Does SRD write with a Thesaurus in his lap?

[Vraith]

[Maybe I'm just subconsciously defensive ... I have used a thesaurus from time to time in order to find just the right word.]

Heh...I usually use one when I know there's an exact word that exists, and the one I'm using is "almost, but not quite"...but then I always look for it used in actual texts, cuz dictionaries/thesauri mislead me.

Funny on the colors SS.
But now you can pick up artist women. [or maybe Martha Stewart]

[Zarathustra]

Well, I just met the Ardent and discovered about 20 new colors.

If you check out the Reading Along thread, that's the point where I lost it and just had to gripe about the obscure words issue. I even quoted the very sentence which I suspect you're talking about. I think that line bothered some others here, too.

[earthbrah]

What fascinates me the most about SRD's use of language is the apparent fact that his primary focus when constructing his narrative is the sound and the feel of the language he's using. Visualization isn't a direct part of his creation process.

I'll let you read his response below.

SRD, GI, 6/14/07

I guess I haven't been clear. I don't remember ever saying that I don't "visualize". But surely I've said (more than once) that "I see with words." I mean that I only see things *because* I have described them. For me, "visualization" is a comparatively pale after-effect of language. Certainly the *impact* of what I write (and read) lies in the language, not in the images which the words may or may not evoke. When I read, images are only flickers in the background of my attention: the foreground is all words. My point, which I've tried to make more than once, is that I do not *see* the story like a movie (or even a static series of images) in my head and then try to transcribe it into words. I only see it as an effect rather than a cause of writing it.

(Incidentally, I suspect that this accounts for the rather idiosyncratic effectiveness of my stories. Because I'm concentrating on the sound and feel of the language instead of on literal images, I give my readers plenty of room in which to participate in the creative process. I'm not trying to describe what I see: I'm trying to evoke what I feel--or what my POV character feels. Of course, setting and image are crucial to what anyone feels. But my "aliteral" approach to such things leaves the reader free to do his/her own visualization.)

[Zarathustra]

I think that what SRD says about visualization vs verbalization is probably true for most writing, from both directions: writer and reader. The process of creative writing is the act of trying to express something that is nebulous and nascent, something that isn't fully developed or clear. It never starts out fully explicit and clearly formed. The process of writing (and more importantly, revising,) is the phenomenon which achieves explication, fullness, and clarity. This is why so many writers describe the story as seemingly "writing itself" or the process as one of "discovery" vs "invention." It rarely starts as a fully-formed image or even a fully-formed idea. The process of writing necessarily involves the process of reading, of confronting the product of one's craft as an object. The writer can't help being affected by his own words. Even though he is their source, he also stands in relation to them as an observer. During the revision stage, the writer can read his own work and compare its effect against the nebulous, nascent intention, and see how well they "match up," and then refine the result accordingly. The end product is built up from a feedback loop of creating/observing/creating/observing.

Perhaps this is the main reason why he says he's not "transcribing" into words an already formed mental image. The image comes later--for both the writer and the reader--as a product of being affected by words. Few of us ever carry around in our heads fully articulated images of imaginary places or objects. Our conscious minds are not good at inventing these from scratch [though, curiously, our subconscious minds are VERY good at doing this while we're asleep and dreaming]. While awake, our conscious minds need "guidance," almost like guided meditation. And this guidance comes in the form of words ... structural stepping stones for us to follow in building up a joint imagining.

It really is magical. String together a few words and you can jointly build "structures" that only exist in the imagination ... structures both elusive, immaterial, flowing, and yet strangely permanent like

Spoiler

the water ballroom of the Viles' caverns.

Words have the power to evoke images not because of their one-to-one relationship with specific parts of potential images, but because of the intermediary concepts/feelings/intentions that bind words to sensual experiences. Words evoke the feelings that we have learned to associate with sensory experiences, and then those feelings or intentions evoke our own personal versions of the attendant images. Kind of like the synesthetic magic of the Viles, where senses are transposed upon one another ... words and feelings and intentions stand in place of sights and sounds.

[earthbrah]

Well said, Z.

And this guidance comes in the form of words ... structural stepping stones for us to follow in building up a joint imagining.

It really is magical.

This joint imagining is what I think of as communication in its raw essence. The act of speaking or writing is forever an exercise in translating the abstractions of our minds into concretions through words. It really is a form of magic in our world...

[lurch]

I look up the word " lurch " every time the author uses it. Its magical.

[Anele]

I don't know. Sometimes I get the sense SRD uses words just because he can. I appreciate a good vocabulary but sometimes it stretches credulity when there is a pattern of archaic or little known words strewn throughout his works. I sometimes wonder if he isn't channeling Tolkien the philologist.

I've read SRD since the late 70's and have come to grips with his vocabulary. It takes some doing, but I accept it as part of who he is. At this point I am no longer surprised or take affront to his sometimes overindulgent use of verbiage.

Heck if I did I wouldn't have been able to get past paragraph 2 of The Wounded Land where he wheels out the words spavined and desuetude. This is who he is.

[Rocksister]

Totally agreed. I can guess some of the more arcane and obscure words' meanings (like the ones I just used, heh heh....) by the context. Others, I have no idea. I don't OWN a dictionary or thesaurus. And I am not going to stop every third sentence, grab my note pad and pen, and write down the words I don't know so I can go online and look them up, forgetting completely what context they were used in, which is useless. It's almost snobbish in a way to use that kind of language. Like "I know what these words mean so I am going to use them, but I bet YOU don't know." Good grief. Sorry, I'm just annoyed by it. It makes it more of a chore than entertainment...........

[Vraith]

I don't know if this will surprise people or not, but an inordinate number of great writers have been the targets of this kind of criticism over the centuries. [at least since Shakespeare, plenty of criticism survives and shows it. I don't know about earlier than that, but I suspect it holds true.]

Maybe he does it just to show off...I doubt it, but how would I know for sure?
Having been the victim of similar judgments, I can tell you when I'm writing to write as best I can [as opposed to when I'm posting on the Watch], I never choose words on any basis other than
1) fitting what I want to say as precisely as possible.
2) suitability to the voice and tone of the thing I'm writing.
Certainly I hope people like what they read. But that is in all ways secondary to the integrity of the thing I am writing.

There are writers who use big/arcane words just because they can, but usually you discover, if you look closely, that they really can't...because usually they use the words badly or incorrectly. Or you find that you really CAN convey the precise idea with simpler words. And that's the test, really:
If the writing can be simplified without losing meaning/effect/affect, someone's showing off.
If the simplification eliminates any of those, then it's the readers problem, not the writers.
For example, the color sentence peeps talked about [was that in this thread? I think so...] was, to me, a problem not because of the vocabulary of it, but the extremity of structure/construction. The words were precise and suited the tone...but the length/punctuation made it drag, not flow. [at least that's how I remember reacting, without going back to examine it].

[thewormoftheworld'send]

I don't know if this will surprise people or not, but an inordinate number of great writers have been the targets of this kind of criticism over the centuries. [at least since Shakespeare, plenty of criticism survives and shows it. I don't know about earlier than that, but I suspect it holds true.]

Maybe he does it just to show off...I doubt it, but how would I know for sure?

AATE seemed that way at first, not anymore.

With this book there are two reasons for employing such an intense writing style. 1) Donaldson wanted to put his all into it. In other words, according to Donaldson, every word in his vocabulary would have gone into every single sentence, if he could have managed it. 2) The Land in general deserves to be described as eloquently as humanly possible, because it is the Land.

[Cambo]

Anyone notice that in the Last Chronicles "clenched" seems to have been replaced with "innominate" as Donaldsons' Word of the Series?

[thewormoftheworld'send]

Anyone notice that in the Last Chronicles "clenched" seems to have been replaced with "innominate" as Donaldsons' Word of the Series?

"Innominate racing" doesn't sound as good as "clench racing."

Perhaps there are some here who have not heard of clench racing.

The rules of clench racing are found in many places online. Here's one:

The rules are simple. Each player takes a different volume of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and at the word "go" all open their books at random and start leafing through, scanning the pages. The winner is the first player to find the word "clench". It's a fast, exciting game -- sixty seconds is unusually drawn-out -- and can be varied, if players get too good, with other favourite Donaldson words like wince, flinch, gag, rasp, exigency, mendacity, articulate, macerate, mien, limn, vertigo, cynosure.... It's a great way to get thrown out of bookshops. Good racing!

The ellipses in the list of suggested terms indicates that you can add any suitable words, such as "innominate."

[Hiro]

Writing is a deliberate act. There is another example of a genre author who uses, let's say arcane language, to create an effect. I am referring to Gene Wolfe, 'The Book of the New Sun' series is filled with obscure words.

Similarly, I am quite sure SRD uses these words to convey the alien, strange, otherness effect of the Land and it's inhabitants. Compared, to say the Gap, the use of language is *very* different.

[Roynish]

Donaldson is nothing if not consistent with these obscure words. Its his style and I love the guy for it. Its been that way since the beginning but he does pull out the stops in this one.
If it started out as smart arse behaviour who cares. Its his style. The land would not exist without this vocabulary Its not the main reason I read Donaldson but I always have a chuckle when he hits me with a new one. He is keeping arcane words alive. And is not the land arcane. It needs a special form of descriptor. For me without them its not the land.

[shadowbinding shoe]

Maybe it shouldn't but the word "tsunami" grated on me when said by a Humbled. It doesn't seem to fit into their world.

[Roynish]

Maybe it shouldn't but the word "tsunami" grated on me when said by a Humbled. It doesn't seem to fit into their world.

Yeah I can see that.

[Cambo]

Maybe it shouldn't but the word "tsunami" grated on me when said by a Humbled. It doesn't seem to fit into their world.

I dunno, I can't really think what I'd have the Humbled say instead of tsunami. They're a unique occurrence. All the substitutes I can think of either make the Humbled sound like idiots:

Clyme: A wave approaches. It is of quite significant stature.

Branl: It is coming.
TC: What? The tsunami?
Branl: We do not know this word "tsunami." I do not believe it is spoken in the Land. It has an ungainly sound on the tongue, as if it were more suited to another world, perhaps, ur-Lord, the world of your origin. But the Haruchai remember occasions such as this when the water receded from the land, only to return with great alacrity-
TC: Hellf-*glub*

[Cambo]

Maybe it shouldn't but the word "tsunami" grated on me when said by a Humbled. It doesn't seem to fit into their world.

I dunno, I can't really think what I'd have the Humbled say instead of tsunami. They're a unique occurrence. All the substitutes I can think of either make the Humbled sound like idiots:

Clyme: A wave approaches. It is of quite significant stature.

Or take a lot of explaining:

Branl: It is coming.
TC: What? The tsunami?
Branl: We do not know this word "tsunami." I do not believe it is spoken in the Land. It has an ungainly sound on the tongue, as if it were more suited to another world, perhaps, ur-Lord, the world of your origin. But the Haruchai remember occasions such as this when the water receded from the land, only to return with great alacrity-
TC: Hellf-*glub*

[Hiro]

[Cambo]

Damn I thought I caught that post before it went through. Sorry. The first one is missing a sentence.