On January 14, 2014, J. Garf wrote, What’s a good way to come up with figures of speech? There are things we all say every day, and I feel like a few of these add color to a story, but some expressions just don’t make sense. For example, you can’t exactly say “what on earth is that?” if your story doesn’t take place on earth. Another good one that doesn’t work is “holy cow!” I use this one all the time in daily speech but can’t in my book because it originated because of Hindus’ beliefs that cows are sacred, and since my book is fantasy this religion doesn’t exist on my fantasy world. There are dozens of other things that we say all the time because of where we live or how we’ve grown up, and I feel like fictional characters should have these too. Any ideas?
Kenzi Anne replied, I know exactly what you mean!! I like to make up figures of speech for fantasy characters; a lot of times it depends on the character using them. If, say, I have a humorous, innocent, and/or lighthearted character, I might have them say “Snarks and snizzles!” because it sounds silly and is absolute nonsense. Also, alliteration tends to make the phrases a little more catchy, which a lot of the phrases we use are. My personal forte is fairytale retelling, and oftentimes I like go back to the language that the original is told in (usually German, though it may be easier for me to use this because I’m minoring in it), and use words from the language so that they sound “real” and can have meaning. If you’re not using fairytales, I’d suggest thinking of the kinds of things that make up the phrases we use. For example, people often would swear “by the king” or, as in Harry Potter, “by Merlin’s beard!” (That one has always stuck with me for some reason). But it makes sense for wizards to mention a wizard that everyone would know, and who is often depicted with a long white beard.
We tend to use very important things in culture that most people living in said culture would recognize, like how the Hindus believed cows were sacred, so saying “holy cow” in the Hindu culture made sense. Taking elements/motifs/taboos/etc. from the culture you’ve created can help you to make phrases that coincide with your world. 🙂
I’m with Kenzi Anne, except in one regard. I don’t think that people whose religion is Hinduism say “holy cow!,” because we’re unlikely to make fun of our own religion in our expressions. I suspect that someone outside the religion, amused by the reverence for cows, coined this one. There’s interesting information about the subject on this Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_cow_(expression).
But I do agree that the source of our figures of speech is likely to be our characters and the world of our story.
Elodie in A Tale of Two Castles, a farm girl who is just beginning to see the wide world, says “Lambs and calves!” when she’s surprised. In Stolen Magic I expanded this kind of expression to other characters. Robbie, who used to live in a harbor village, says “Whales and porpoises!” The barber says “Hair and teeth!” because barbers also pulled teeth in the middle ages. And the dragon Meenore says “Fire and smoke!” Wrapped up in these examples are three approaches to expression development: a character’s background (a farm or a fishing village), a character’s occupation, the character’s nature (a dragon). Count Jonty Um thinks, but never says, Fee fi! or Fo fum! for the obvious reason that he’s an ogre.
Elodie’s world is an approximation of medieval, when conditions were grimmer than we have to face in our daily life, so a local adage is: Love your lice. Only skeletons have none. Ick, but having lice is preferable to being dead, so there’s that consolation. Few are rich on Elodie’s home island of Lahnt, and poverty gives rise to other sayings, like, Share well, fare well. Share ill, fare ill, which leads to another strategy: Think of the realities in your stories. Here’s a prompt: Invent three proverbs that could apply to a warrior culture, three that might arise in a farming community, three for a university science department, three that might be used by fairies.
I love Kenzi Anne’s idea that an expression might reflect a passing emotion or a character’s usual state of mind. “Snarks and snizzles!” is delightful. And I agree about bringing in sound to explain why an expression catches on. For example, we have the rhyming “doom and gloom” to indicate a different feeling.
Although “doom and gloom” isn’t specific to a particular culture and would probably work in a fantasy, I’d stay away from it as too close to cliche. I’d prefer to come up with something fresh. Same with any other common expression. But if I couldn’t think of anything new, then I’d just skip the figure of speech entirely and reveal my character’s feelings in another way–through action or thought or dialogue (minus expressions). A gloomy POV character might get bad news and feel her limbs grow heavy, for example. A secondary character might appear uncharacteristically draggy to our MC.
Having said that about cliches, in a non-fantasy story, one of our characters, say Joe, might use ordinary expressions often. He might be a fountain of them and may not be an original thinker. We don’t want to be cliched writers, but we can certainly develop cliched characters. In fact, we can even think of a character arc in which Joe finally comes up with something surprising and new. And in a fantasy we can have a character like Joe, one who spouts the sayings that are common in her culture. She can set off spasms of yawns in her listeners whenever she opens her mouth.
Here are two prompts:
• Invent three expressions for each of these emotions: pain, anger, love. Make two of the three use sound, like alliteration or assonance or rhyme, to boost their memorability.
• Two of your characters, friends, swear to speak only in expressions for a day, and the expression has to fit what’s going on. Cliches are fine for this. No matter what happens, they will voice an expression or say nothing. As soon as they agree to this, something unexpected happens, one or more of these or an event you make up: a tornado tears through town, someone they both thought dead shows up, aliens land, a magic wand appears on the bed of one friend. The friends don’t abandon their vow in the face of the unforeseen. Write the day.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Eliza says:
That second prompt is hilarious!
Recently I found out "gee whiz" is just the butchered pronunciation of Jesus and "golly" is slang for God. It fascinates me how we use words and expressions long after we've forgotten what they mean.
It's crazy how many expressions come from games. Showdown. Holds your cards close to your chest. Checkmate. Get the ball rolling. Low blow. Up to bat. Keep your eye on the ball. Saved by the bell. Imagine how differently we'd talk without baseball or boxing or poker.
Michelle Dyck says:
Wonderful post, and really helpful too! Another thing that might inspire expressions (at least for a fantasy world) would be important landmarks or historical characters. For example, in one of my stories, a character says "Great Bending River!", a reference to his country's main waterway.
In a fabulous, fairy tale-like book series I started reading, called Tales of Goldstone Wood (by Anne Elisabeth Stengle), dragons are evil and feared. So the characters often say "dragon's teeth," or describe something as "dragon-eaten." (Dragon-eaten curtains, dragon-eaten woods, etc.) If they're mad at someone, a boy named Leo, for example, they'll say "Dragons eat you, Leo!" I found those sayings delightful. 🙂
carpelibris says:
Robin McKinley's Shadows has some interesting slang that fits perfectly with its world.
I have a character who says "For Spring's sake," because he lives in a world where there's been to winter for 200 years, so Spring never comes either.
carpelibris says:
I tried to think of more examples today (I think both Narnia and LOTR have some good ones), and it occurred to me that maybe I was having trouble remembering them because really good ones just fit naturally into the dialogue.
Eliza says:
Anyone else feel weird about including real world religions in a fantasy setting? I haven't written anything where religion is important, but sometimes I'll have a wedding or funeral and some kind of religious authority needs to be involved. I don't see much point in created a fictional religion if it will only matter in that chapter. Real religions are tied to places like Jerusalem and Mecca, so I'm not so sure about using them in a world where those don't exist.
Bibliophile says:
I just don't use religion when I write, but I see what you mean. In the Jessica Day George's Dragon series, Creel often prays to the Triunity, a trio of gods loosely based off of the Trinity of Christianity. I think that that is a good idea. That way, it makes ceremonies and such so much easier to describe when the religion of the characters is similar to one on Earth. But then again, you might offend people. I have come up with some religious structures before for my stories, but that was based on Greco-Roman mythology. I think that using an older, obsolete religion like that one, Norse, and Egyptian mythology would be simple and wouldn't offend anyone.
carpelibris says:
I like making up religions for my stories. The nickname of one of my characters that people seem to like the most is "Temple Boy."
OTOH, I have another as-yet-unpublished book that has 2 nonhuman species. One is a tribe of sentient lizards that I call seroent-demons. The other looks like the angels you'd see in a children's illustrated Bible- robes, feathery wings, etc. (No halos, though.) I used to call them Seraphim, but a lady at a convention said that that really bothered her, because the Biblical Seraphim are a very specific sort of being, and my characters aren't it. So I changed the name.
(That was a fun book to write. Multiple afterlives, miracle cures, and a shape-shifting deity. 🙂 )
carpelibris says:
BTW, "Temple Boy's" favorite exclamation is "By the Stars!" 🙂
Tania Abraham says:
Does anyone have any references to books or websites on Medieval clothing? For example, like the clothing Gail includes for characters in her novels (FAIREST, A TALE OF TWO CASTLES etc.)
Elisa says:
I'm guessing by "Medieval' clothing, you mean clothing for English noble women in the middle ages? If so, here's one website that I found helpful: http://rosaliegilbert.com/clothesandaccessories.html
Some of the topics she writes about are a bit mature, but most of it is fine.
Tania Abraham says:
Yes, that is what I meant, and thank you Elisa!
Tania Abraham says:
I also have another question. Like I mentioned before on the blog, I am writing a series of books told in the POV of one princess, each of the 12 DANCING PRINCESSES. I am just confused about the ages and time. The eldest princess may be, say 21 years old, and the youngest one could be around 8 (considering there are twins and triplets involved). If each story takes place one month after the previous story, wouldn't the youngest princess be too young to tell her tale? How would you control the time in this series?
I hope this doesn't sound complicated. If anyone needs clarification, please let me know.
Tania Abraham says:
Or should the stories happen a certain number of years later so the main character can grow older by then?
Michelle Dyck says:
Good question. It might be easier to not have a set time between each book. Just do whatever works, whether it's one month or five years. That would make the oldest sisters quite a bit older by the time your last book rolls around, but if that's not a problem, I'd say just vary the times as it fits.
By the way, let us know how the series goes! 🙂 It sounds like something I'd enjoy reading. (I always thought Jessica Day George should've had a book for each sister… Kudos to you for taking on such a big project!)
Elisa says:
I'm also doing a TTDP story, followed up by sequels about the younger sisters. I don't have a specific time between the stories, not exactly anyways. In my story, the ages of the girls (they aren't QUITE set, I still have to work out few bugs) go from 19 to 5. The second story will take place about a year after the first, and the third three months after that. The fourth will be about a month after that, but here it gets a bit mixed up. I'm not doing it in exact order of age. Because, think of it, will all twelve girls get married all in a row? It's not that probable. My mum came from a family of nine children, and, while the oldest did get married first, she was followed a year later by the third and then the fifth.
My method for stories (at this point, it may change)
The girls in order of age:
Saphira
Chalcedony
Alexandrite
Tourmaline
Celestine
Aventurine
Marit
Tashmarine
Almandine
Peridot
Esmeralda
Ametrine
The order the stories are told in and the ages they are when their stories are told (approximately)
Saphira-19
Chalcedony-19
Alexandrite-19
Marit-17
Celestine-18
Tourmaline-21
Aventurine-20(I'm thinking of leaving her single)
Tashmarine-18
Almandine-17
Peridot-16
Esmeralda-17/18
Ametrine-16
Bibliophile says:
OOOH!!! If Aventurine is single, can she become some awesome wizard/mage/sorceress thing??!?! Just wondering……
Eliza says:
I really like the name Marit. I don't think you need a set amount of time between sisters, their stories can happen whenever. Tania Abraham and Elisa, are the younger sisters going to have fairy tale stories too? If so, which fairy tales are you doing?