Many cultures believe words have power. The bards sang stories. They made sure things were remembered and took these stories from one place to another. They could also lampoon someone and make them suffer.
Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me …
Not true if everyone is laughing at you because of an easy to remember catchy rhyme that is passing through the village like wild fire!
When I set out to write King Rolen’s Kin I wanted a traditional fantasy story, but some of the words we use have been used so many times they lose their power. So I avoided prince or princess and used kingson and kingsdaughter. Both of these are based on the way people were described (and what is a name but a description?) in the Norse sagas. Unlike our society, in the Norse sagas a man might also be described by his mother’s ancestors as well, and I use this in KRK.
The other word I wanted to avoid was magic. It has been used so much it has lost its original awe inspiring power. It used to be out there, all around us, tied to the earth and to specific places where someone with the right ability could tap into it. So I came up with affinity. In KRK power seeps up from the earth’s heart. It affects animals and people. Some people are born with the ability to manipulate this power, they have an ‘affinity’ for it. So the term becomes, they have affinity. This way magic becomes something ‘other’ and powerful again.
What I look for in fantasy and science fiction is that the thrill of wonder. It can be associated with the future and the possibilities of where we will go as human beings, or it can be associated with the past and the powerful things our ancestors held to be important. There was a time when your word was your bond. You could not break an oath, or you would be known as an oath-breaker and no one would trust you.
Hi!
Since you read and left a comment on our blog I figured I’d wander over and take a look at yours.
Yes, I absolutely enjoyed your books. I loved the pace of the story, like how in the action sequences the words just leapt off the pages like the battles were going on around you, and in the “slower” back story parts of the books you used a more melodic pace that continued to draw the reader deeper into the story. You can tell lots of authors aim for that; most fail, but you nailed it.
The goal of any author should be to draw the reader into the story, to make it hard for someone to put the book down. Well, you hooked me. I’m just happy I had all three novels in hand before I started reading them because I would have pulled out what’s left of my hair waiting for the next book to come out after finishing each one.
Good luck in the future…I’ll be watching 😉
Shrek.
Thanks, Shrek.
We neurotic, needy authors love hearing from someone whose enjoyed our books!
No, seriously. We do.
Its always struck me that the little things like naming conventions, are dreadfully important to get right. Try too hard, be too obscure and you end up with names that don’t fit the setting or if you are not inventive enough you end up producing something that is bland. Tolkien was lucky that he could plunder Scandinavian myth for something that was different tough familiar.
Tangentally, I wonder how my preference or acceptance of names/worlds rests on how they fit in with my own fantasy reading canon.
I know exactly what you mean, Sean.
It’s a very fine line between coming up with words that carry the right connotations and being obscure. I try to use the roots of words we know. So I look up the old High German, or early English. I figure people pick up the meaning on a subconscious level.
Please excuse the misspellings above.