# Using the Familiar or Creating?



## Deleted member 2173 (Jan 6, 2013)

Hello All,

I would like some opinions on the subject of using real-world terms versus creating new ones.  Does using standard military titles such as captain or general help the reader have a greater understanding of a power structure?  Does using nobility titles that you create fresh from thin air alienate a reader unless the author info dumps the structure?  I am of two minds on this, so please share your thoughts.


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## MadMadys (Jan 6, 2013)

I'd say unless you have some really compelling reason to do otherwise, keep things simple.  You're introducing readers to a new world and if you throw too many new things at them they're going to drown.

I used to be of the mind of total world immersion with creating new names for months, days of the week, distance, economic systems, weather patterns, blah blah blah.  Finally I realized none of this did anything for the actual story which is what it's all about.

If you need to create a new term, that's fine, as long as it doesn't have some exact parallel to reality because then the reader will wonder why you bothered.


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## T.Allen.Smith (Jan 6, 2013)

I'm in agreement with MadMadys. Some new words can add a bit of texture. Too much and the reading becomes work. Remembering what one word means, keeping a mental notebook along the way, it can suck the enjoyment right out of the story.


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## H. Y. Hill (Jan 6, 2013)

I prefer familiar terms. As a reader, it takes less of an effort to connect with the story. And I agree that too much new terms does make reading, which is meant to be leisure, into work. 

But it also depends on many factors: the culture of your group of people. If it's based on well-known European cultures, then leave it. If it's based on more obscure cultures, then even the real-world term would be alien to most readers. 

And how does it impact the story? If it barely impacts, is it worth the extra effort coming up with all those new terms and explanation? Can you explain all of it in a way that isn't info-dump? (info-dumps take readers out of the story and suspends their connectivity)


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## PaulineMRoss (Jan 6, 2013)

The trouble with familiar terms is that they always come with baggage. Widely-used terms like Captain or Commander not so much, but Centurian (say) carries certain implications. And terms like King, Princess, Duke, Baron, etc bring with them the whole patriarchal feudal shebang. If that's not what you intend, invent your own terms. They don't have to be complicated, and don't need any overt explanation. Readers are capable of working out from the characters' behaviour and dialogue who is subordinate to whom.


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## ALB2012 (Jan 6, 2013)

I would tend to agree, keep it simple. Making up a ton of new terms for familiar concepts gets confusing. The reader ends up having to work out what these weird terms mean and it detracts from the story. If you decide to use new terms or out of context terms the maybe use a glossary or explain early on.

Example- I used the term Power (capitalised on purpose) to denote magic, mana whatever you want to term it. Early on I state it as the essence of magic.


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## JCFarnham (Jan 7, 2013)

I think it's all in how you use the terms. _Thrown in on every page with no explanation_ is probably NOT the way to go, but if you can take the time and words to cement these new terms in the readers head then I don't see a problem. 

Eg., I was recently informed that in the British Indian Army back in the days of empire, Indian troops and officers had quite a differently named command structure. 

In a book about the above, I would be happy to accept these "new terms" for the sake of a coherent setting. They could get confusing if handled badly, but would work fine otherwise. Something like, the first time the title is used it comes with an attached example of how the character ranks to other, would be perfect.

At some point in using created terms for things you begin to think "if it's a rabbit then call it a rabbit", but I'm not entirely sure that's evidence of a fundamental need to keep it simple, or just a few bad examples of renaming leading to a generalisation. 

To that extent I always judge a piece on it's own merits. If _it_ handles its terms well, then there's no point editting it. Some people will get confused, but then again some people get confused as soon as you leave the real world. All you need to think is _whether or not it matters that this race of people--who have never lived on modern Earth--using these terms breaks the willing suspension of disbelief.
_
If you make a big deal of it being another world, maybe you SHOULD use made up terms, just so everyone knows where they stand.


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## wordwalker (Jan 7, 2013)

JCFarnham said:


> At some point in using created terms for things you begin to think "if it's a rabbit then call it a rabbit", but I'm not entirely sure that's evidence of a fundamental need to keep it simple, or just a few bad examples of renaming leading to a generalisation.
> 
> To that extent I always judge a piece on it's own merits. If _it_ handles its terms well, then there's no point editting it. Some people will get confused, but then again some people get confused as soon as you leave the real world. All you need to think is _whether or not it matters that this race of people--who have never lived on modern Earth--using these terms breaks the willing suspension of disbelief.
> _
> If you make a big deal of it being another world, maybe you SHOULD use made up terms, just so everyone knows where they stand.



Agreed. By all means don't overgeneralize, but look for opportunities.

I think "Whether it's new to the character, or sometimes how new the whole world is to the reader" is a good standard. The one lets you show how certain words are more exotic than others, and position them so the reader notices and remembers what they mean, punctuating differences in the story. The latter does the same if you can manage more words without overload.

Military ranks sound like the kind of thing that the character is too familiar with to do that with-- although the more feudal or non-modern your world is, the more too many of the less-epic terms like Corporal and Major start to look anachronistic, compared to a well-set-up "Banneret" or something. A foreign army might _have_ to have a different rank or two.

Still, some tales simply immerse you in the army and lead you through it all. Chris Bunch's _The Seer King_ and sequels are a soldier making his way matter-of-factly through Legates, Tribunes, and so on, and it works because he does the army that well.


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## Addison (Jan 7, 2013)

Personally I believe it depends on the story. If it's military and you use your own words that's great. How the characters interact will tell the reader who the higher rank is. Same goes for nobility and such. It's entirely up to you. If you're still unsure you could put a little glossary at the beginning.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Jan 7, 2013)

I think that if there is a already a proper word for what you are trying to express, then you should use that word. If you are writing about a feudal society populated by humans, then there's no point in going: "That noble is a _taim_ and that other one is a _sashell_" if a taim and a sashell is just as count and a duke, respectively. You might as well call them a count and a duke and avoid confusion.

If you are going to invent words, they should refer to concepts that have no equivalent in the language your are writing in. (Which would be English for most of you, Swedish in my case.) For example if you are using a more distinctly foreign society like the Indian caste system, and don't want to use actual Indian terms to preserve immersion. Or better: If you are writing about a non-human society with radically different concepts.


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## Deleted member 2173 (Jan 7, 2013)

Thank you to everyone with their feedback.  My thoughts are now, the farther a race or people are from being human, the more the terms might be different.


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## Nebuchadnezzar (Jan 10, 2013)

I agree with most of the comments that have been made; if there is a perfectly reasonable term already in common use, no need to make up an imaginary one to take its place.  However, I agree with the comment that you don't want to use a word that may import baggage you don't intend.  "Centurion" or "samurai" are going to come with definite connotations for your readers...

That said, this post begs a mention of Gene Wolfe, who used many, many unusual words & titles to describe his Urth of the New Sun.  Wolfe's intent was (in part) to emphasize the very alien nature of his Earth of the far future.  To Wolfe's credit, none of his words & titles were made up.  Autarch, lictor, omophage, cherkaji, etc are all real words and they mean essentially what Wolfe intends them to mean in his books.


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## Devor (Jan 12, 2013)

It's okay to use made up or exotic words if you use them well.  You've just got to get a feel for which words look natural enough to use casually in English and figure out how to explain the word through context.  If you do it right, the reader should be able to pick it up easier than you pick up an English word you're not familiar with, since you've built the context clues into the text.

I'm not advocating that you overdo it by any means.  But I will go so far as to say that a skilled author telling the right story could use them everywhere and make it work.  But most of us should use them sparingly to emphasize the occasional exotic elements.


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## Fakefaux (Jan 12, 2013)

In most fantasy settings, the given assumption is that nobody is speaking actual English; the story is just translated from their languages for our benefit. As such, it makes sense that the story should work like a real translation. The fantasy culture may have something very similar to a king, though they might not call him a king, but it's close enough that our theoretical translator would just call him that for simplicity's sake. Save the made-up words for concepts or places that no have no English/real world equivalent. Place names, or the names of ethnic groups, for example.


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## Sherman (Jan 17, 2013)

An approach I have taken is transporting the familiar into the unfamiliar, so that the familiar acts as a bridge for the reader.  It becomes a point of reference.


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