If you're hearing this term for the first time, an archaism is a word, or a sense of a word, style, or speech of writing that belongs to a historical epoch beyond living memory, but which has somehow survived into a few practical settings or affairs. These are words that have fallen out of general use, but which may still show up in use in court, in a religious setting, or similar, niche places. Thou, thee, forsooth, troth, and other old-timey words all fall under the idea of archaisms.
And a lot of us, as fantasy authors, love using these... but should we?
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| Prithee... why doth thou query? |
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Archaisms... Do We Really Need Them?
The major uses for archaisms in our fantasy fiction is that we use them as a way to try to make our settings and characters seem like they're part of another era. Whether it's old Thor comics where he speaks like someone out of Shakespeare, or dialogue in A Song of Ice and Fire where older forms of words are used to try to make the story really feel like it's from another era, we've all come across this use of language, and a lot of us choose to imitate it in our own worlds for the same purpose.
But... does using these really help our stories?
The thing about archaisms is that they're archaic, and even if they're well-known to you as the writer, that doesn't mean their original use is well-known to your audience. And even if it is something your audience is familiar with, archaisms can often act like stumbling blocks when someone is trying to grasp the meaning of your text... particularly if the rest of the story is written in a more colloquial style.
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| Or, put another way... |
Have you ever been reading a novel, and come across a character with a really thick accent that's written phonetically? If it's one you're not familiar with, then it's going to completely stop you dead in your tracks to try to figure out what it is this character is saying. And if you manage to decode that character's speech, then you have to go through the same process every time another character has lines in your story, pretty soon readers are going to run out of the energy to care.
Archaisms are sort of like that. Because the best-case scenario when you use archaisms is that they'll sink into the background and provide a touch of flavor. However, they can often end up making your readers stop, blink, and tilt their heads as they try to figure out what it is this turn of phrase means in the context of your story. The other issue with archaisms in fantasy is that they can raise questions of why language developed the same in different worlds. While not every fantasy story is set in an alternate world, enough of them are that it could make your audience stop and ask why words with particular historical or literary context from our world is showing up in a place with dragons and wizards.
Does that mean you shouldn't use archaisms? No, it's your book, and you can do whatever the hell you want with it! But it's important to make these decisions deliberately. But the Literary Mercenary tip of the week is that if you want your setting to feel unique, you might want to consider creating terminology and language for your setting specifically, instead of trying to just port in terms from old plays, Romantic era poetry, or even nursery rhymes.
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