Writing 101: Neologisms and Technobabble (How Much Is Too Much?) · 8:48am Oct 2nd, 2017
So I recently finished playing Tales of Berseria. Like many games in its genre, it was a dense experience, both in terms of gameplay and story. This density has many expressions, but one that I noticed in particular was its use of invented terms and technobabble. Here’s a partial list of some of the world-specific terms it uses;
* Malevolence – Evil energy. Related to the next item.
* Demonblight – A disease that turns people into demons.
* Demon – Monster. Dragons are a particularly powerful variety.
* Malak (pl;Malakhim) – Angels/spirit beings. Usually invisible to humans Most are human-like, but there are subtypes that have different names. Like Normin – short malak that follow slightly different rules; or Empyreans – comparable to a god or demigod, there is one for each of the four classical elements.
* Resonance – Spiritual sensitivity.
* Excorcist – Humans with high resonance. They work for the Abbey, a religious/military organization.
* Arte – technique/magic spell. Has several sub-types, including malak artes (magic spells) and mystic artes (limit breaks)
* Scarlet Night – A lunar eclipse/blood moon
Again, this is only a partial list, but I’m sure you get the idea. Not only do we have invented terms, we also have real-world terms being used for a different purpose.
Technobabble and invented words can have their place in storytelling. As does repurposing existing terms into something new. But how much is too much, and when should the author settle for a more mundane term? That is what I’d like to discuss today.
One of the most fundamental things about storytelling is exposition; the act of giving information to the audience. But like all things in storytelling, exposition takes up the reader’s time and attention. There are many ways to give exposition, some more subtle and others not so subtle. But generally, the less exposition one has to do, the better.
This means that the more invented words or technobabble the story uses, the more exposition one needs to do to put them in context. And if the author doesn’t give any context, then the reader is left to infer the meaning themselves, which can make the story hard to follow or obtuse.
So what is a good limit to these sorts of things? I often note that writing is subjective, and so generalizations and rules are always going to be vague guidelines at best. But my vague, generalized rule for this is quite simple; one concept or explanation per chapter. How explanations are delivered is another blog post, but measuring the pace of them is important.
Another aspect of this is using pre-defined terms instead of inventing or altering words. This is especially easy in fanfiction, because there’s already a pretty clear library of terms available. New concepts or headcanon/reinterpretations of current terms are rare enough that they can easily be spoon-fed to the reader.
Even outside of fanfiction, however, that library of terms still exists in the pop culture consciousness. I can use the term lich or knight in a story and the generalities (if not the specifics) will be clear to most readers.
I’m starting to ramble, so let me conclude by summarizing things in the clearest possible terms. When it comes to neologisms—words invented just for one story—or pre-existing terms that have been severely modified, use restraint. Use pre-existing concepts whenever possible. If you are introducing new things, do so slowly and carefully (like once a chapter). Don’t overdo either one, or it will make your story obtuse and hard to follow, or bog your narrative down in explanation.
Thanks for reading. As always, feel free to discuss anything I’ve said, be it agreements, disagreements, or supporting evidence for either side!
I agree on all of this. I haven't played this particular Tales game, but this is something I've noticed in the other ones as well.
I think another important thing is theming making it easier for the audience to remember the names of stuff. Like if a world's backstory is that the world was sung into existence, and music is magic, making terms related to music works as a means of tying together the theme of the world, and it also makes things easier for the audience to remember, because the terms aren't arbitrary but already connected in their mind.
If you do use neologisms, they should, wherever possible, be something very important, and this goes double for referencing some known concept. Using another term for magic or psionic powers can be used to distinguish it in the minds of the audience, but only if they are truly distinctive - Star War's The Force, the three types of magic of The Wheel of Time, ect. But if you do do that, it needs to be central, not peripheral, and you need to deliberately set the rules for why it would be different, so it feels like something new to the audience, not just calling a rabbit a smeerp, which will just be hard to remember and annoying.
Just randomly renaming stuff is pointless. Just from the list at the start: Scarlet Night adds nothing. Malak (מַלְאָךְ) is literally just angel in Hebrew; why not use the word angel, given that all that stuff is referencing angel stuff? This is the sort of thing that bugs me, and I see it in all too many games and it makes it hard for me to really get into stuff sometimes.
Also, mystic arte is a terribly confusing name - I would assume that was a magic spell, not a limit break, which is exactly the opposite of what you want when you name something, as the entire point of names is to label things.
While I would agree with your complaint, the problem is the source of it. Tales is a series that has been around for over 20 years. Arte dates back to the Tales of Phantasia which was released back in 1995. Resonance and Malevolence have shown up sporadically as well, including the previous game, Zestirai. In fact most of those terms show up in Zestiria. The only exceptions are Demonblight (Malevolence by itself caused this in Zestirai), Excorcist (which is really just a church spin on The Shepard/Warrior of Light/Chosen One/ect) and Scarlet Night. Demons are just Zestira's hellions, and Malak/Malakhim are just Seraph/Seraphim. It's how a long running series like Tales keeps things fresh/disconnects things from the world of the previous game.
In fact, to an extent, it's required by ANYTHING that would be borrowing lore from an existing source. Telling a story that is 100% original is almost impossible. By changing certain words you can help differentiate your work from something else, or even help put a new face/fresh spin on an old classic.
4684595 Agreed. This is another thing I wanted to cover in the post, but didn't want it to get too long; only use neologisms if it is warranted. As you said, something needs to be central to the narrative, and also have enough distinctive aspects to justify its own name. Otherwise it is superfluous and intrusive.
4684673 Yes, the Tales series is a bit of an odd case, because it recycles certain terms and concepts across games. But the advantage this has--of making things easier for previous players--doesn't always work and isn't always capitalized on. Berseria in particular uses very different sub-types of arts compared to previous titles (hidden/martial/malak/mystic), and its dual mystic arts are much more restricted and specific than previous games. It also has the oddness of being a distant prequel, and that further changes around its vocabulary.
Regardless, tradition doesn't justify bad design. The Final Fantasy series and other long-running franchises with recurring elements often encounter similar problems. We as writers and worldbuilders should not try and justify these awkward decisions, but rather ask how we can avoid those pitfalls and do better in our own writing.
Whenever possible your neologisms should enhance, rather than detract from the story, which means that they should be limited in number, serve a purpose, and ideally be easy to remember.
For example:
Demonblight- a disease that turns people into demons. This is a good, if perhaps slightly unimaginative neologism because there's no real world name for this disease and someone looking at it can guess what it means pretty easily.
Malak- Angels/spirit beings. This is not so good. If you're already throwing around familiar terms like demon, why not angels or spirits?
Exorcist- A real life exorcist is a (Catholic church) priest who specializes in driving out demons. So, if magically powerful church people in the game fight demons, this is a great use of the term. If they don't, it will confuse the audience a bit.
4692222 This raises another point; if you are repurposing a pre-existing term, then it needs to be done with some caution. If the term is too removed from its original meaning, then you are confusing readers. There's a line where a concept or idea should be described with a neologism, because re-working an old word creates the wrong impression.
4693333
Right. Sometimes you have to create a neologism because no existing term describes what you're talking about.