This is a problem I have encountered a few times while writing my novel. To set it in context, my novel is set in a fantasy world completely created by me. The main character, the hero, is a young woman named Elissa. Now Elissa is constantly held back from reaching her potential due to the fact that she has a crippling fear of crowds. Her chapters are also narrated in the first person, so do I just tiptoe around it by using descriptions of it, or should I come right out and refer to it as enchlophobia? At one point I did put it in the book, but it seemed so out of place that this girl in this fantasy realm would refer to it as such. It also got me thinking about other technical words, and whether it matters too much to use them in the context of my novel, for the sake of avoiding explanation. Thoughts?
Show that she has a fear of crowds? Like she avoids them, feels nervous when within one or near them. Sweats when she's going to approach one ect. I can't really say accurate examples of what a person with Enchlophobia feels when they're in crowds.
I agree it is such a long complicated word personally I wouldn't use it even in a contempoary story. Show the condition.
See that's my problem; whether or not it is in her vocabulary since she's the one telling the story. I've shown it many times but from her perspective so she's going to talk about it. Reckon I'll just stick to her referring to it as a fear of crowds, or something similar.
You might also consider whether or not this fantasy world has it's own terms of euphemisms for a fear of crowds/large groups. "The lone flower that bends away from the field" or other such things. I find those are exceptionally helpful to give flavor to a culture as well as to explain details without sounding like authorial intervention.
