From Words to Worlds: Dialect and Language Can Enrich Worldbuilding
For those of us who love to create and play in fantastical worlds or even just those marginally different from our own, the art of worldbuilding can be both the most joyful part of the process and the trickiest.
Since Speculative Fiction is what I love and do, worldbuilding is an inevitable part of any book I write. I always start with the same questions: where do I begin and where do I stop? Should I build my world first and then develop the plot? Should I develop my plot and characters, and then build enough world to fit them in? How much worldbuilding is enough? How much do I need to know? The answers for me often depend on where the story idea was born.
Now fair warning: I’m no expert. (If you want expert advice, I highly recommend N.K. Jemisin’s Elements of Worldbuilding Masterclass.) But I have been playing with something in my recent work that’s really enriched my writing and I wanted to share it with you.
By experimenting with how people speak and sound and exploring how the language they use informs who they are and where they come from, I’ve been able to create richer, more immersive worlds.
Tone of voice and dialogue informs character no matter what genre you write in. But what’s been most exciting for me lately is how it can help create and inform whole worlds and cultures.
Dialect in The Bones Beneath
In my recently completed adult speculative fiction, The Bones Beneath, I have two different places and cultures - there’s a golden city above ground where the people know no suffering, and there’s a crumbling underground world where the people who live there have an intimate relationship with death and suffering.
My protagonist comes from the world above and lands in this strange underground world, so very different to her own.
In developing the characters my protagonist interacts with underground, I knew their language needed to be different. The two cultures are related, but they have evolved very differently with little interaction.
So I started by asking some questions:
How would living underground inform the way these people saw and thought about the world around them?
How would their intimacy with death and suffering impact their voice and language?
What kinds of things would be most important to them? What things would they have no words for?
In an anarchical society, how would they describe and understand their relationships with each other? How about to the world around them?
As I worked through the answers to these questions, a sort of dialect began to evolve. It was direct and fleshy. It was immediate. Because Clans and family systems and ancestry are important in an anarchical world, their language had to reflect that. As their language evolved in my head, the culture became clearer. Bone and ancestor worship formed part of their spirituality, and that in turn became reflected in their language. Language informed culture which in turn evolved language.
In the book, it sounds something like this:
“You’re safe-wise now. My bones have got you.” (You’re safe. I’ve got you.”)
“Tried to snitch more, but was savvied, eh?” (“Tried to steal more, but they saw me.”)
“You sneaked me.” (You startled me.)
“My bones thank you, eh?” (I can’t thank you enough)
“Your bones are my bones, cuz.” (You’re welcome)
“My mama storied it.” (My mother told me the story)
“I eyeballed it.” (I saw it)
“Ylfa balladed.” (Ylfa sang)
What I found as I evolved this simple language structure, was that it in turn helped me deepen my understanding and knowledge of the world I was building. I wanted the reader to be able to intuitively understand it, but I also wanted them to get an instant sense of how different this world was.
Using language to bring authenticity to a feminist, steampunk re-telling of the Odyssey
My next work in progress is based on the Odyssey. It’s set in ancient Greece and is a feminist re-telling of the story of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. For this story I’m mixing Steampunk with Greek Mythology and once again, I’m exploring how language can bring authenticity to my worldbuilding.
Unlike The Bones Beneath, I’m not inventing a whole new speaking style. Instead, I’m playing with a language I know well - Greek. This story is written in English but I’m experimenting with that by bringing the style and tone and cadence of Greek to the dialogue. Greek has a musicality and tonality that differs from the English. How might that musicality enrich the characters and world I’m building? Once again, this process is adding layers and authenticity to the worldbuilding that I’m finding exciting.
For example, in English a parent might say something like: “You are your father’s daughter”. In the Greek it might sound like: “Whose daughter are you? Because you’re not mine.” Same intent, different rhythm.
World-building isn’t just about the setting and place, or the social rules and structures.
It can also be informed by dialect, language, and speech, which inform culture and tell us a lot about people’s relationship to the world they live in and to each other. The way a character talks can be a critical tool to build both believable characters and immersive worlds.
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