I’ve been thinking more about word choice, and I’ve decided I haven’t beaten this dead horse enough, so let me say some more.
As I’ve said, one of the glories of the English language is that there are often three (or more) different ways to say something, Anglo-Saxon, French, and Greco-Latin. Each one has its own distinct color. Or flavor, if you like.
This is something that all writers need to pay attention to in their own work, even if they are not writing epic fantasy novels set in Dark Age England. Because the colors are going to work for you (or against you), so you need to understand them.
Greco-Latin verbiage is technical, bureaucratic, and polysyllabic. This language can communicate with great precision, which is why scientists and academics and the educated frequently employ it. The difficulty inherent in using this language is that it can feel abstract and colorless. And though it is precise language, its very technicality facilitates confusion. Audiences can be misdirected by this language, and its very sense of sophistication can be used to induce the credulous to conclude that important ideas have been expressed, when in fact the language is basically empty of content.
French words lend themselves to express beauty, artistry, vision. It is the language of grace and balance, a ballet of letters that can touch all the pleasures and mysteries of experience. French words lend themselves to poetry. They are the music of the soul.
Anglo-Saxon speech is short, punchy, and earthy. The words are crisp. They show meaning without bloat. They are words of feeling. Words of love and hate. Words of life and death. Blunt, hard words that make sharp thoughts and quick deeds.
Did you see what I did there? Ha, ha, yes. I am so clever. I did the thing I was talking about while I was talking about it. But I think even in these hastily constructed and self-conscious sentences, you can see what I’m driving at. Note too that I constructed more complex sentences to go with the more complex language, and simple sentences that go with the simple words. The longer sentences are sentences of mood and contemplation. The short, punchy sentences are sentences of action and passion.
(I am now 107,000 words into this project. I am no longer sure whether I have two long books or three short ones. Who knows? Maybe three long ones by the time I’m done. I’ve decided to just go ahead and write the damn first draft already, and worry about structure later.)