Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Morphemes: Inventing Words for Speculative Fiction Authors

Authors of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, etc.) often need to describe people, places, and things outside the normal realm of experience. There are three basic ways to do this:

1.) Use a combination of standard English words. For example, if your characters use bodies of water to travel between different dimensions, you can call them 'waterwalkers' or 'water-walkers.'

Pros: It's easy for your reader to know what you're talking about.

Cons: Limits creativity. Also, these terms don't necessarily call attention to themselves, and can be lost in the rest of your prose.

2.) Make a word up from scratch. In this case, you might call the water-walking characters 'lisorbb.'

Pros: Absolute creative control.

Cons: Many readers abhor the made-up word. Used too frequently, they can turn all but the most dedicated reader away, as I talked about in my post on different types of fantasy novels.

3.) Use the basic building blocks of the English language to invent a word more or less within the accepted boundaries of word formation. In order to do this, you can parse a word into morphemes, a.k.a. basic units of English taken from the ancient languages (usually Latin and Greek) that originated English. Say you wanted to create a new word to mean 'waterwalker.' Water has a Latin morpheme of 'hydr' (as in 'hydropower') and walk has a Greek morpheme of 'ambl' (as in 'amble'). So we could call the waterwalkers 'hydramblers,' if we'd like.

Pros: High level of creative control. Works best if you use easily recognizable morphemes.

Cons: Still might throw some readers off.

And no, I'm not fluent in either Greek or Latin. I use an excellent book that I bought as a textbook for a class on the origin of the English language. The book is English Vocabulary Elements by Keith Denning and William R. Leben. (William Leben actually taught the class I took.) I mostly use the list of Greek and Latin morphemes at the back of the book as a reference guide. And yeah, I know I'm not following the 'rules' for word formation, but that's my creative license at work!

The book is also handy if you're interested in learning why certain words are the way they are. Did you know that the 'hyster' in 'hysterical' actually comes from the Greek morpheme for 'womb?' Because back in the day, 'hysterics' was an actual disease women were diagnosed with. Grrr.

I think that inventing words has the potential to add another dimension to speculative fiction. We do it all the time in real life: how long has 'vloggers' been around? So why not use it in our writing?

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think people do not use Vloggers because bloggers covers audie, video and written.

I think this strategy should be used for people in branding. Having your own vocabulary goes a long way.

Dr. WRight
The Wright Place TVS how
www.wrightplacetv.com
www.twitter.com/drwright1

Chris Redding said...

You've been tagged. http://chrisredddingauthor.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Really really really good post, emerging one! (smile) One of my favorite all time authors is Robert Heinlein. His book, "Mars is a Harsh Mistress" is chocked FULL of made up words that the Lunies talked. It didn't "throw" me at all. Just sooooo imaginative in my mind. Then again, he WAS already a famous writer when he wrote that so he had artistic license way beyond most of us writers. Thanks for the tip on that reference book also. I'll have to get that.

Unknown said...

Dr. Wright, inventing words is good for branding. I use 'emerging author' because it's not widely used, but otherwise I could see inventing a word for myself. Although it was actually Marvin who pointed out that I'd branded myself 'emerging author' ;)

Argh, Chris, another tag?! I'll see what I can do!

And Marvin - glad you liked the post! There's for sure a right way and a wrong way to invent words. Just look at Tolkien or Shakespeare (some say Shakespeare was the first to ever use up to half the words in his works!) And I definitely recommend the reference book. Although, I admit, I have an even better reference - Greek boyfriend!

Helen Ginger said...

Really enjoyed your post today. I'm going to look for that book since I know absolutely nothing about Latin.

David Fitzgerald said...

Okay, I need that book. I'm actually trying to come up with a name for creatures in an upcoming book and I love how you broke down the thought process of doing so.

I just read FALLEN by Tim Lebbon, a dark fantasy, and he does an excellent job of combining the two techniques you mention.

Dana Fredsti said...

Ahem. Dana/Zhadi here. I signed in as my boyfriend becauase my computer opens to his gmail account. David Fitzgerald is me!

Unknown said...

Aw, man, and I thought it was someone new commenting on my blog! It's all good, Dana, I go into conniptions just trying to keep my own gmail accounts straight!

This book really is great. It's the most used reference book on my shelf! Dana, you're going to have a blast making up names. I have a 'City of Golden Ice' and I called it Chryscrya (chrys as in chrysanthemum, cry or cryo as in cryogenic freezing!)

Charlotte Phillips said...

Thanks Emma! I never really thought about the process of making up words and would not have been able to explain why some made up names work well and others don't. I'll be looking for that book.

Unknown said...

Charlotte, I think that some people are just really good at making up words. Take Tolkien for example - he made up complete languages! His word 'nazgul' easily invokes fear. And he's using a lot of license - the 'gul' means 'wraith' and is similar to 'ghoul,' but I'm not sure where 'nazg' ('ring') comes from.

Brendan O'Connor said...

Hey Emma, cool post. I think morphemes that are used in words we already know, are what make made-up workds work -- either pre-existing English words, or Latin and Greek also, as long as your readers have heard of words with those roots. ("hydro"/"hydra" works great, since many people get a vague notion of "water" or maybe "monster" from that.)

Unknown said...

Hey Brendan, long time no see, thanks for stopping by! Excellent point. Morphemes like "hydro," "mega," and "psych" are more likely to be recognized by a general audience. In fact, making words out of parts that just sound like morphemes can be more effective than using morphemes that no one knows. If I told you that a Megotor was about to trample you, you'd probably be scared. Even though it would be more linguistically accurate if I said "megataur," which would literally translate to "Great Bull."