Fun With Words

[rolanni]

All righty, then.

The alert reader will remember Carousel Tides, which had a few weeks ago gone out to the bold and courageous folken who had agreed to be beta readers. The comments are now in, since every one of them reads much faster than I write, and are insightful and helpful. In the way of such things, everyone found something different to note or talk about*. My job now is synthesis, and then a little more wait before I actually, y'know, read the whole manuscript myself.


*With this exception: No fewer than three readers wished to know what "ravin" meant. Fair enough. I accept that I know a lot of weird words. Also? I have been known to make words up when none of those on hand were precisely what I wanted, so they're right to watch me. If "ravin" kicks even experienced readers out of the story, it needs to go, and another, less weird, word found to bear its weight.

Which brings us to today's exercise. Behold the sentence frag in which "ravin" appears:

...vandals and condominium developers poised to rape and ravin the land.

Now, I like this. "rape and ravin" have a nice rhythmic rrrr thing going on between them, I like the reflection back to the vandals, and I want to evoke precisely the sort of terrible things both "rape" and "ravin" have packed inside them. In short, I think the phrase says everything it should say, neatly, sweetly and in voice.

OTOH, we certainly don't want people getting knocked out of the story at this point, saying "WTF is 'ravin'?" (I think it's broadly understandable from context, but that's just me.)

The search is therefore on for a new phrase. I dismiss out of hand "rape and pillage". "Rape and wreck" preserves the rrrrr thing, but, I dunno, "wreck" just doesn't pack the same weapons as "ravin."

Suggestions? Comments?

Comments

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Just pondering. I actually like the word ravin, think it does the job, and you give it pretty good context as is. Seems to crossover to both raven and ravine in my mind, incidentally.

Back in the stone ages, one of the creative writing teachers used to pass out 3x5 cards with unusual words on them, and ask us to include them in the story. Fun course! Anyway, tricks that we found ourselves using included a bit more explanation or definition of that word, sometimes cleverly hidden as "action definition" - do something and then use the word, thus showing what it means - or the always fun "dialog definition" - have one character use it, another ask what that means, and then the first gets to explain it. I.e., using it once in the story makes it stand out, while using it a few times with added context makes it a part of the landscape? Or maybe you could have a Kiddie's Book of Exploitation, with pictures showing rape and ravin? Well, maybe not.

Any chance of adding it to the pirate exchanges? Rape and ravin sounds like a rallying cry for pirates somehow? And then you could do some more context setting there?

Anyway, should be interesting to see what you come up with! Thanks!