How do I introduce my readers to new words as gracefully as possible?

Question

Let me apologize in advance if this question has been asked before. The ones I found only discuss this issue in the context of writing in general and do not touch on writing narrative fiction.

I am writing a science fiction story that explores some futuristic concepts and I want to give these concepts proper names. The story is also written from the POV of different species with different cultures, so they might have different words for the same concept. The point is I have to introduce a lot of new words. My question is how do I do this most gracefully?

Here are some possible options that I anticipate to find in the answers, and also to give you a feeling of what I mean by graceful:

1. The obvious one is footnotes. But I strongly dislike footnotes as they are reminiscent of scientific papers and textbooks.
2. Write them in the appendix. I will do that for maximum clarity but I don't want my readers jumping to the appendix in the middle of a chapter just to be able to understand what I am talking about.
3. Write them in parentheses, something like this:

The adverts spoke of virtual experiences (virteces)

But this is also reminiscent of academic papers, especially when it introduces acronyms.

4. Integrate them in the sentence. Example:

The adverts spoke of virtual experiences, or virteces as they called them

This seems to be the best option for a sci-fi story, but it tends to make sentences longer, less concise and more cluttered. Plus it does not always fit in the sentence and sometimes breaks the tension.

5. Use a mixture. Not an option, I would like it to be consistent.

I understand there might not be one objective style. So maybe you could tell me which option you prefer as a reader or writer and why, or which is the most common. Or maybe you do have a 6th option, I would appreciate your insight.

Answer 1

Depending on your narrator there are different approaches. Here are the two extremes:

Omniscient Narrator and Frame Story

If your narrator is more of a travel guide for the reader, who shows them around the fictional world and explains everything to them, you can simply give such an explanation whenever the reader encounters something they might not know, and you can even address the reader while you do so:

Outside, a billboard advertised a virtec. Now, you probably don't know what a virtec is, as they haven't yet been invented in your time. A virtec is a virtual experience...

First Person Limited Narrator

The other extreme is the stream of consciousness viewpoint of a character who experiences his or her life and is familiar with the things he or she encounters. In this viewpoint, you have to show the reader what those things are by showing them in use:

Chapter 1

... Outside, a billboard advertised a virtec. ... ← The virtec is mentioned but not explained. The reader will have to endure this lack of knowledge.

...

Chapter 12

... The train rattled along the uneven tracks, it's wheels screeching. The smell of sweaty bodies was suffocating. John decided to tune himself out for the ride. He paid for a new virtec and activated it with a thought. Immediately he found himself on a tropical beach. Relieved he breathed in the salty breeze and relaxed. ...

Other Types of Narrator

Other narrative viewpoints are possible between these two extremes. If you are unsure how much explanation you want to give, consider the relationship between your narrator and your reader. On the one extreme end is a situation in which the narrator and "reader" sit in the same room and the narrator tells the story to the "reader". On the other extreme end is a "reader" who sits in the mind of a character and experiences their life along with them.

How do you want your readers to experience your story?

Footnotes and Appendix

A glossary is a good idea if your story is long (e.g. a novel) and contains many unfamiliar terms that appear only infrequently. If your story is short (e.g. a short story) and contains only a handful of unfamiliar terms that appear frequently throughout the story, the readers can be expected to remember them.

Footnotes are unconventinal in fiction. Your story will acquire a scholarly feel if you use them. This effect can be employed, if it fits your work, or it might disrupt immersion, if it doesn't.

Answer 2

First, people understand words by context, not by definition. Do not demand that readers memorize definitions, that is a sure fire way to make them put down your story.

Instead, you introduce these in scenes so the context is clear and the word is understood by the reader.

Second, a lot of words is going to take a lot of scenes, and imagination to come up with scenes that fit into the plot for these words to matter.

Sparse is better, do not just invent words because you think they are cool, invent them because you need them.

If virteces are a thing important to the plot, invent a scene where they have to be mentioned. Maybe a lot of them showed up dead, and people are talking about them, and arguing whether virtual reality is a religion or not, or if people are wasting their lives living and working in the virtualverse, or whatever.

So first your new terminology has to matter to the plot in some way, the word must be understandable in context when characters use it, and the word must be used repeatedly in the story, and be necessary.

The classic example in Star Trek is the Warp Drive, and Dilithium Crystals.

From the story, from the start, the audience doesn't really know how the warp drive works, or what the hell dilithium crystals are. We learn from context that the Warp drive is FTL, and from context that dilithium crystals power the Warp Drive and cannot be synthesized or transported, unlike virtually everything else.

We learn from context about the Transporter, and how it can go wrong. To this day, I don't think it has ever been explained what "dilithium" is.

Or, for that matter, "gold-pressed latinum", so prized by the Ferengi. We know from context that gold can be synthesized, but apparently gold-pressed latinum cannot be, and thus serves as a form of currency.

The answer is: Do not use (parens) or footnotes, and do not explain the meaning of words (in a pinch, words can be explained by a character to children or a stranger in a strange land, an alien or visitor of some sort).

Words mean what they mean by how they are used, you should strive to create scenes in which the meaning of an author-invented word becomes obvious.

For what it's worth, "verteces" is a bad made up word. It sounds exactly like "vertices", and just looks like a misspelling of that word. I would call people that choose to live in a virtual reality just "virts."

Slang words are generally shorter and easier to pronounce than the words they replace, and unique, they cannot be mistaken for other common words that already exist.

In general, do not make up words that are easily mistaken for existing words, or are difficult to say. New words have to be both obvious and easier to use than the longer version.

That is how texting slang developed. FAIK, OMG, etc. Clear and easy to type.

Answer 3

The traditional (and probably best) answer is 4. Or a set of similar approaches.

If you're writing in close POV, then the words your character is using are familiar to them, even if they're not to the reader.

You don't necessarily have to explain new words if you can give the reader sufficient context to make the leap themself. Alternatively, you can slip in explanations around the words in a less obvious way than just stating them.

• Explain it directly to the reader (as per your example)
• Explain it by using both the familiar and unfamiliar words close together
• Explain it via dialogue between characters
• Show it to them

"Eight ziggurats towered over the gardens. The stepped pyramids were sacred..."

"Hey, have you heard about the new virteces up in sector twelve? No? Well, apparently you can experience killer VR inside your own head..." (ok not the best example text wise, but you get the idea?)

"Seb strapped on the VR bodysuit, and BAM, the virteces flowed into his brain..."

Answer 4

I suggest giving explanations of these words as dialog, or if that's not reasonable, as narration.

A common convention in many science fiction stories is to include a character from our own time and place. Then anything strange to us will be strange to him, and so it will flow naturally if he has to ask about it or figure it out.

You don't say what sort of concepts you're thinking of. But just for example, you could have a dialog like:

Fwacbar said, "He is strong in the ramnatz."

"Excuse me? What's a 'ramnatz'?" John asked.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Fwacbar replied. "A ramnatz is ..." etc.

I'm reminded of a story I read many years ago that did this very well. I forget the title or author or most of the story besides this one point, so forgive me for not giving proper attribution. But the climax of the story was where one of the aliens is revealed to actually be a cow-like creature that has been transformed by alien technology into a bipedal and intelligent being. But the story is set on another planet so he can't say that she is a "cow", that wouldn't make sense as there are no cows on this alien world. So the writer invented a creature of this world that is sort of like an Earth cow, which he calls a "dest". So great, when he gets to the climax, he can say, "She was a dest." But if he had sto stop at that point to explain what a dest is, the impact of the sentence will be lost. So instead, many pages earlier, he has a character insult another character by saying, "He's a dest". Then he explains what a dest is and why this is an insult. So he explains the word in chapter 1, so when he uses it again in chapter 5 the reader knows what it means.

This is a simple example. Not some complex philosophical concept but just the name of an animal. But I think it illustrates the point. You introduce the word long before it is needed for some punchy point of the story. Then in the text -- either as dialog or narration -- you explain what it means. Then when you get to where it matters, the reader already knows, and you don't have to break the flow of the scene to explain it at that point.

Answer 5

An approach I personally like is to have a character who for in universe reasons doesn't really know how society in the universe functions. This of course depends on the story you want to tell but an example where this is pulled of very well is 'Star in my pocked like grains of sand' by Samuel R. Delany.

This is a far out science fiction story and one of the main characters grew up as a slave in a mine and is liberated at the beginning of the story. He has no clue about the world around him and naturally asks all kind of questions which just so happen to explain a bunch of things the reader wouldn't know or understand otherwise.

So foryour example, when he first encounters a virtece he will ask about it and some other character will explain to him (and hence the reader) what a virtece is. It becomes a natural part of the story.