Tips and Thoughts on Jargon for Writers and Readers

After reading Dune, I spent a little time thinking about the use of jargon in writing--where it's necessary, where it isn't, how to handle it, how it can be used for nefarious purposes, etc.

So, in case you don't know the definition, let's start with What is Jargon? Jargon is technical terminology or high-level language compared to the expected audience of the piece. So, if I talked about Bragg diffraction to a group of physicists, that wouldn't be jargon, but if I put it into a story, it would. This could also include the use of made-up or foreign-language words in fiction, for instance, a random Romanian word in a book not targeted at Romanian speakers.

Sometimes jargon is necessary. We need it when we need a precise description of a thing, such as the cobalt bombs of On the Beach or the psychohistory of Foundation. We also need it when we are introducing unique or novel constructs in our fictional worlds, such as Dune's stillsuits and Feist's Lesser and Greater Path magicians.

It's worth noting that novel jargon can be made more accessible by making compound words like stillsuit; the definition is in the word.

Sometimes jargon is unnecessary but helps to add flavor to the story. Proper names are a good example of this, such as Epasotl in Doomsday Recon. We may also want to show off cultural artifacts or phenomena which are part of the story, such as Clanspeak in Battletech, or unique month and holiday names in the Elder Scrolls setting.

It's worth remembering that whenever jargon appears for a good reason in the story, the author needs to make a good faith effort to explain the jargon either explicitly or through context. Sometimes flavor jargon only appears once, but even then it helps if there is some context to guide the reader's understanding. For example, the fictional month names in the Elder Scrolls world are mostly veiled references to what time of year it is, with references to harvest times, etc.

All of these uses of jargon are valid and can be great boons to your worldbuilding. However, some authors like to use jargon in ways that can confuse the reader or damage immersion.

One example is extensive use of large quantities of jargon which require the reader to spend a lot of time reading and trying to remember the meaning. In The Widow's Son, there were frequent sentences in foreign languages (mostly Spanish) that were often long enough that someone unfamiliar with Spanish would have trouble understanding what was said. Some of the context clues for the meanings of those sentences were too vague or too far away or even missing.

Using jargon when perfectly reasonable English terms already exist is another bad use of jargon. Perhaps one of the silliest and most egregious examples is illustrated here:

Another bad use of jargon is to create an illusion of depth, or to force a particular theme. One poignant example of this is the naming conventions in the anime Evangelion. Throwing darts at a bible in order to name things is neither depth, nor true attention to theme.

As a writer, here are some things you can do to ensure your jargon is reasonable:

Ask yourself... 

• Is this jargon necessary?
• Is the reason behind it justified by the plot, characters, or setting?
• Is it organic and supported by context?
• How much am I asking the reader to memorize?
• Can I simplify it or make things easier to read somehow?

As a reader, you might ask yourself these questions instead:

• Is the jargon slowing me down?
• Do thematic elements of the jargon actually fit?
• What jargon do I actually need to remember, and which can I let slide by?

Jargon is a powerful tool, which can add precision, originality, and color to your writing. As a reader, you should also be open to being taught interesting, original, and useful things in your reading.

However, it can also be used to confuse or dupe the reader. Therefore, writers must be aware and respectful of the reader's time, and readers should distinguish between jargon that serves the story and jargon that confuses things, and actively avoid the latter.

Intricate Characters, Unique Worldbuilding, but so darn Depressing: Dune Review!

Before I start, I want to tell a little story. Back in the day when Borders had bookstores all over the place, I would often go to see what was on the shelves with friends. My friend Justin and I came up with a fun game to play with the later Dune sequels (the ones from after Frank Herbert died). We called it the "Dune check," and what we'd do was grab a Dune book off of a shelf, open it to a random page, and see if there was anything on that page that was written so weirdly that it was funny. I don't think we ever found a pair of pages that wasn't funny.

So, I was a bit skeptical going into Dune, and was pleasantly surprised to find that, while the writing is a bit clunky in places, it wasn't nearly as laughable as the later Brian Herbert books. As I've been leaning more into classic sci-fi, I thought it was worth giving Dune a real chance.

So Much Going On--Maybe Too Much! Children of the Lens Review!

Well, we've finally reached the end of this very fun series, and finally we get to see how the Lens works across generations. Children of the Lens is now the story of Kimball Kinnison, Clarissa, and his five kids, all of whom have seemingly inherited Lens powers, and to a greater degree than anyone seems to realize.

The Amazingly Unique Writing of the Soul Blazer Series

It's time to talk a bit about one of the most interesting and unique bits of video game writing that I've ever experienced. It lives outside the fairly standard "protagonists save the swords and sorcery fantasy world from antagonist" model that you see in a lot of games--a model that can be really good, too. See Final Fantasy 4 and 6.

No, today I'm talking about a fairly obscure little series that was produced by Enix back in the 1990s, before they merged with Squaresoft. Enix, the company most known for the Dragon Quest series, a series which fits fairly neatly in the aforementioned model 99% of the time. In the 1990s, Enix of Japan could basically print money by releasing a new Dragon Quest game, and they did something that most big game companies are terrified to do today:

More Lens Swashbuckling and Twists! Second Stage Lensmen Review

At first glance, Second Stage Lensmen seems like more of the same from Doc Smith, which isn't a bad thing: we get action, intrigue, grand strategy, disguises, and larger-than-life characters.

But it turns out that we actually get more: extended looks at the enemy and its operations; the appearance of the first female lensman; more details about space battles, from heavy cruisers down to individual dogfights; and direct mention of Eddore!

Five Editing Foci

As I finished up editing my first novel, I spent some time considering the different things I was looking for each time I went through a new draft. I came up with a list of five things to focus on during a particular editing stage, and thought this might be helpful for people who spend all their time looking for typos or feel like they're just doing the same thing over and over each time they edit.

A Modern, Pulpy Mashup: Doomsday Recon Review

After reading and reviewing Ryan Williamson's The Widow's Son, I decided to try out one of his later works. Doomsday Recon is the first book in a series of three, and has Jason Anspach also on as an author.

Compared to The Widow's Son, I found this book to be much more polished. One of the problems I had with The Widow's Son was the constant foreign-language bits, which are still present in this book, but are handled more skillfully and naturally.

Contrasting Gothic Horror: Dracula v. The Phantom of the Opera!

I've covered both Dracula and The Phantom of the Opera (the books, obv), with Justin Fraser on the Wordy Pair Podcast, but I thought it might be fun to contrast them with each other in a bit more detail, so that's what I'm gonna do here (and in the video above).

Both of these books are classics of the Gothic Horror genre, yet they are about as different as can be!

A Character Description Crash Course, Courtesy Rex Stout

I've recently read comments to the effect of "don't describe your characters," and was a little shocked to discover that there are actually people that promote this kind of nonsense.

Of course, it's possible to overdo it, but nothing at all is a bridge too... close?

In the video above, I look at character descriptions from a variety of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books, and try to glean some bits of wisdom from them.

How Not to Name Drop in Writing

I recently re-read Massacre of Mankind, an official sequel to H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds that was published in 2017, written by Stephen Baxter. It's a decent book, and Justin Fraser and I talk about it on this episode of The Wordy Pair Podcast.

Gray Lensman? More Like Great Lensman! Book Review!

Gray Lensman is the next book in E.E. "Doc" Smith's famous Lensman series! This one continues the adventures of the inimitable Kimball Kinnison, actually starting by retelling the ending of the previous book (which I noted was abrupt and not particularly good) with a bit more flair!

If you're looking for something drastically new, you won't find it here, but overall I enjoyed this book very much and if you've enjoyed any of the Lensman books already, you'll find more of it here.

When Reality Is Crazier than Bizarre Fiction!

A little silliness for you today...

How many bizarre and unlikely coincidences does it take to connect a new song to a video game that is several years old, and takes place over thirty years ago? I count at least six.

Asimov's Foundation: Better than Expected!

How is it possible that this is my first time reading Foundation? I enjoyed a bunch of Asimov's robot stuff when I was in high school, and I even think I read some of his non-fiction work. Yet somehow, Foundation always missed me. Whenever I would think of it, the library or bookstore I was in wouldn't have it. And so, many years have passed, and I'm finally reading it for the first time!

It's worth noting that Foundation, like a lot of the Lensman stuff, was originally published serially, even in the same magazine as some of it: Astounding Stories. But while the Lensman series is swashbuckling and practical, Foundation is much more cerebral and driven by clever plans with a lot more moral grayness floating around.

This first book in what would eventually become a series covers five specific points in time: the Founding, Founding+50 years, Founding+80 years, Founding+155 years, and one part that happens between 80-155 years later but is not exactly placed.

I found this book super interesting and very thought-inspiring. The five individual stories are loosely connected by the concept of "Seldon crises," which are major turning points in history.

Seldon is the great psychohistorian who anticipated the fall of the galactic empire, and the potential for a dark age of 30,000 years. His goal, described at the start of the book, is to reduce that dark age to a mere 1,000 years.

The book follows the movement of the Foundation from a twinkle in Seldon's eye, to a purely scientific endeavor, to a pseudo-religion, to a trading partner spreading good tech across the galaxy.

One interesting point of conflict is between the large-scale tech of the empire and the miniaturized tech of the Foundation. We see a fascinating example of economic warfare, as well as an expertly-planned intrigue that seeks to create control by limiting access to high-tech--less violent than the alternatives.

The most powerful scenes in the book involve one character outplanning another, yet the story still manages to avoid falling into the all-too-common pitfall of advocating centralized planning. I was honestly a bit worried Foundation would be a socialist disaster, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not.

Even Hari Seldon isn't really planning; he makes some good predictions and works hard to set up the right incentives early on, but he doesn't "plan" the actions of the Foundation in any meaningful way. He doesn't provide instructions but rather says each crisis leads to a constriction of choices, which I thought was an interesting take.

One point that made me laugh was Asimov poking fun at people playing science by simply reading and comparing old authorities, as opposed to doing their own experiments and research. In fact, there were quite a few humorous moments throughout the book.

I loved the point when some Foundation logicians broke down a politician's words during a meeting and determined that the whole thing was null content.

On the down side, I was a little disappointed to find there was almost no actual science in the book! Asimov mostly relies on minimizing detail on space travel and communication, throwing in the buzzword "atomic" here and there.

There were a few parts of the book that lapsed into very pulpy dialogue, reminiscent of Doc Smith's Lensman books. You may enjoy that or not, but it wasn't a significant chunk of the story.

To make one last contrast with Lensman, the action in Foundation is much less bombastic, punctuating important moments but not fatiguing the reader.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed my first look at Foundation. If you want to give it a try, check it out here. This is the version I got, a very nice hardcover containing the first three books.

Space Drama! Review of Colony Launch

Colony Launch is an okay novel. If you're looking for some reasonably interesting character drama, you might find it satisfying, but my final thoughts on it were unfortunately not great.

From a plotting perspective, Colony Launch is about four separate story threads that come together very slowly. It takes nearly half the book for three of them to stick together, and the fourth only joins up right at the end.

An Exercise or Method for Deeper Writing

Do you ever feel like your writing is a bit shallow in places? Whether you feel it's deficient in character, plot, worldbuilding, theme, or even for non-fiction where you feel the argument is lacking, today I'm going to talk a little bit about a technique I use sometimes to help deepen my writing.

You'll probably feel like it's pretty obvious once I say it, so here goes: Ask questions.

Fun with All Men Are Brothers!

The Water Margin Story, a famous Chinese novel that goes by several different names here in the West, is so freakin' crazy.

Writing Tip: Avoiding Late-Draft Tunnel Vision

Redrafting is obviously a big deal. You can add and polish enough in the later stages that you can turn a relatively weak story into something really great.

This video is from a few months ago when I was in the later stages of editing my novel, Pursuit of the Heliotrope. I found a couple of significant mistakes and managed to improve the flow of those chapters quite a bit.

The Lens Just Keeps Getting Crazier! Review of Galactic Patrol!

I've talked a bit about the Lensman series by E.E. "Doc" Smith already, and this time I've got a review of the first chronologically written Lensman book, Galactic Patrol. This book was serialized in Astounding Magazine in 1937 and 1938, then expanded and published as a stand-alone book soon after.

Reading: More Money than Brains

Just me reading one of my short stories. This one is More Money than Brains, a story about Aric, Bill, and Lew on a little job with a real jerk of an employer. I tried to be funny but ended up being mostly sarcastic. Still, I think the story has a few good moments.

Tutorial: Making a Paperback on Amazon!

This might be helpful to other writers! I do a video tutorial, producing a paperback version of my first novella!

Fantastic "Food for Thought" Sci-Fi: Roadside Picnic

Been meaning to read this one for a while, but I finally got around to Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. I've heard a lot of good things about the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games and this book is the basis for those, so I thought I'd give it a read.

My most basic top-level observation was the book's very dark, almost nihilistic tone... Roadside Picnic deals with a small number of characters, and those characters are very fragile... their numbers reduce significantly over the course of the story.

It's heralded as a great classic of Soviet science fiction, and I daresay it is packed with interesting ideas, from the merely mechanical ("empties" and "traps") to the philosophical ("the unlucky barber"). These ideas are presented in a range from obvious to subtle in the book, leaving potential rewards for repeated readings.

One great element of the story was its ambiguous ending. These can feel hollow or trite if done poorly, but I enjoyed it in this book.

Another thing that got me about this book was the tragic arc of the situation. The "zone" gets worse and worse, and so does the government's reaction to it. Eventually, people are forbidden from leaving, and those left behind suffer--the "zone" messes with them and especially their children. The area becomes more and more impoverished as people distance themselves from the "zone" and its inhabitants.

I also found it interesting how making the trade in "zone" artifacts illegal ensured that only the most unreliable people would offer payment for them. A lesson in bad economic incentives.

On the micro level, I found the descriptions of "zone" exploration vivid, creative, and tense. The characters were interesting and often surprisingly sympathetic. Even though mankind learned some useful things from the "zone," it was clear that, most of the time, what you got out of it was far less than you put in.

The Strange Freedom of Old Sci-Fi!

Reading older sci-fi has made me think a lot about how, as time goes on and scientific discoveries are made, the universe of "plausible" science fiction narrows. A century ago, there were so many things that we didn't understand, or where our only understanding came from mathematical models untested in the real world.

Einstein wrote his famous paper on special relativity in 1905, but it took decades for that theory to be backed up by significant experimental data. Hell, there was a man named Herbert Dingle who was the president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1951 through 1953--not a crank or kook! In the late 1950s he managed to "un-convince" himself of special relativity and he spent the rest of his life trying to explain what he discovered (or thought he had discovered) was wrong with it.

It's worth noting that, just because a mathematical model is created to solve a particular problem (in this case, the apparent constancy of the speed of light), that doesn't mean that no other models exist that could also explain the same phenomenon and have different forms. Models with very little data to back them up should be met with some skepticism!

But think about all the discoveries that got data to support them over time (special relativity included)... each time that happened, some gap that science fiction authors could play with and still be "plausible" got closed up.

It's easy to forget that 50, 80, 100 years ago, authors were dealing with very different explanations about how the universe worked. One of the things that happens when you're writing in those olden days is that you could write a "hard" science fiction story hypothesizing a stable nucleus at high atomic number, or faster-than-light travel, or other things.

The video above contained some of my musings on the topic of how "not knowing" can sometimes open up paths for authors to write plausible works that we instinctively reject as impossible today. That means that works that could be seen as "hard" sci-fi 100 years ago might be classed as the softest of soft sci-fi today. Something to think about!

A Fun Little Lovecraftian Diversion

One day, I was looking through my old Lovecraft collection, looking for a short story that might be fun to read on YouTube, when I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole.

See, I was trying to figure out which of his stories were the oldest, and what I stumbled onto was something uncharacteristically... cute? For a Lovecraft.

It turns out that Lovecraft's earliest extant writing is a little piece of fiction that he wrote when he was five or six years old.

You can find the images here, in young Lovecraft's own handwriting: https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:425207/

So, I thought it would be fun to read this little piece of history aloud, and talk a little about it, too. Unlike the works that made him famous, this one is playful and funny.

Finally Making my First Novella Presentable!

Honestly, I resisted doing this for a long time, but I figured that, as I was finishing up the first full-length novel in the series, that it made sense to finally get a real cover for my first novella, The Hyacinth Rescue.

Thinking About Brandon Sanderson's "Five Tips for Writing Your First Novel"

Well, I already kinda finished my first novel before I found this video, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to go back in retrospect and see how many of Sanderson's tips I found on my own, and what I thought of his tips in general.

(By the way, you can see his original video here.)

A Method to Help Break Bad Writing Habits: DEEP Cuts!

Have you ever found yourself "over-flowering" your writing? This could be in fiction, in copy, in essays, whatever. One temptation writers face is to write more--to create interesting little linguistic constructs that are flowery, clever, or even poetic.

However, this can sometimes develop into a bad habit of drawing things out and adding a lot of unnecessary words.

Thoughts on Continuity, Tone, and Beetlejuice

This video was inspired by an episode of The Wordy Pair Podcast where Justin told me about "Beetlejuice" and its sequel, "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice."

Now, I've never seen either of those movies, so Justin ends up explaining how the fun, playful tone of the first movie was completely absent from the second movie. It's honestly kind of fun when I ask a basic question or put forward a rudimentary suggestion and Justin is like, "They didn't do that."

Anyway, based on this, I made a video talking about the importance of continuity (including continuity of tone), as well as thinking up some circumstances where you can get away with paying less attention to previous works.

Peak Rex Stout? A Look at The Doorbell Rang

I kind of shot this review from the hip after reading my favorite Nero Wolfe book, The Doorbell Rang.

So, I don't have a detailed written review to put here. Uh... just enjoy the video, I guess?

Here's what I can say: The Doorbell Rang is so much fun. It has one of the coolest plots of any of the Nero Wolfe books, with a lot of engaging twists and turns. It has colorful and interesting characters. It has a lot of wry humor. It also teaches you a couple of good ways to shake off a tail.

The murder is almost incidental to the story!

There are some great scenes (look for Archie "waving his legs around"), some great commentary from Archie, and an amazing scheme by Wolfe to ensure they can finish their job.

It has no illusions about law enforcement and it has a clever solution and famous ending. A lot of questions are left unanswered, yet the book is thoroughly satisfying.

It's basically Nero Wolfe vs. the FBI. As a Nero Wolfe fan who also happens to dislike government surveillance and overreach and corruption, it's like a... ...uh... a really amazing pizza in book form. I devour it whenever I get a chance, and you might like it too.

Disjointed by Design? Review of Slaughterhouse Five

Finally got around to reading some Kurt Vonnegut, and figured I'd start with the classic Slaughterhouse Five.

It's a weird book, to be honest. Not necessarily in a bad way, but as much as Vonnegut explicitly states it's an anti-war piece, the rest of the book that isn't explicitly stating its purpose... doesn't really serve that purpose very well.

Examining the Writing in the Ultima Series...

I did a series of videos looking at the writing of the famous old CRPG series, Ultima, created by Richard Garriot. I examine the overall quality, worldbuilding, characters, themes, and several great narrative tricks that help to pull the player in and improve immersion.

The Paradoxes of Adaptation

Adapting a work from one medium to another is a difficult and not-necessarily-straightforward task.

The Strange Addresses of Nero Wolfe's Brownstone...

The address of Nero Wolfe's famous brownstone is given several times in the books, and there are even a couple of different addresses attributed to the great old house.

A Reading of my Favorite Lovecraft Short: "Cool Air"

Trying to catch up my blog here with my YouTube shenanigans...

Just a reading of my favorite Lovecraft short, Cool Air. I love this story because, in contrast to a lot of Lovecraft's writings, there is no cosmic horror, no twisting dreamscape, and no ancient evil. That uniqueness is what really makes me love this story.