Being a Better Writer: Wordbuilding Colloquialisms · 9:05pm Sep 8th, 2014
Welcome back, everyone! How was the weekend?
Mine was interesting. I got some news on when I'll be heading up to Alaska for some work. Once I'm up there, I'll have limited opportunity to post, especially once the work itself gets going. So I'm afraid I'll be offline after a certain point for a good few weeks. I'm not such a big fan of it, but a guy has to eat. Plus, I've done this before, so it's not such a huge deal, as I know things will survive without me. Granted, this does make it a bit trickier to release Hunter's side story before I go. I might just double up the release schedule for Hunter's chapters or something like that.
Other quick news, The Dusk Guard FimFiction group is, for those who missed it, finally a thing at last! And there is a contest going! So if you like the idea of contests and prizes (or just a place to chat about the Dusk Guard or whatever with fans of the Dusk Guard), take a quick look!
All right, I think that's everything. So, moving on to today's topic, which is a bit of an interesting one. Let's put forth a scenario to get us started. Have you ever been reading a story that was either Sci-fi or Fantasy, and then suddenly been reminded that it's a book when a piece of dialogue sounds completely out of place? I'm not talking foreshadowing or eye-catching, I mean something that's completely ill-placed and breaking of the book's world, like a medieval fantasy character using the phrase "awesome" or making a political joke that relies on modern political climates to be funny—which means in the context of the book, it's entirely out of place.
It happens. Surprisingly enough, quite a bit, in a lot of literature, if not with jokes or slang, with characters swearing (which in a lot of books, tends to be the biggest offender. The number of times I've read a book where characters who have a completely alien pantheon of gods use Judeo-Christian swear words...). It's a trend.
What's the problem, here? Well, it's an author who didn't make colloquialisms part of their worldbuilding.
See, the thing is, colloquialisms and slang are one of those things that we don't often think about unless it's pointed out to us, because by definition a colloquialism is not something formal, formally recognized (except in title), nor literately correct. A colloquialism is just a quirk of day-to-day dialogue, an odd phrase or word that has taken on a new—and often temporary—meaning. They're rooted in culture. Deeply rooted in it, in fact. So deeply rooted that most of the time, we don't even think of them. We just use them, lose them, and pick up new ones.
For example, take the word "cowabunga," a term used as an expression of happy amazement and interest in the early 90s. For most users of this word, it was inspired by the show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in which the characters used it as an expression of amazement when something really good and interesting happened (or as many of us today would say, when something "cool" happened).
However, TMNT was not the origin of the phrase. TMNT was merely bringing back and older term used as a greeting by 60s Southern California surf culture. So in the 90s, the term was used to express amazement, but to the SoCal surfers of the 60s, it was a greeting. And where did they get it?
Turns out, the original use, and origin of the word, is from an old kid's show called The Howdy Doody Show, wherein a Native American character, rather than use the cliche "How?" phrase to greet the peanut gallery, played with the pronunciation to say "cow," and then (supposedly) added on the "abunga" because it sounded fun.
And somehow, that phrase ended up being picked up by surfers a decade later. Then, when the designers of TMNT were creating the series characters, they made the decision to include "cowabunga" as a phrase and nod to surfer culture. They way they used it, however, was different, and it took on a whole new meaning to a new generation.
This isn't anything new. Colloquial slang comes and goes at an almost terrifying pace. Most of you reading this blog can probably recall slang phrases and word that you used as a kid that no longer have popular use today. Or slang phrases that really didn't mean too much outside of a small group of friends.
XKCD Illustrates this perfectly
If you want a really good example of this, take a look at this list of colloquials and slang from the 1920s. What's truly interesting is that some of these have stuck around, leaving examples of their use in every decade since then. Others have vanished, died out. And some have even recently resurfaced, brought back into the modern vernacular by popular songs or TV shows.
All right, all right. "This is all very fascinating," I hear some of you saying. "But so what?"
Well, the key here is to realize that every culture and time has these colloquialisms, and to take advantage of this in our writing. Rather than just sitting back and making use of the same colloquialisms and phrases we've grown up and used ourselves, we should realize that our characters, and along with them, our world, will likely have their own batches of slang and phrases that they use in place of our own.
This is something I've been working on with my own writing as of late. Spending time on Colony, one thing I realized was that I was falling into the trap of simply having characters set in a future over a hundred years from now use slang a dialogue that was distinctly modern, despite the fact that setting and culture of the time probably wouldn't have led to such phrases existing. So I started making changes (and more will probably be made, the book needs some work in that respect). The catchphrase for "cool" became "prime." A dead end or point where no one was getting anything done, became to the locals of the colony world "dead water." Getting in over one's head became likewise "caught in the tide" or "stuck in a riptide." A derogatory term for someone became "chum sucker" (ew).
Now, while most of would sound odd or even strange to us if used in a conversation, that's kind of the point. When you're writing about a culture that's removed in both time and place from us, currently, it's necessary to realize that such a culture might be a little different (though still recognizable). Part of your goal when writing about it is to make the reader feel like it's real, after all. And nothing helps that along more than giving your characters strong slang and colloquial.
So where do you start? Like with most other things, if you're going to build a world and characters from scratch, start there. Or even if you're going to make a version of our existing world. Look at where some of our own colloquialisms come from and work backwards to see what inspired them, and then see what phrases a similar line of thought could create in our characters culture and situation. "Prime," for example, in the universe of Colony, is similar to "cool" in that it's a single word with a maleable meaning (colloquials and slang don't need to worry about correctness). In this case, it's replaced "cool" as the slang for similar. There isn't any real justification for it aside from the fact that it sounds "cool" and is quick to say while being fluid to a number of meanings. In other words, a perfect slang.
Other colloquialisms and phrases can come out of your world's unique history. No one in your medieval fantasy, for example, is going to use the term "Grammar Nazi." It's just not going to happen unless you actually had a very widely known, world-altering Nazi party somewhere in your fantasy's past.
But what could you use instead? Well, that's up to you, but it should be something that is part of the world you've created. Maybe a famous ancient bard/playwright named Gerin was a stickler for grammatical correctness to the extent that he offended a king and got himself beheaded, and so people say "Don't be a Gerin" when someone is being a stickler for something at the wrong time.
Sounds plausible, doesn't it? And straightforward enough. All you really need to do for colloquialisms is dig into your world a little and let it influence your writing.
Well, ultimately it probably won't be as simple as it sounds to remind yourself of when working, since we tend to try and stick with our own slang the majority of the time. Reminding yourself to use cultural lingo is actually a little tricky, since you'll be trying to overcome your own verbal tics as you do it.
But the effects ... they're worth it. Colloquialism and slang, despite their oddness, are an unmistakable part of culture, and making them a part of your world and your characters will do much to increase the life and vibrancy of your creation. Turns of a phrase, slang ... These are all things that indicate a living world, one that stands on its own. When you have characters use phrases that aren't part of the world (or redone phrases that are literally word replacements which a lot of fantasy does), these become reminders to a reader that the world is merely a construct, a play which the reader is merely observing.
We don't want that. Well. not normally. What we want is a world our readers can lose themselves in, a world that's seamless and real.
And as small and inconsequential as they may seem, colloquials, slang, and other types of language based phrases can do a lot to help with that.
So, challenge for the week: look back on something you've written and come up with some in-universe colloquialisms for your characters to use.
See you all next week!
I prefer the "Grammar Inquisition."
'Prime', such as 'that's just prime' is often used in the Transformer series, I can distinctly remember one instance in the Beast Wars series. Is that where you got 'prime' from?
The link to the flapper's expressions was truly enlightening. Being a non-native speaker, I've been astonished what words were listed and I never suspected to be that old. These have such a modern feeling to them, like scram. Also, now I know where ponyfeathers actually originates.
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Actually, I grabbed it from prime Numbers. A prime number is a number that can only be divided whole by itself or 1, so something that is prime can be utterly unique. Which is pretty use to "cool."
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Colloquialism is an interesting thing, that's for sure. Studying where some old sayings come from and why we use them can be fascinating.
Huh. Have people discovered much about Renaissance-era colloquialisms yet? That's the era I'd want to emulate most in this world I'm starting to build.
The best part of colloquialisms isn't just the world-building part, but the fact they can be used for characterization. Characters may be from the same world, but individuals from different social classes in the same world will obviously possess unique diction.
You can utilize a character's language to illuminate aspects of their personality without using a direct exposition dump to just tell your readers what sort of individual they are. One of Moon Glade's later lines, for example, is, "Mother o' Molly, 'aven't been hit that hard since Luna caught me peeking under 'er tail." That sort of dialogue, along with the fact that he's the captain of the Night Guard, actually tells the reader a lot about the world, the Night-Captain, and Princess Luna without me having to hold my readers' hands and drag them through all the quibbling details.
I have a hard time believing a story where every character speaks exactly alike, because I've yet to encounter any two people in the real world who shared the same speech patterns. (Although a writer can take it too far, as well. See: Most Fimfic's authors attempts to write Applejack dialogue.)
Augh!
Why can't I upvote blog posts?
Seeing the colloquialisms you came up with for 'Colony' just makes me want to read it more. Does the use of the word tide refer to the colony being on planet mostly covered in water? Or maybe it has a very wet climate, like a rainforest? I want to know how those phrases originated
Also, in Danish we have the phrase "Ude hvor man ikke kan bunde" which roughly translates to "out where you can't reach the bottom". Meaning "in over your head", which you translated to "caught in the tide".
Why so many waterpuns?
One sugestion I can give from personal experience is to actually make a concious effort, at least to start, to use your world's slang and colloquialisms in place of your own. Though you may get a few strange looks, context still counts, so you'll likely be understood, and I find it helps me to get into the right mindset.