Comment by PhasmaFelis 3 days ago
> it has four, going on five, esoteric proper nouns in one sentence. it's not hard to parse, but it isn't something I love reading either.
Even so. If the sentence was something like "Kowalski's Mosquito soared high above the Führerbunker, Hitler's final redoubt in Berlin," no one would find that problematic. McCaffrey's sentence is only troubling if you've already assumed that made-up names are inherently bad writing.
That maybe very well be true, but it still doesn't indicate any problem with the McCaffrey sentence.
Also note that it's the start of the second chapter, so some of those nouns may have been introduced already.
My first paragraph is very well true. The second one says "there is nothing inherently wrong with made-up names", which seems to be in agreement with what you hold to be true.
I am also entirely in agreement with the position that no significant criticism of the author can be made from a single sentence, especially when presented without context.
Made-up names are bad to read for me too. I don't like too many things in my head with unfamiliar names. I can't think of things with unfamiliar names, and it bothers me.
That sounds very unpleasant. I'm sorry. With all respect, though, I think we can agree that that's an issue with the reader, not the writer? If I read a novel with a lot of Vietnamese characters and locations, say, I might well have some difficulty telling them apart, but that doesn't mean that Vietnamese names are bad writing.
> but that doesn't mean that Vietnamese names are bad writing.
Not everybody agrees: https://www.jesusandmo.net/wp-content/uploads/2011-05-31.png
On a more serious note, I watched a Chinese drama with my parents, and the fact that the characters' names were in Chinese caused enormous problems for them.† This is hard for me to empathize with, but clearly it's something that some people can't handle.
† Another thing that caused them problems is that Chinese characters are addressed differently by different people, sometimes by name, sometimes by title, sometimes by a kinship term that will vary with the relationship between speaker and addressee....
That's easier for me to empathize with; it causes difficulties for me too, but those difficulties are mostly in the nature of nailing down a bunch of different pieces of information about each character, not in the nature of "why are you speaking a language that isn't English?!?"
I don't think foreign names are 'bad writing' but I do experience more difficulty keeping track of names that are in a language I'm completely unfamiliar with.
English names already have an allocated space in my brain. Fake names that follow the pattern of English names are usually easy to slot into the existing system. Names in my second language can be slightly more difficult but I seem to have developed a similar system of breaking them down and storing them. But names that don't fit into patterns I'm familiar with can be like trying to memorize completely arbitrary strings of information.
For example (grabbing some Aztec mythology names) "Tlaltecuhtli" won't be accurately stored beyond the first syllable or two until I've seen it many, many times, and if there's another character called "Tlazolteotl" I'm likely to mix them up.
>† Another thing that caused them problems is that Chinese characters are addressed differently by different people, sometimes by name, sometimes by title, sometimes by a kinship term that will vary with the relationship between speaker and addressee.
I have that problem with watching anime, especially slice-of-life types where you have 20 people all in school uniforms and with realistic hair colors and such. They'll all be called 3-4 different names and have no real distinguishing characteristics.
Ever read A Clockwork Orange? Guessing that didn't go over well with you.
My original example was going to be, a young person reading an adult book with a large vocabulary. I decided that might come off as rude, so I changed it, and maybe lost some impact.
Put more bluntly: having a reading disability does not obligate all authors to write to your reading level.
The thing about the alternative you offer is that none of the names in it are made-up, other than that Kowalski may be a fictional character.
There is nothing inherently wrong with made-up names, and some genres will require more than others, but I suspect that sentences in the style of McCaffrey's are partly intended to draw in the reader who feels, vaguely and probably subconsciously, as someone who has the inside scoop on esoteric knowledge from having deduced what sort of entities these names denote. To be clear, I am not immune to the effect, and it can be pleasant in small doses if the rest of the story is engaging.