How old does a word have to be to be acceptable in fantasy?

[Brian G Turner]

It may have been translated like that by Tolkien

That excuse doesn't quite work with his reference to "fish and chips".

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I was surprised by Wilkie Collins have one character repeatedly call his son a Lout. It seems to mean nearly the same as today. "No Name" (1862).

Some stories I have characters say "OK". Others it seems out of place and they say "Fine" instead.

I think partly it depends on the overall style and setting, unless it's set after 1750s approx in the real world, in which case I think you need to research. Georgette Heyer bought letters and collected a library of over 1000 books specifically for "Regency Period". I think for anything set after 1918 you can perhaps be less careful as long as nothing is obviously out of place. If you are writing 1960s to late 1970s and are not old enough to remember well you can fall into error of having expressions too archaic or too modern. Also some things 1800s to late 1970s existed in tech etc that younger people think are more modern. Never mind Romans stone facing concrete buildings or central heating, or a form of abacus to get round issues of adding IV CL IXX etc.

Anything you aren't familiar with needs research. Don't assume it doesn't matter simply because your beta readers don't pick up on it.

 

[The Judge]

I find OED online very useful for this. OED I've been surprised how many words that feel modern have been around for a long time.

Oh, definitely. I have it up on my browser permanently when I'm writing, and I refer to it all the time.

The other surprise is when you come across a word which is actually a relatively recent coining, when it feels a lot older, or eg the noun is old, but it was only verbified recently. I love the byways it can take you down, thinking of how words originate and change, or even burst into being, like "quiz".

 

[allmywires]

I go with the 'it's a translation' thing in my writing, and I know it doesn't agree with everyone (HB always picks me up on it!) but it works for me, apart from when I use too Earth-like modern turns of phrase which I need to be careful of. I do always try and avoid the religious language stuff - no 'Thank God!'s in my world - but I think that language is such a completely individual thing, so tied to our own world and history, that trying to approximate a fantasy world completely with that is kind of like saying you can only write a world that is properly aligned with a period in human history. Which is not at all true. Yes - it wouldn't make sense to use smartphone metaphors in a fantasy world where there's no internet, but that's an extreme example. I think a few modern words, and also in particular phraseology, is harmless.

IMO, of course.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree with a lot of what’s been said. If most fantasy is pseudo-medieval, everyone would talk like Chaucer or Mallory (or maybe not like them in particular. Regional differences were probably much greater). My list of obvious “wrongs” would include:

- Terrible “local” dialect
- Obvious Americanisms (including my favourite, the bit where Locke Lamora calls the villain “mother****er”)
- Teenagers talking like modern teenagers or indeed anyone obviously speaking in the wrong way
- The assumption that all British names are equally old and were used identically across the board (“Here are my champions, Sir Peregrine, Sir Hamish and Sir Gary”)

I get the impression that medieval people, being vastly more religious than modern Europeans, would make much more reference to God and would regard swearing about religion as much stronger than swearing about sex or poo (they might not even had polite words for some things). This could look really odd if literally reproduced and gets close to “by Grabthor’s hammer!” territory. Personally, I think the answer is for characters to talk the way that a more lively Victorian novel is written: King Solomon’s Mines, say, or The Hound of the Baskervilles, but without any Victorian period slang.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

would make much more reference to God and would regard swearing about religion

Umm ... there were a lot of religious oaths that have passed in to modern English nearly unrecognisable and now much milder in meaning.

Generally unless it's very well done and a suitable story, novels work better with less swearing than some parts of society might have in reality. It can get tedious.

 

[Ursa major]

If the aim was merely to achieve maximum authentic immersion (within the limits imposed by doing this with a book), surely the pages should be impregnated with something imparting the "flavour" of the open sewers present in many locations.

But, of course, that's not what immersion is about. Immersion is a process that allows the reader to "forget" that they're reading a book. Filling a book's pages with appalling blasphemies (but, as Ray has suggested, appalling only to the book's characters, not to we readers) is more likely to pull most readers out of the experience than draw them in (because they are drawing attention to what separates us from the characters we are encouraged to "inhabit").

So what we have here is a similar issue that most books, whatever their settings, have with events and dialogue: both are usually tailored to maximise the impact of the story, with the bits that don't (particularly the very tedious ones) being omitted. The book is a completely artificial construction, whose content (tries to) maximise immersion, choosing words that do that over those that don't (whether the omitted words pull us into the present, or remind us -- in the wrong** way -- that we are strangers to the setting).


** - Obviously, a fantasy world will contain things to which we are unfamiliar and which we are (or should be) pleased to "experience" for the first time.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It depends largely on the general style of the prose. There is, of course, the whole translation thing for anything from an early date, another language, or another world, and a writer might use very modern sounding dialogue to make it sound natural and accessible to readers. And that's one way to do it. Some of us, on the other hand, prefer something that may reflect the period we are writing about -- and as readers we would prefer it, too. The other may strike us as lazy, unless it is done very, very well. But attempts at a more period style may come out garbled and even silly if the writer doesn't know the period or how people spoke and is trying to fake it. That can be lazy, too, and often comes across as affected and very much unnatural.

If characters are going to speak naturally, they should speak in a way that is natural to their situation in life. Are they educated in a society where education is a large part of what separates the gentry and the nobility from the working class? What about age? Profession or station in life? All this is about characterization, really. If your character sounds like Bob who works at your local convenience store he's not in character for King Alfred XXIII.

Erikson not withstanding, it makes sense to avoid words that involve concepts that wouldn't exist at the time or in the type of society you've invented for your story. Because, again, it's about characterization: patterns of thought expressed through speech.

Then there are words that used to have different definitions than they do now. Those can grate for some readers. One that I personally hate to see (and do see all too often) is fine, as in "I'm fine" or "He'll be fine." How hard would it be to substitute something like "I wasn't hurt," or "He'll recover soon." These not only don't clash with period usage, but they're more exact, too.

And finally, it's good to take a hard look at any slang you are using. Some of it has been around for a long time and will probably continue to be around for a long time. Some of it, especially the slang that is the very most up-to-date at the time you're writing is likely to grow dated very quickly. In a decade or two or three it may look downright quaint, and not in a good way. It may even look silly. Think about reading a story that was written in the 1950s where the author had all his medieval people might be saying things like "Gosh" and "Golly." The effect on you would probably not be what the author had intended. You might be snickering at moments that were supposed to be serious. So slang should be used carefully.

As, when it comes down to it, is true of every word we use in our writing.

 

[Toby Frost]

One thing I have a real problem with in writing fantasy is that the slightly stilted, formal speech that seems to be expected – mock Victorian rather than “prithee my liege” – isn’t that good for conveying subtleties like sarcasm, irony and so on. I find it hard to believe that medieval and Renaissance people didn’t have such things (I’d have expected court speech to consist of little else). Perhaps a reader of that time would have been able to pick up the reference, but I think here modern British English wins out.