Intentional Word Stupidity

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Made ya look!



Have you ever tossed in a bit of word salad just for fun to trip the reader up? Not fully nonsensical but just enough to throw off the cadence and make the reader go ... eh?


Thing is, I'm not even sure I have a valid example right now, but 'comically quipped' crossed my mind when posting something elsewhere.

 

[XerXesXu]

'I know you did', said she, fluttering her eyelashes in the accusative case.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Quite a lot in my recent Alex in Wonderland. I tried not to make the story too silly and childish, but it is still Wonderland and some strangeness is par for the course.

 

[JohnBJohn]

On occasion I'll do that, but I don't want to disrupt the reader too much when they go 'huh?' at an unusual word. I absolutely do not like it when I hit a word that I have trouble figuring out what it means from the context of the rest of the sentence. If it takes more than a couple of seconds, it absolutely takes me out of the moment that the story has being building.

I will sometimes change the cadence of my writing to emphasize something. For example, I'll have a character go into a long run on sentence because they are overwhelmed by something (usually arousal...this is Lit.) I do not normally write like this and I do not use this 'technique' in most stories (can you call this a technique or is it just bad grammar?)

“Oh my god, it feels so good like I’m being stretched so good like a huge monster donkey cock that just fills me and fills me and I know that they’ve wrecked my kitty and it’ll never be the same but it feels so good and I don’t want it to end and I’m gonna have to do this again and again and oh oh oh…”

 

[yowser]

From an earlier tale:

'I specialise in the late fifteenth century, the incanabula era. For some reason there was an explosion in manuscript production then, even as Gutenberg's invention had arrived and was poised to upend the world's system of scholarly communication.' He smiled wanly. 'I have always been a bit late to the table.'

A comment from anon:
Wow
You had me at "incanabula"

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Not since last Brillig.

 

[anthrodisiac]

No, never.

"Do it! Please! Fertilize me! Make me your filthy little cum balloon!"

"Good! All 'bout that jizzmaxxing!"

"Dump your spunk in my messy cumhole. I wanna have your jizz sloshing inside me for weeks. I want you to paint my insides and finish on my ass. Make it yours so every sniffer in town knows I'm your chonky cow. I'm pathetic, Daddy, wreck me. Pin me down and break me open like a slutty piñata so all your cum spills out like the bestest candy everrrrrr!"

I just blinked at her for a second. That was definitely... dirtier; nobody could say she was a sweet angel. Took me a second to recover from the rapid tonal shift. "Damn right. I'll beat your insides with my meat stick and plug you up and, uh, pump you so full you'll look like Violet Beauregarde when I'm done with your slippery cunt."

"Pretty decent. Lotta guap for us kinky bitches. Bros love fat slippery tiddies even before dem tiddies kick ass playing Deaddrop Ops." She juggled her breasts in her hands, then licked some of the cum from her palm with a loud slurp. "Been busy AF slingin' content lately, so when Slyss said you'd be perf for my turf, I was like, 'Ain't got dicked down inna while.' No cap, hella glad she sent you. Been a treat so far."

"Those were words, right?"

...oh.

 

[Britva415]

I don't usually do it in stories but I do it in forum posts all the time.

And in speech.

 

[SmilingLez]

"Literaturally perfect," she said, inventing a word that sounded right in her mouth and wrong everywhere else.

 

[THBGato]

Quite often in sort of nonsensical similes:

E.g. "She smelled like vanilla and fifteen years of friendship."

My beta-readers urged me to cut that line but I fought to leave it in as I knew readers would like it. Sure enough, at least three comments mentioned that specific line...

 

[jhealy55]

"I could tell right away that you liked me", he whispered through a smile as the clinking of glasses and conversation faded all around them.

"Was it that obvious?" She tried to sound nonchalant, but her eyes had already locked with his and she began to wonder how well he could actually read her.

"Maybe not to most people, but I'm psychotic"

"Don't you mean psychic?!?" She blurted, grateful that she hadn't taken a drink after she asked.

"So, can I call you this weekend?" His eyes drifted comfortably across the crowded ballroom.

"Do you have a pen?" She could feel her skin getting warm across her chest as her heartbeat pulsed slowly in her own eardrums, thinking about the chance to see him again. To be alone with him.

"I don't need one," He turned back with a twinkle in his eye. "I've got a pornographic memory." He winked, tilting his head back to finish his drink.

She rolled her eyes and feigned disbelief to distract from the flush that now suffused her cheeks, as she wondered just how pornographic it could be.

 

[RetroFan]

Not sure if it is the same thing but sometimes when writing third person stories and I go into the heads of the characters, I'll use expressions and grammar that fit them, but which I normally wouldn't use for neutral narration or for more likeable characters.

For example in my story 'Trailer Trash Teen Hates Rules' trailer park princess Breanna cannot go one sentence without using the words 'fuck', 'shit' or 'cunt', nor using offensive terms like 'faggot' or 'retard'. When Breanna is thinking and not speaking (which is less common as she never shuts up) she swears like a sailor and uses offensive terms in her inner voice too.

Other examples would be Cornelius from my story series 'Crazy Cornelius & the Magic Pills'. Cornelius has a real attitude problem with the police - mainly because he can't stop breaking the law - and laments 'the pigs hassling him' all of the time. Obviously I don't refer to the police as 'the pigs' in more neutral narrative in the story, only when he is thinking about him. And Todd - the stupid fat bully from 'The PTA Queen Bee & The Teen Rebel' - still years later bears a grudge towards his elementary school for putting him into a program called 'Let's Read and Have Fun Together' for kids who are having trouble with literacy skills. He considers this an insult and a slight to his dignity as 'He can read good.'

 

[bi_cathy]

Quite often in sort of nonsensical similes:

E.g. "She smelled like vanilla and fifteen years of friendship."

My beta-readers urged me to cut that line but I fought to leave it in as I knew readers would like it. Sure enough, at least three comments mentioned that specific line...

I know exactly which story this was in, and almost exactly when it happened. A testament that that was an _excellent_ line and I would’ve been heartbroken to know it was ever taken away (or even considered!). It lit up my brain like a fuse.

 

[Tajiqa]

People on Lit are easily triggered (or can't resist the urge to put someone down). This is especially true of authors. If you intentionally play word games like that, someone will likely attack you and try to pick a fight.

Just sayin.

 

[TheLobster]

E.g. "She smelled like vanilla and fifteen years of friendship."

Aha! So it's you who taught the LLMs to emit all those weird and nonsensical metaphors!

 

[Britva415]

I found a nice example today in a review of Lucky, the Anya Taylor-Joy show on AppleTV:

Drew Starkey has a face for crypto [currency]

It makes perfect sense in context - it's actually a real zinger. It's exactly the kind of subversion of linguistic patterns that I appreciate, and the kind of way that bastardizing "standard" or "square" conventions can be wickedly evocative.

Link to the review. Many Lucky spoilers: https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/lucky-tv-review-22367441.php