The Brevity Law
World-building a story's language
My niece, Olivia, (or “Livy”) is still learning to talk. She knows names of people and is at the stage where she can communicate (mostly) effectively through speech, but can’t quite form complete sentences yet. Conversational, but not quite fluent. And sometimes it takes a little translating effort to figure out a specific word or phrase she’s trying to use.
The most recent time I visited her she kept calling me “Alex,” my brothers name (her other uncle). Her mom (my sister) insisted she knew my name, and tried to correct her, but Livy kept calling me by the wrong name. When pressed, she finally said my brothers name was easier to say, so she decided to just call me by that. We’re both uncles, close enough, right? (Why “Alex” is easier than “Evan” I’m still perplexed by)
As the good uncle I am I started calling Livy by her brothers name, “Zeke” (short for Ezekiel). She got frustrated at first. “That’s not my name,” she said, then quickly realized what was happening, and a sly smile on spread her face. She got the joke, she’s a smart cookie. She started calling me uncle Evan after that (for now).
Livy just met my Aunt (her great Aunt?) for the first time. Livy demonstrated she could say “Tracy,” but then proceeded to say “Shishi” instead. Again, when pressed, she just said it was easier. To rectify the situation Livy approached her Aunt Tracy and simply asked her, “Can I call you Shishi?” which Aunt Tracy thought was incredibly cute, and said, “Yes please.”
The Brevity Law (originally called Zipf's law of abbreviation, some irony there) states that the more frequently a word is used, the shorter the word tends to be.
The most common words in the english language are: the, be, of, and, to, a. About as short as a word can get. The law applies to both written communication and also the spoken word. (Some studies show this rule even applies to animal communication. Fascinating.)
This isn’t too ground breaking, right? Or at least it intuitively makes sense. We tend towards efficiency, the path of least resistance. From infants, like my niece, we are wired towards the efficient path, including with language. Why say “Tracy,” when “Shishi” will do?
The more we use words as a person and as a society, the more likely that word will get shortened, be made more efficient. This law doesn’t just apply to how often a word is used by percentage. It also applies to how much a word has been used over time. Or perhaps to simplify: the more total surface area of use a word has, the more efficient it will be made. Like a stone monument worn down through wind and rain, the softer stone wearing away and the stronger stuff lingering.
This happens with phrases too. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Speak of the devil.” Did you know this isn’t the whole phrase? Which is: “Speak of the devil and he shall appear.”
Over time, people understood the meaning, and it become less necessary to say the whole phrase. So it was shortened, unconsciously by millions of people over time, to the most efficient amount of words to communicate the meaning without losing the meaning.
How about “Scot-free?” This originated from a line in the Shakespeare story, Macbeth: “we have Scotched the snake, not killed it.” Scotch, meaning “scratch,” in Shakespearean. Over time “Scotch,” shortened to “Scot.” and “Free” was added to shorten the rest of the meaning: “There should have been bad consequences, but were escaped without a scratch.”
OK, great. What does this have to do with story telling?
A story should show situations, dialogue, and characters in a way that seems real and truthful, despite those things are, literally, a fiction.
Using the “lie” of a made-up story to show underlying truths is the great tool of story. In order stay in a story and not be “pulled out,” a reader needs to accept that the story matches their own experience of how the world works on some fundamental level.
This truism of story telling is often called Verisimilitude.
How we use the made up names and terms and language in our story have to also abide by verisimilitude.
Epic fantasy stories have a certain reputation for long, complicated, made up names for cities and characters and places. Would people really use these long names in common practice? After considering the Brevity Law, probably not.
I think some interesting questions to ask as you write and build a story are things like:
Is this old?
Is it culturally significant?
Is it common?
Do people talk about this all the time?
If the answers are “yes,” than perhaps a good follow-up question could be: “How would people shorten this word/phrase/name over time? What nicknames and short-hand would people produce?” How would the Brevity Law wear down the words so only the most basic and true meaning remains?
That’s not to say don’t also create the original long complicated name. But if you have the original and show how people interact with it, shorten it, make it more efficient to communicate with each other, that shows movement and history. It shows a living, dynamic, cultural ecosystem. It shows you have real people and real society doing what they really do in real life. It adds a little spice of verisimilitude into the concoction that is your story.
The reverse is also true. If something is secret, if it is rarely talked about, if it is largely unknown, perhaps keep the long complicated name that’s hard to pronounce.
It’s an interesting tool in the writer’s tool belt to communicate history and texture and meaning. What do you think?