Today I’m browsing through Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel again – this is an excellent collection of 100 of his plates illustrating everything from marine protozoa to antelopes. I’m looking for inspiration for fantastic marine monsters for a novel – and equally important, vocabulary!
This is one of my favorite vocabulary-building techniques for writing fantasy – find visual reference of something real and generate as many descriptive words and metaphors as possible. I’ve also done this recently with Miller’s Antiques Handbook & Price Guide by Judith Miller for objects ranging from porcelain plates to oak chests-of-drawers and Foraged Flora: A Year of Gathering and Arranging Wild Plants and Flowers by Louesa Roebuck and Sarah Lonsdale for flowers and foliage.
Here’s a list of some vocabulary I brainstormed while examining Haeckel’s drawings of Radiolaria (Plates 1, 22, 31, 41, 61, 71, and 91.)
- Spiked cages
- Spheres
- Medallions
- Latticework
- Radial
- Symmetrical
- Crowns
- Pieces of armor
- Gorget
- Cestus
- Helmet with visor
- Sieves, colanders
- Latticework bulb trailing branching root-like tentacles
- Elaborate headgear
- Tall, pointed peaks
- Lacy wings
- High crest
- Spheres perforated by thick bars
- Honeycomb
- Bisected like toothy jaws
- Stellated dodecahedron assembled from flexible bars
- Long, elaborate antenna
- Barbed spikes
- Frilly
- Feathery
- Lacy
- Crown of thorns
- The heads of tools and weapons
- Mace
- Flail
- Grapnel
- Pitchfork
- Bauble
- Censer
- Six-petaled window
- Iron maiden
- Rose window
- Cart wheel
- Mandala
- Spokes
- Gourd
- Pitcher
- Spinning top
What techniques do you use to expand your vocabulary?
Featured image: Spyroidea Nükchenstrahlinge from Art Forms in Nature (1904) by Ernst Haeckel. Original from Library of Congress. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Chronicler's Note: 
Wonderful ♥️