This is so great, & I love the title of this so much. Co-sign, etc.
The “insipience” that immediately comes to mind for me is GGK’s use of “scintilla” in Fionavar—the first time it comes up I am awed by the word that sounds like the point of a diamond, & by the second instance I’m just squinting, the repetition obscuring all the other text around it.
What a wonderful a post! I love this topic, and I love thinking about words in books. Thank you as always for the inspiration :)
In Russian literature, this comes up with the more poetic of the authors -- Gogol, Bulgakov. Bulgakov very carefully cuts between heavy, ponderous language in the Biblical part of Master and Margarita and simpler, modernist prose in the present day part -- you'd be hard-pressed to find many repetitions beyond commons words. But there is a notable exception: the author spends a great amount of both parts talking about the "storm" (groza) that is about to overtake Moscow / Jerusalem. The word is one of the key unifiers of these two very disparate stories, and calls the reader's attention to other similarities, weaving the book together. B. also uses an old Russian spelling of Jerusalem, Ershalaim, that used to grate me at first but now definitely sticks with me as one of the stylistic anchors of the book. Really fun stuff :)
In my current project, I am struggling to talk about magic in a different way than most fantasy authors talk about it, because I want the player to think about magic in a different way -- something more like oil in our world than sunshine and rainbows. It's not quite a Dark Curse that you'd find in gothic novels, not quite like Herbert's Spice but similar -- scarce and dangerous enough to be a threat if you really think about it, but not obviously so to the everyday observer. I decided to use the verb "spell" in strange ways as a placeholder, and am happy enough with it for now. Let's see if it survives the revisions!
This is so great, & I love the title of this so much. Co-sign, etc.
The “insipience” that immediately comes to mind for me is GGK’s use of “scintilla” in Fionavar—the first time it comes up I am awed by the word that sounds like the point of a diamond, & by the second instance I’m just squinting, the repetition obscuring all the other text around it.
What a wonderful a post! I love this topic, and I love thinking about words in books. Thank you as always for the inspiration :)
In Russian literature, this comes up with the more poetic of the authors -- Gogol, Bulgakov. Bulgakov very carefully cuts between heavy, ponderous language in the Biblical part of Master and Margarita and simpler, modernist prose in the present day part -- you'd be hard-pressed to find many repetitions beyond commons words. But there is a notable exception: the author spends a great amount of both parts talking about the "storm" (groza) that is about to overtake Moscow / Jerusalem. The word is one of the key unifiers of these two very disparate stories, and calls the reader's attention to other similarities, weaving the book together. B. also uses an old Russian spelling of Jerusalem, Ershalaim, that used to grate me at first but now definitely sticks with me as one of the stylistic anchors of the book. Really fun stuff :)
In my current project, I am struggling to talk about magic in a different way than most fantasy authors talk about it, because I want the player to think about magic in a different way -- something more like oil in our world than sunshine and rainbows. It's not quite a Dark Curse that you'd find in gothic novels, not quite like Herbert's Spice but similar -- scarce and dangerous enough to be a threat if you really think about it, but not obviously so to the everyday observer. I decided to use the verb "spell" in strange ways as a placeholder, and am happy enough with it for now. Let's see if it survives the revisions!