Whether you’re a fan of The Highlander, Doctor Who, Dune, or the Lord of the Rings, one of the things you have done as a reader or viewer is to suspend your disbelief. This may be overlooking the fact that the effects are cheesey, the dialog is stilted, or the story is being projected on a two-dimensional screen in front of you.
The fastest way (in my opinion) to absolutely screw up that suspension of disbelief is to use convenient cliches (including euphemisms) or inappropriate labels when dealing with far-away places or distant times (past or future). These are the sometimes subtle anachronisms that drive me to distraction. If you’re asking me to read a story about some other place and some other when, then please cut all ties to modern English, Americanisms, and verbal expressions. The more I’m reminded of earth, the more it sounds just like my next door neighbor, the less I’m going to believe your premise.
I often read and critique the drafts of younger writers, just as sort of a hobby, as time permits. Listed below are some of the things I’ve pointed out as potential areas of a richer reading experience.
Cliches and Euphemisms
Vocabulary is a wonderful tool. Reliance on cliche’d expressions and euphemisms is simply a crutch. The hard part is knowing sometimes that a phrase you’ve just used is actually something to be avoided. I had trouble with this idea until I found four books by Charles Earle Funk: Horse-Feathers & Other Curious Words, Heavens to Betsy! & Other Curious Sayings, Thereby Hangs a Tale – Stories of Curious Word Origins, and A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions. Another reference that was helpful is The Dictionary of Cliches by James Rogers. You don’t have to memorize these volumes, but it pays many dividends to be familiar with the contents so that you can weed these phrases out of your writing. I also appreciate a good giggle on a rainy day over how silly some of these expressions really are. Unless your story is not so far in the future, is about an Earth colony, and there is a reason they are all using antiquated references, please kill these phrases.
Earthbound Measures: Calendars and Time
If you’re about to suffer a bombardment of Zorgothian satellite energy weapons, why would you choose to have it happen on a Thursday? Did they also have a god named Thor who swung a hammer and had a day of the week named after him? The same goes for March, July, and December (and so on). I would be far more entertained if something were to happen on the 23rd after Marketmoon, at six dawns before the equinox, or on the next twelvemeet. If I’m exploring a new world in my mind, a calendar is one of the primary areas I focus on. If the calendar works, then much of the rest of the story has something concrete to use as a backbone.
The same can be said for seven-day weeks, years approximately 365 days (or twelve months) long, or four distinct seasons instead of maybe, three seasons? Or six or something? Just because Earth is stuck in a slot, going around Sol at a certain speed does NOT mean that any other populated worlds must do likewise.
The same can be said for reckoning time. What does 2:00 PM really mean on your world? And why? Why is there not a 19:00 that is still mid morning? Even in a higher technology world, I would rather read about a character checking a water clock, waiting for a shadow to reach a position, or checking to see how many electrons remain to be counted before the sensor changes modes.
Why would the concept of an “hour” mean the same thing to Chewbacca and to Duncan MacLeod?
On a side note, I’m amazed at how many times the sun comes up at 6:00 every morning, with no reliance on seasons, latitudes, altitude, or the actual odds of every day being the same length. Maybe on a world where there is no tilt from the axis at the equator, but that leads to a lot of interesting differences.
Earthbound Measures: Weights and Measures
While you may use pound, ounce, kilogram, mile or meter, these terms really miss an opportunity to inform about your environment. Rather than tedious definitions of any terms you might create, please show us how much that measurement matters.
- It was only a halfstone of pottery, but when she dropped it on the stone floor, the noise of the crash was heard throughout the plaza.
- The merchant rubbed his chin. “It’s about seven rides from here to the bridge, provided the weather holds. Then it’s three rides from the bridge to the town gates.”
- The zitibugs were smaller than the width of a finger, maybe about three crans long.
- She carefully measured the remaining water. Only five drinks left! She sadly dropped the cup back into the bag and shouldered her burden.
Currency
Don’t get me started. Just TRY to find something a little more evocative than “credits” in the future, please. Please? Thanks. An entire monetary system with exchange rates would be a bonus.
Constellations
Get the stars right. There is NO reason to believe that the stars will line up anywhere else in the universe so that they are given names just like ours for the constellations. The constellations from the Earth point of view are a two-dimensional representation of a vast three-dimensional chunk of space that spans uncounted light years. If you have a constellation named Taurus, well bully for you! On the other hand I’m just as likely to snort at the idea and charge.
Religion
A lot of the labels that you may end up putting on things like months, hours, distances and so on were probably derived from religious ideas unless your planet has no spirituality or religious thought. If you do some thinking and reading about the impact of religion on our own society (and I don’t mean just the obvious wars and other conflicts) you will find a great wealth of things we take for granted that are based in superstition or religious thoughts. Tuesday for instance, named after a Celtic (okay, Old English) deity.
Alternately, perhaps things in your world were named in fours after the four elements. Or maybe your world has seven elements, or only three.
What I’m asking you to do is to finish making your world. I feel strongly that it should be more than just a random sky color, some random critters and plants, and otherwise just a place for your characters to run amok. The more it seems like its own place and time, the more I’m going to enjoy reading.
