A fantasy vocabulary

 This week I've been editing the novella which I wrote during NaNoWriMo.  It's firmly in the fantasy genre, but it's full of political and feminist issues, and that's given me several vocabulary challenges.

My main character is an a romantic asexual, and so is her best friend.  My problem was in getting that across in a fantasy novella where using the modern term would stick out as awkward.  The term aromantic asexual only came into use relatively recently, and would stand out as a wrong use of vocabulary in the middle of my novella.

I've chosen a semi-formal tone for the story.  I'm not a literary writer, but some of the sentences I've constructed are more convoluted and less straightforward than I would use in a science fiction story.  I also decided to use no contractions in either the narrative or the dialogue.

When I started writing the novella I did wonder if that would give me problems when I came to scenes like the argument between my main character and her mother.  As it turned out, it didn't.  "You vicious old witch!  I will not be a pawn in your evil scheme." conveys the daughter's anger just as efficiently in this slightly more formal tone.

The one thing I haven't got in this novella is any swear words.  The events of the story didn't need any, so I've avoided that without having to confront the issue.

I decided that the level of technology in my world would be roughly Victorian, and that prompted several searches for the earliest use of a word or phrase.  "Breakwater" and "marine chronometer" are two examples.  It was surprising how often I checked for the earliest use of a word only to find it was some time in the 1700s, much earlier than I expected.

I've only written fantasy short stories before tackling this novella, and I wasn't sure how I'd get on with writing a longer piece.  But I found that the story flowed easily, so did the more formal tone of the piece.  I have found a few tongue-twisting sentences on the edit which I've straightened out, but a surprisingly large proportion of the first draft has remained unaltered.

I've created such dialogue gems as: "If you had not spent unnecessary gold on that obscene mourning dress..."  That gets across my character's anger perfectly within the confines of the period dialogue.

I had the most trouble with describing gay characters.  I have both male/male and female/female relationships in the novella, and my main character is giving these pairs of sailors berths on her new ship, partly because they have been discriminated against by other captains.  Getting the information about those relationships across within the confines of my chosen vocabulary was rather more challenging.  I couldn't use the designation 'gay', as it would have had a very different meaning in my reference period.  

I've managed to find a way around my vocabulary challenges without disturbing to feel of the story, so I'm counting that as a win.