A quick post about Vaarsuvius' Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness

[Eldritch Queen]

Can we take a moment to appreciate Rich and his ability to find all these obscure words when writing for V? In all the time I've spent reading V's dialogue, I've never needed to open a new tab and read an online dictionary every 5 minutes to under what they were saying. But more to the point, I have to admit that I'm a little envious; I'm currently writing fan fiction, and one of my OC's uses a speech pattern similar to Vaarsuvius. And man, oh man, I cannot get his dialogue to work! I don't know if it's because I'm not using big/obscure enough words or if his personality is slightly different from V's, or if I'm just not a good enough writer, but I can't seem to nail this whole "using big words to show a character is smart" thing.

Meanwhile, Rich has been doing this seamlessly and consistently for several years. That takes a special kind of talent, and I just wanted to say that I appreciate the effort he puts into V's dialogue.

[nespunkt]

Beware, what follows contains unsolicited advice. I mean well, and I apologize if it comes off as rude.

I was going to write this response as "in character" as V as possible, but then I realized that would take time that I don't actually have. But – I want to invite you to consider the reason that V is so profusely enriched in words, it is not merely because they are long-winded by habit, they also seek to be as exact as possible, which reflects their wizardly training. So the reason you're not managing to write V-ishly could be that you're trying to express something inexact, or that you don't know the exact thing you're trying to use the vocabulary for.

There can be many reasons to use big words. A common one is to bully or bamboozle others and show that one is the smartest in the room. I've known several people who use the biggest words at their disposal in order to filibuster whole conversations because they love the sound of their own voice. So, consider what the reason that your character does this is? It can't be just because they're smart.

All that said, it's of course impossible to write a character who uses a vocabulary that you don't yourself have in your active vocabulary, and having to grasp for nuances every time you sit down to write something might easily bring you out of the flow of writing.

Some more general advice: You could also go scavenger-hunting for good words. Read some old texts and write down words you don't know. Keep a notebook for them. Try constructing the sentences you want to write around the fun words you want to use, rather than trying to shoehorn the longest synonyms into sentences you've already written.

[halfeye]

The bit in OoPCs where Roy hires Vaarsuvius is spectacularly good:

Spoiler

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Vaarsuvius is kind of doubtful, Roy tells him in flowery but precise what he wants done, V translates it to normal speech, Roy replies "did I misspeak?" and Vaarsuvius agrees to sign on.