Episode Rating: 🌟 🌟 🌟
Humor: 🌟
Usefulness to me right now: 🌟
Perhaps is because of how much I enjoy the whole crew, but when it’s just some of them doing the interviews, those are the episodes that I find be the least satisfying. And I don’t think this has anything to do with the hosts, but my own expectations.
This week’s episode is an interview/panel with Dirk Elszinga, an associate professor of linguistics, and focused on using constructed languages in fiction.
The biggest take away I had was that it is worthwhile to consider language background and usage if doing secondary world fiction (which most of mine is). Even down to how names behave. While I think this is something that I should consider, I’m not certain how far the rabbit hole I’d need to go – i.e. how much is anyone really going to care?
And this is probably where I would need to examine my own biases. Small tangent here – recently, I started re-reading a debut novel from a favorite author and noticed just how much my own critical eye has changed since I first read this book. I first read it just before I was starting to consider being an author and novelist. What I’ve noticed on this re-read is how much the author uses simile compared to now where he uses metaphor. And just how much more effective the later is.
As a reader only, that first pass didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story at all and the “limitation” of using similar vs. metaphor was lost on me. So I wonder how much of that really matters for the general populace.
This is similar to the discussion that is ongoing in the film space – critics have the things that they look for in movies, and in some very high profile cases recently, the critical opinion has diverted strongly from popular opinion.
I think constructed languages could very well fall into the same category of things – those in the know might really appreciate it while others may not care at all. So, how much effort should a writer expend? Brandon Sanderson has talked about this in his world-building lecture and I think I’ll echo what he said – Do enough to make people think you’ve done it all, but don’t do it all. Pepper little things around your story and world-building that at least let people know you’ve considered something, but don’t solve all of it.
And that’s where I think constructed languages is going to go for me right now. Maybe that can be a place in the future for some more craft building.
Grant Michael Gardner 