Creating Meaning For Your Words

AKA a Rose is a Flower is a Shop Assistant

A dictionary will tell you what the people who compiled it think a word means. Sometimes, lots of other people share that meaning, like the definition of “cat” from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary which is “a carnivorous mammal (Felis catus) long domesticated as a pet and for catching rats and mice.”

Things get fun when you create a new context for a word; change its meaning with your characters and worldbuilding. Define the word through dialog and action, have it be relevant to the plot, make it so strong that when readers encounter that word outside your book, they think of your definition.

Doctor Who always has a companion, someone traveling with him on his adventures through time and space. Captain Malcolm Reynolds on the spaceship Serenity also travels with a Companion, however in this ‘verse, it’s a job description. Daemon is an alternate spelling of demon, but anyone who has read Philip Pullman‘s His Dark Materials trilogy doesn’t think of an evil spirit when they see that word.

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Some words have a timeless appeal. They are used and re-invented over and over again. For example, the word “vampire”. If you are in Bram Stoker‘s world or Stephenie Meyer‘s, that vampire is going to behave very differently. There is the general understanding that a vampire is someone/thing that feeds on blood and is not considered “alive” by humans standards. Beyond that, you can create the rest of the definition to suits your story.

The key to creating a new definition or context for a word is consistency. That word (and everything it entails) has to behave the same way every time the reader comes across it, every time a character embodies it, and every time it shows up anywhere in your books. Similar to learning a foreign language, you are teaching the reader about your world and the meaning of the words in it through repetition.

So what happens to your vampire in the sunlight?

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
- Hamlet, 2.2

Jul 30, 2009

Tags: words  |  worldbuilding

Categories: writing