I Have A Large Problem With The Word Large

I HAVE A LARGE PROBLEM WITH THE WORD LARGE Frequent readers of Fantasy Authors Handbook know that I am willing to personal my own personal biases. Like everyone, I actually have opinions, many of which can not be supported by details, but I try to have the maturity to avoid presenting those opinions as rules. Yes? Okay, then, here’s another one. This week I fully personal however at least try to elucidate (and therefor, like a psychic virus, spread) my personal distaste of the word massive. Large is, indeed, a word, and like other phrases, it typically has a perfectly nice place in fiction of all genres. According to my dictionary app it means “of considerable or relatively nice measurement, extent, or capacity.” For me, a minimum of, it’s major use is in describing the number of fries in an order or the dimensions of a cup of coffee or soft drink. You may have had a big fries and huge Coke with your large burger for lunch today. It’s also the clothes size they all the time appear to have left after all the XLs and XXLs have sold out. Not sure what that claims about America, however there it is. So… yeah. It’s a fine word. Except when it shows up in fiction to describe pretty much anything else: The massive starship warped out of orbit. Galen was a big man with an even larger ego. The monster seemed like a big crab with a squirrel’s head. Large doorways opened onto the citadel’s inner bailey. And sure, I actually have seen variations on these sentencesâ€"more than as soon asâ€"and I have always instructed that author discover a better word to say the same factor, the same thing being: it (no matter it is) is bigger than regular. Author John Grisham wrote, “There are three forms of word: phrases we know, phrases we must always know, and words no person knows. Forget those in the third category and use restraint with these within the second.” Good advice, generally. I don’t assume we must always all go down the Lovecraftian rabbit hole and fill our work with head-scratchers simply to point out off the fact that the same dictionary app additionally has a thesaurus in it. But nonetheless, fiction should come alive. Your writing ought to have a life to it beyond the plain qualifier, and “giant” is just as obvious a qualifier as you'll find. As such, I discover it boring and clunkyâ€"and I know we’re not going for boring and clunky, so what else then in addition to massive? First of all, the apparent synonyms: The huge starship warped out of orbit. Galen was an enormous man with an even greater ego. The monster seemed like an immense crab with a squirrel’s head. Huge doorways opened onto the citadel’s inner bailey. Simple, right? And all 4 of those match to what Grisham would name “phrases we know.” But these are words that no less than have a smidge extra poetry to them. A “massive starship” actually doesn’t have a lot character. Not that making it “massive” is all the description you’ll ever want, but it’s assumed that, though both w ords are generic in that there isn't a exact quantity that matches directly to either massive or huge, large is bigger than large. And why can’t your starship be massive? Why can’t the castle doorways be huge? A “huge man” suits the idiom better. I’m an excellent sized guy however no one has ever referred to me as “large.” That simply doesn’t sound right. I buy clothes from the Big & Tall section, not the Large & Tall part. In college, my friends used to name me Big Phil as a result of there was one other man in our circle of pals also named Phil and I was bodily bigger than him. Things might have gone barely in a different way if my name were Marge, but in any other case, it’s going to be Big Phil, Big Jim, Big Pussy*… Easy sufficient, however then let’s problem ourselves to go a level deeper than the synonyms. When the starship warped out of orbit the planet shuddered in its wake. This exhibits the impact of the thingâ€"it’s so huge it has a gravitational e ffect on the planet beneath it. Galen towered over the others, feeling taller still when he seemed down on them. Here we see Galen being an egotistical prick. The squirrel-head’s eyes rose five, ten… twelve ft over Bronwyn’s head because the shadow of its crab-like physique descended over the entire street. Now we see the impact of the scale of the crab and use a couple of careful specifics to convey a way of movement. War elephants plodded three abreast through the doors that swung open onto the castle’s internal bailey. Here I’m showing you ways huge the doorways are by providing three things you realize to be massive fitting via them at the similar time. Showing, being the operative word in all these examples. I’m not justtellingyou that one thing is, precisely however dryly, massive. â€"Philip Athans *Did I just break a rule from final week’s post? Blame The Sopranos. About Philip Athans I share your aversion to banal descriptive phrases similar to “large”, although as your examples show, they can be efficient in a relative sense, e.g., the man’s ego being as massive as his large self. Otherwise they can be imprecise and deceptive. In Stuttgart a few years back, I ordered “zwei bier” and was asked “gross oder klein?” I was thirsty however not thirsty sufficient for the gross bier the waiter introduced that came in around two gallons. I appreciate that John Grisham would have little use for words no person is aware of in thriller writing. You and I write fantasy and science fiction, so occasional exotic communicate may flavor a description, e.g., on the Bra’yoh-koh clan council hearth, Lear described the invader’s ship descending as gently as a Chen Doe blossom. 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