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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48072
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

It's okay to have words and alien creatures that your readers don't know about, but if your description cannot teach readers something new or inspire them to picture something, it is empty verbiage and has no purpose. Why should readers care if something looks like a gaijamu flower? Why does the POV care? If nobody cares, there's no point in mentioning it.

If your POV is thinking that something looks like a thajva gem, a visual image will be in his mind, and if we are in his POV we should see it with him. It doesn't have to be more than a mention of what aspects of what he is seeing are like a thajva (brilliant blue, inner sparkling lights, etc)

You might want to ask yourself this: what do I want to accomplish by mentioning this word? If the answer is "nothing" then cut it. It serves no purpose.

It might be that you want to mention the species because you want to show that your world has alien flora and fauna in it. If this is your purpose, it could be accomplished far more effectively by actually having the POV encounter these alien creatures or plants.

If you want to show that the lillahi bird has some sort of special meaning for the character, then let us know what that meaning is and where it came from. Why does it make the character feel calm? Because it is hypnotic and soothing? Or because she used to have them all around her house when she was a child, so hearing the birds takes her back to when she was a child, and makes her feel safe.

If you simply want to describe what the POV is seeing, then describe it. When you are writing about our normal world you can use shortcuts in describing things by comparing them to other things that your readers will be familiar with or have emotional associations with. If you are in a fantasy world, you have to do things the hard way.

Original score: 7