This week: authors try to find the perfect words to describe the worlds their creating. Sometimes, they can go a bit too far. Let’s discuss.
Named
Sometimes I think world building is the best part of writing. You, the author, get to make everything up from scratch - what the people look like, how they talk, what they do, how they live - everything. And each author starts from a different place. Some start with the warring factions of their fantasy epic, others start with the harsh terrain of their alien world. But no matter the starting point, every author arrives at the same place sooner or later: what do you call all this stuff?
Let's say your heroes need to get from point A to far-flung point B. Do they take a car? A transport? A teleport? Maybe an ornithopter1? Or, a different example, your heroes have gathered and are ready to begin their assault on the villains...fortress? Castle? Stronghold? Or, in the most maddeningly complex decision yet, what do your heroes call their leader? Captain? King? Sarge2?
The trouble is, of course, that all these words have established meanings3. Which means they create images in readers' minds, some of which may not match the image you hope to create.
So authors drag their thesauruses out of their dusty nooks and get to work. Synonyms are researched, foreign languages are combed through, and historic dictionaries are consulted. Then, once the perfect word has been found, it is tested for its fit, and then assigned its place in the story. But sometimes, in the search for a word that is just right, or maybe just previously-unused4, authors can go a little far.
Here's an example from Netflix's The Sandman5. Dream is questioning one of his agents about the whereabouts of a another: "Fiddler's Green is missing? That is passing strange, Lucien. He is, after all, vavasor of his dominion and always so reliable." Okay. Cool. Only, what does vavasor mean?
Merriam-Webster, as usual, has an answer:
: a feudal tenant ranking directly below a baron
Huh. Okay. So does that make Dream of the Endless a Baron? He is, after all, the personification of dreams and stories, so I suppose he could also be a baron, but it seems a little strange. However, when we take Google's definition (itself taken from Oxford Languages), we get a slightly broader definition that helps to highlight the key component:
a vassal owing allegiance to a great lord and having other vassals under him.
In other words, the missing Fiddler's Dream, while being subordinate to Dream, is high-ranking enough himself (itself?6) to have other beings subordinate to him. This makes sense and makes Dream's concern7 more understandable.
However. While vavasor is a good and cromulent word, it's also more than a little obscure. So much so that etymonline doesn't even have a listing. Meanwhile, Wikipedia's entry traces the word back to the 10th century and the Corpus of Historical American English doesn't have any entries besides those where vavasor is used as a surname. So, yeah, obscure is one way of putting it.
Which makes it all the more likely that it was a deliberate choice8, back in 1989, when Neil Gaiman first wrote the scene. I wonder whether he worried about this potentially unknown word breaking readers' grip on the story or if vavasor fit the characters and atmosphere of the scene so perfectly that no other word would do and pulling readers out of the scene was an acceptable risk? Possibly a little of both; either way, it's an author's prerogative9 to use the word that works best for their story.
91 Days
We’re getting into the back half of the project; the first seven issues are up at the site or you can always follow me on Instagram or Flickr. Links at the 91 Days website.
Down the Rabbit Hole
Just what is a green, anyway? According to Google, it is “a piece of public grassy land, especially in the centre of a village.” It’s not something we have a lot of down in the American Southwest. But I wanted to know more about the inspiration for Gaiman’s Fiddler’s Green, and so the chase down the rabbit hole began anew…
Fiddler’s Green appears in British folklore as a kind of heaven for old sailors. There is always a fiddle playing and you can dance forever.
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society is the title track to a 1968 record by the Kinks. It is widely regarded as one of the Kinks best songs and is a mock-serious ode to preserving things.
Village Green is “A game of pretty gardens and petty grudges” wherein you play a gardener trying to make your green the envy of everyone around.
Around the Village Green is a 1937 documentary comparing “traditional and modern village life, as changes occur with better transport and as country estates are sold off for housing.”
Village Green Bookstore began as a single shop, grew to become a large chain, only to end up filing Chapter 11 and closing the doors of its last shop in 1996.
From the Archives
It’s summer time for me, which means that I’ve been taking a couple of online classes as well as ramping up my own for-fun studying. And, just like always, every time I start studying something, I start wondering if I can pick up a certificate or a degree. To that end, I went back and re-read, both my own post and in general, about the DIY MA. Definitely an idea worth exploring.
Dune was so good. Can't wait for Part 2.
The answer is Sarge, obviously. Everything else is some weak-kneed idiot who doesn't know his ass from his elbow.
Many times more than one. Some words are becoming so over-used that they end up with conflicting images. Take the word elf, for example, are the elves in your story Tolkien-esque or straight from the Keebler tree? Vampire is even worse...
There are a lot of authors who lean towards the "no one else has used it yet" side of the line and I wish they wouldn't.
I finished the t.v. series last week. I enjoyed it so much that I savored it, refusing to watch more than a single episode in a single sitting. It's rare that I have that much patience and even more rare that I find something I'm willing to give that kind of attention to. This is, in other words, the highest recommendation I can give: I watched it as slowly as I could.
Fiddler's Green is a dream of a place, but shown as a male-presenting figure in both the comic and the t.v. series, so I'm going with he/him.
By the way, this is all from Issue 10 of the comic or Episode 7 of the t.v. show.
To be clear, I’m not trying to come down Gaiman or his writing or to paint myself in any way as superior. It’s just that in this one case, seeing a word I didn’t know pulled me out of the story.
So, turns out, that's a word I've been misspelling my entire life.
The diagram is hilarious, no wait let me fancy myself, the impression on the digital screen is uproarious.
On a serious note : I agree with you on this, "So authors drag their thesauruses out of their dusty nooks and get to work."