saying that "China" in Chinese meant "Our Land."

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

I have no experience writing made-up names/languages, but I just wanted to say we loved Dexter's Laboratory in our house! All three of us - parents and kidlet. We still spout off Dexter- and Deedee-isms. So cool that you wrote for that show!

But, more to the point of your post, from the point of view of the reader/viewer, I prefer fewer uncommon words/names than more. The only exception is CSI - they use a lot of scientific terminology, but it's extremely contextual, generally explained right away (like, character X rattles off the name of a chemical compound and character Y says "Ah yes, nail polish remover"), and the words have a very familiar enough sound because they contain the same types of sounds (-ate, -ite, -ial, -ium, etc) as so many of the English language's common, Latin-derived words. I think it also makes a huge difference that firstly, the show is purposefully *not* talking down to audiences, and secondly, that they're not making that stuff up. As a viewer you can believe in what you hear even if you've never heard a random term before.

On the other hand, when I read a fantasy novel, I only want to read a made up language if it's foreign to the POV narrative, and only if necessary (not just because it's cool) and only in a few lines of text. Otherwise it feels like the author got lost in a bit of creative masturbation. I tend to believe easier if the unfamiliar language is simply referred to, rather than spelled out. Such as, the text says that a character overhears two beings talking quietly and she can't understand them, and leaves it at that.

As far as names, sound, consistency, and ease of pronunciation make a huge difference, to me. Alan Dean Foster's Thranx names work for me, because the naming protocol is easy to understand and remains consistent; the names themselves sound bug-like (in keeping with the aliens being big bugs) but not *too* bug-like (there are 'z' and 'x' sounds tossed in, but not overwhelmingly); the components of the names are simple sounds that flow well together; and even though the long forms of the names are generally easy to pronounce, he makes it even easier by using one component of the name as a sort of 'first name.' The end result is that I never stumble over the names when I run across them, and am thus not kicked out of the story.

Other than that one example, it seems like the most believable fantasy or sci-fi names/words are iterations of real names/languages, altered just a bit. Maybe the author ran across the name of an ancient Eqyptian and thought it sounded cool, and used it, and so it somehow rings true.

I don't know; probably not helpful at all. Mainly I'm just sitting here thinking "you wrote for Dexter! That is so awesome!"

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I have no experience writing made-up names/languages, but I just wanted to say we loved Dexter's Laboratory in our house! All three of us - parents and kidlet. We still spout off Dexter- and Deedee-isms. So cool that you wrote for that show!

You have such good taste!;-) I wrote for the books that were based on the series.

Totally with you on CSI. Having people use specialized language is really satisfying when you can follow it and it's explained in context. Actually, I'm still very annoyed that last night I missed the word that someone said and then Grissom said, "...from the [?] for magpie." I really need to look it up because a mental disorder named after a magpie is something I should know.

But since I usually don't like fake words I try to use as few as possible. Especially with this made-up language. It seems like it would have to be there, but I find making it up more of an irritation sometimes, which I think is good. Like, I just want them to exchange a few words and I have to stop and figure out how to do that. Hopefully it will flow within the scene.

I hadn't thought about the pronounciation but that's true--it's frustrating to me if a name comes up and I have no natural pronounciation in my head that I "hear" when I read it.

Heh--I'm basking in the Dexter glow.:-) Though I didn't write for the show, I just did some tie-in novels. (Which I loved doing, btw. Dexter rocks!)

[earth-magic.livejournal.com]

I hate having to come up with names for things, they always sound fake.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on that! I always hope even if I'm worrying about it it will read naturally to somebody else because they don't know how much I worried over it!

[the-gentleman.livejournal.com]

I write fantasy a lot. Not high fantasy- although I do have a lingering world in the back of my mind developed in my teens that I still dream of writing one day. Renaissance fantasy, on a world based on the Nordic worldsystem. I made up a whole set of languages, and the names based on them, not to mention the different provinces and dialects. No magic.

I basically have three "rules" of fantasy writing. The first is that all fantasy creatures are the product of evolution, disease, or degeneration, though this change might be sped up. Vampires are degenerated humans, as are werewolves, fauns and so on and so forth. (This lingers on in my HP vampires- you start off as infected, and live a reasonably normal life, with hypersensitivity to light, and a need to consume blood to replace failing blood cell production. Hence blood lollipops... After a while, the need for blood becomes too much to live in normal society, and you end up little more than a predatory beast in human form.)

Second rule is that economies make sense. Third rule is that, when writing "AU" fiction (sort of like HP- other world coexisting with ours) is that it's historically accurate with our own- so no stone castles in tenth century Scotland, for example... And from those rules, I have to slot in linguistic and literary problems- for example, how would a Renaissance police state ruled by superhumans represent themselves in literature, and what words would they use to describe their world? I looked at English, ditched words with a predominately Germanic background (for most characters, anyway- there were some traders from the north where the opposite was true) and established a basic set of slang terms that made sense for the culture.

Basically, stick with the real world as a guide (and I've found symbol magic becoming increasingly the status uo in my writing) and it sounds far better than just making nonsense words up. Hey, it worked for Tolkien...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating even just hearing about--it sounds like a real place (which is, of course, the idea). When I was young I loved Joan Aiken's Wolves Chronicles, even though then I don't know how much I "got" how they were Alternate Universes.

I definitely think basing things on real languages is a good idea. Picking the language it sounds like goes a long way to giving it character--and the sound of the language also gives you a sense of the people.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I only ever bother in the Potterverse, and there, I've got loads of canon example. A copy of Culpeper's Herbal to pad out the potion ingredients, some Latin back-formations, oh, and a Disneyfied sense of gadgetry -- like the tea vending machine in the employee canteen that had a talking gypsy mannequin who'd read your leaves if you handed back the cup -- and I'm happy.

I was working on some original fic in a universe with magic and metahumans and I was a lot more conservative there... magic existed, but it was commercial like technology here, and most people didn't cast spells of their own.

Oddly, I find it easier to write realistically about psi talents, however improbable they seem.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Huh--that's cool. I love the way that would seem natural to you in ways other things don't. Maybe that idea appeals to you for some reason.

Anyway, I love being able to just get real names for things--there's so much fabulous stuff out there there's no reason to make up more.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think it's an uncommon gift among fantasy writers themselves to make up words that are pretty-sounding and also right somehow (that is, one accepts them without question). I think it takes a good ear, perhaps, more than anything, a sense for the poetics of language. You can make up a non-English word, say, and maybe that would sound natural, but in the end you need either a linguistic or an intuitive understanding of how language works, how syllables repeat and differ across different words, how prefixes/suffixes/pronouns/etc work. If you're having trouble, you could always use an old disused language (like JKR did with Latin-- you could do it with Sanskrit or something). My favorite made-up-words person is Patricia McKillip-- because she always has such plesant-sounding syllables, that are simple and true, like smooth river stones. She taps into some basic root of language, I think.... Just recently, reading Alison Croggon (of `The Naming'), I found her fantasy language pretty and suited. Then again, this is all dependent on my own inner ear, too.

As far as my own words-- when I was young (15-16), I liked to go wild and put syllables together almost randomly (that's how I came up with my first online username-- lo-ri-en-- see, pretty), to see if I liked the sound. I loved the freedom of making up new things-- that's why I wrote/read fantasy in the first place, partly. Even so I think my names were better than others 'cause I have a better ear than others (probably), but... with time, I started to use obscure real English because it had more emotional associations built-in.

I think there are certain syllable combinations that are always pleasing. If you think about the pretty words you know, you'll see it; 'od', 'kel', 'fre', 'were', 'lyn', 'nor', and so on. Well, that was my initial 15-year-old's philosophy, anyway :> These syllables are already common in English, so I think if you put them together right, people would find them 'natural' even if they're not 'real words', because they could be.

I think you're approaching this from a rationalist pov, ie, 'does it make logical sense', and of course it doesn't. I guess that's how I write fantasy... I have a non-real (non-rational) idea of 'sense', and what makes it. By creating a fantasy world, you can't help but rely on the notion of 'intuitive sense'-- that is, things that could be true but aren't, and of course it's a messy business and you can't make up rules for it, and even the guidelines will differ from person to person. For me-- it's almost entirely instinctive, and I write what I 'see'-- the kind of world that my dreaming self envisions. I don't rationalize it until later, when I'm editing and trying to make things fit. But then I'm not a very linear writer, and that's a point of difference too.

I think in the end, either you painstakingly create your own language from scaps of old ones (like Tolkien did, I think), you use common English syllables in pretty ways, or you just use an old language intermittently :>

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I love the whole thing with those syllables--that's totally my thing is that when I think about what together I always go for my favorites. Though I was surprised the first time I had to say something in this fake language and the first sound that came to my mind was "Ai" So the word became "ayo." I don't know why it was so satisfying to say that. It just seemed like the right sound for what the person was doing--and you know, I think it was that it reminded me of the Flintstone's episode where Wilma and Betty learn karate. The person was kicking someone. It was just fun to say. Yup, it's a totally intuitive thing. That's why I think the language probably sounds kind of Japanese-y. It has more short syllables like "ha" than softer ones.