Why Nouns Matter, part 2: objects and labels

Here I am, back to tackle common nouns. I'm going to take two angles on this (though they are hard to extricate from each other): first, to talk about choosing objects that will appear in a story, and second, to talk about labels for objects.

When people talk about putting "details" in your story, a lot of it has to do with nouns. (Adjectives are also implicated, but we'll hit the nouns first.) What do you put in the room with your protagonists when they are speaking together? Each noun you pick makes a large statement - first, a declaration that the object you've chosen is worth paying attention to (and is therefore important) and then possibly several more statements depending on what you pick. The choice of a high-technology object will imply that other objects of similar technological level are in use in the society you're working with, and that the society has economic mechanisms in place to produce such an item. The choice of a toothbrush or other personal hygiene item can imply things about the society or about the character (perhaps cleanliness and personal hygiene are important to them). The choice of a natural object, such as a tree or an animal, can imply the role of nature to your society and the personality of your point of view character. The choice of an object associated with witchcraft (black cat, for example?) will evoke a very different, specific type of atmosphere. The more time you spend on any given object, the greater its perceived importance, so think through why you have it there and what it's doing for you (see my previous post, Focus your worldbuilding efforts). Also, the more you support any given object with others that evoke the same thing, the stronger will be the power of the impression you make on the reader.

Objects don't exist in our minds in isolation. They are like mental webs of all the contexts and emotional responses in which we've ever seen them. Thus, they can potentially bring any or all of those contexts with them into a reader's mind. As writers, we can choose to include an object as a way of guiding the way our readers think - which brings me to the topic of labeling.

It's not only the objects you include in your story that are important, it's what you choose to call them. Think about the mental web that I mentioned in the last paragraph. What you call an object will allow your reader to enter that mental web at one location or another, to very different effect.

For example, say your character carries with him/her an object that allows him to talk with other characters at a distance. Is it a walkie-talkie? Is it a cell phone? Is it a mobile? Is it a communicator? Is it an ansible? All of these are names for (very) roughly the same kind of object, but each one says extremely different things about the surrounding context of the world, and even the genre of the story (I'll remark in case I have non-sff readers that communicator and ansible are both science fictional terms). Even the two that are most alike, cell phone and mobile, imply that the story takes place in very different areas of the world, or at least in the point of view of a person from these different areas.

Labels are also very important socially. If I chose to discuss labels for people here, I could go on all day (which I'd better not). The example I immediately think of for that is the American high school model where the kids are divided into groups labeled things like "jocks" "geeks" "stoners" or any other selection of labels you recall from your own experience. Objects can also have this kind of diverse personality, because any object can be called totally different things by members of smaller sub-groups of the same society.

I have an example of this from my Varin novel. The servant caste uses a particular type of defensive weapon for bodyguarding purposes - small metal balls that they can throw like (slow) bullets to slow down an attacker, even one who is better armed. Defining these objects and their characteristics wasn't enough, though. They needed to be named. I knew that the Imbati servant caste would have their own name for them, an insider's name, and it would be short and familiar, relying on a lot of insider knowledge. The outsider's name for it would associate it with them, and would possibly be derogatory or slang-like. A scientific name for it would be more descriptive, as would the impression of them of someone who was not familiar with them. Thus I have the Imbati call them "rounder spheres." Other castes typically call them "Imbati shot." But when the noble character sees the servant use them, he doesn't know what they are, so he describes their effect: "Something too small to see hit the shop's front window with a sharp crack."

That's as much as I can do today, but let me just end by saying that if you have an object in your story that will be seen differently by different groups, it's worth putting some time into figuring out what those different groups will call it. That will imply as much about the social groups as it does about the object itself.

It's something to think about.

Why Nouns Matter, part 1: Proper Names

I've been thinking for some time now that I should do a series on parts of speech. This is the linguistics-geeky part of me coming together with my writerly side, and the side that always loved grammar in school. So starting today, and running over the next few weeks, I'll be considering parts of speech as fine-tuned weapons for writers.

Today my focus is nouns. (Didn't anyone ever tell you that the noun is mightier than the sword?) In fact, nouns are a huge topic, so I'm dividing them up into two parts - Proper Names and Common Nouns. Proper names are those nouns that denote unique entities, such as a person, a company, a city, or a country. They are generally capitalized, and don't have to take an article like "a" or "the" (though sometimes they do; I'll write a piece about articles later). In English, the names of weekdays and months also fall into this category.

So why do they matter? Why are they worth a writer's special attention? (I'm sure your mind is teeming with ideas already!)

I'll start in a slightly unexpected place. There is no single tool more uniquely effective for indicating the genre of your story than the proper name. Why? Because the instant readers encounter a name they don't know from our world, they will know they are in another one. It doesn't have to be the name of the protagonist. Mention the town of Gorindon and your reader will probably guess fantasy. Mention Kasemsarn's World and chances are your reader will guess science fiction. Mention Miami, by contrast, and your reader will guess real-world (and if you're pushing the real world in a speculative direction, you'll have to do work elsewhere to convince them).

Wikipedia helpfully notes that proper names "...are used to denote a particular person, place, or object without regard to any descriptive meaning the word or phrase may have (for example, a town called "Newtown" may be, but does not necessarily have to be, a new [recently built] town)." But in fact the content of names is extremely evocative, and writers should be sure to use it to their advantage. I've seen a lot of science fictional names take advantage of folding in the word "New," much in the same way that it was used when Europeans began their colonies in the Americas. If you can have New England and New Hampshire, then why not have New London or New Sacramento? In this way the content of a name can give you historical information about the location and its significance to the people who live there.

Then, of course, there's the feel of names. Names come in different flavors, leading people to conclude that a person is a good guy or a bad guy, or sleazy, or proper, etc. The feel of a name generally arises from a resemblance to another word with good or bad connotations. There is also a degree of onomatopoeia involved, where certain sounds will make you think "small" or "light" or "pointy" or "bright" and others will make you think "big," "heavy," "round," "dark." The classic example of this is the character Snape from the Harry Potter books. Snake, anyone? In fact, all of the names in those books are extremely evocative - but so are real world names. People spend tons of time looking through baby name books and lists for just this reason. What does the name mean? What is its history? Does it sound like it comes from a particular country? Does it sound like it belongs to someone of a particular racial background?

When it comes to company names, we can draw on associations with existing companies by creating a name that sounds similar, or we can give the name a "marketing" feel by emulating the way companies actually name themselves. (I loved naming "Terrafirm" and "the Paradise Company.") Because all of these strong associations already exist in the real world, we can certainly take advantage of them when using proper names in fiction.

Lastly here I'm going to mention weekdays and months. If you're working in science fiction or fantasy, you should most definitely pay attention to these. There is an enormously different feel to a fantasy world that uses "Tuesday" and "November" from one that has its own names for weekdays and months. Using the existing names implies a connection with our own world, and suggests alternate history or steampunk... certainly one could imagine other varieties of connection, but if those words are going to appear, there has to be a good reason. Some might argue that they could just be "translation," taking the way the people of this world talk about time and rendering it in a way that readers would find easy to understand, but I wouldn't suggest this. Not with names of such distinct identity. The way a group of people organizes time, and names it, can have a lot of significance. I did use a partial translation method when I designed the calendar for Varin, inasmuch as I took our model of naming weekdays after deities, and used it for their purposes. If we can have Wednesday (Odin's day) and Thursday (Thor's day), then I can repurpose that and let the Varini have Maiday, Plisday, Besday, Trigisday, etc. At the same time I did make sure that I had created the deities in question and figured out their significance to the society. For the months I decided I would use terms (for example, Soremor) that came from another country, and whose meaning was opaque to these people (but perhaps not to those of its country of origin!).

I'm sure that I haven't covered everything here, so I'd love it if you could add your own thoughts and ideas about proper names and how to use them to your advantage in writing. And of course, any suggestions for things to add to upcoming articles in the series (which I know will include articles, verbs, adverbs, and lots of other great stuff) are also welcome.