Historical Facts
No, Michael, you didn’t go on too long. This is cool. Let me amplify a bit more. I don’t mean that you get big, known facts wrong. That would be sloppy and lazy.
I guess what I’m talking about it trying to figure out what was the name of the London tailor who made suits for the upper class in the 1930’s and 40’s, or who was the chef at the Savoy in 1937. Giving the name of the tailor would certainly add to the verisimilitude, but if it’s going to slow you down for days while you research that point is okay to just talk about the fineness of the material, and how well the coat was cut across his shoulders, and dispense with the tailor?
And even the big “known” facts can become slippery. I started my book because I read several reports about how Heinrich Himmler was well on his way to crossing the border out of Germany at the end of the war when he suddenly walked up to the British guard at the checkpoint, pulled off his eye patch, and said, “I’m Heinrich Himmler.” I thought, how interesting. Why did he do that? My solution was because my character was travelling with him, and convinced him to turn himself into the Brits. Then I started digging deeper, and I found an equal number of sources who said that never happened, that an alert young Englishman spotted Himmler and recognized him despite the disguise. I ended up sort of splitting the difference in the interest of giving my main character a satisfying arc, and I talk about the different versions in the afterword.
Melinda
March 17th, 2007 at 3:10 am
Greetings! Speaking obviously as a reader and not a writer, I only want enough historical detail to make me feel that I’m in the period but I don’t need to have every single scene set with specific period details. I read a lot of mysteries set in other periods and a common fault I find is that I often feel that I’m being hammered with historical facts, not because they’re helping the plot or the characterization or the period feel of the work but because the writer researched the heck out of the period and by Ghu, the reader is going to have to read about it! I was never able to read a popular series by one Writer Who Shall Remain Nameless who writes mysteries set in feudal Japan because when I tried her first book, in one scene the protagonist was being taken by a servant to a wing of the house and during that walk the writer bludgeoned in a lump of irrelevant facts (”He knew that in a house of this type owned by this class of person, the house would consist of this many rooms decorated in this way…”)
Working in historical facts gracefully is one of the hardest things for a writer, I would think. I personally would rather have too few than too many, and, of course, accuracy above all. And now, back to working on Someone’s Bio…
March 17th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Lol, if you think a tailor in London 1940 is difficult, try to find the name of the praefectus cohortis of the First Vardullian equitata cohort stationed in Vindolanda in 120 AD. Or make sure the name is indeed not known so you can safely give the job to your MC.
Of course, I try not to spend an insane amount of time on small details (except in cases like the above where a plot point hinges on them), albeit sometimes the historian in me gets carried off. I like to know things because it’s fun.
And sometimes, there’s scarce material, like about the culture of the tribes north of the Hadrian’s Wall in Roman times. Even the Pictish stones, one of the few remains we have, are later. Nor did Roman historians ever bother to write about the barbarians in detail. The advantage is that I can make up a good deal without violating facts.
As reader, I get thrown by wrong facts the writer should have been able to research with little effort, and by not getting the mentality of a period. Sometimes characters tend to think like a 21st century person and for example muse about how bad it is to keep slaves in a time slavery was a normal part of society, or have a feminist agenda in the 11th century. That’s worse than have them eat potatoes.
Though small mistakes can often be an alarm sign. The book where I found the misplaced taters has a number of other incongruicies and eventually ended in the Put In Front of the Paper Container-boxes, unfinished.
March 18th, 2007 at 5:40 am
The tailor is an interesting example, but again, I still think it depends on which readers you’re hoping to attract.
I’m reminded of another point I recall reading in one of Lawrence Block’s essays on writing. He mentioned the name of a British writer who has a very popular series of mysteries set in the USA. The problem is that he gets many of his social facts about the USA wrong. But, and this is the key point, he’s only trying to reach a British audience, and his readers are more interested in the mystery plots than in the details of life in the United States. So he doesn’t really have to do that extra bit of research, because for what he’s trying to accomplish, it’s not that important.
I will note further, though, that well-done research pays off in the end. I did a lot of research about Catholic customs and liturgy for my novella “Sanctuary,” research I needed to do because I am not Catholic and the story required a Catholic priest protagonist. I was delighted when many Catholic readers responded well to the story; one even said that I knew more about Catholicism than most Catholics. Which isn’t really true — I learned just enough for what I needed — but because I got those details right, it gave the story that extra level of resonance that readers appreciated.
If the name of the tailor is vital to the historical period, then by all means you’d want to have it right in the story. If all you need to say is that the character of interest wore good clothing, then that’s what you’d need to say.
I guess in the end, my answer to your questions is that it depends, but that I tend to err on the side of more research.
March 18th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I have been thinking about these issues a lot myself lately.
HBO’s ROME is a show that I greatly admire, probably my favorite television drama at the moment. One thing that I like about the show is that they get most of the details of Republican Rome right… unlike, say, the moronic ABC miniseries EMPIRE that preceded ROME by a few months and played fast and loose with Roman history at every turn. ROME feels authentic, in ways that EMPIRE never did. ROME is giving us Romans, where EMPIRE gave us 21st century Americans dressed up in togas.
That’s not to say that ROME has not taken liberties, however. In last week’s episode, they introduced the future empress Livia, something I know that all the I, CLAUDIUS fans in the audience (including me) had been waiting for. They introduced her as if she were going to be Octavian’s first wife, however. History tells us that, in fact, she was Octavian’s FOURTH wife. The first two are largely insignificant, and I can see why the screenwriters chose to omit them. I probably would have done the same. The third is a bit more problematic, as she gave Octavian a daughter, Julia, who would be his only child and (eventually) mother to several of his doomed heirs. I’m not sure I would have eliminated her so blithely.
ROME also gives us the marriage of Marc Antony and Octavia, and is about to give us his marriage to Cleopatra, yet they wrote out the wife who preceded Octavia, the fearsome Fulvia, one of the most singular and important women of the period. (History would suggest that Fulvia was actually a far more powerful and important woman than either Servilia or Atia, the two mothers who have dominated so much of the action in ROME). That decision was likely made very early, when the story arc was first being broken down. By getting rid of Fulvia, they free Anthony to have his passionate affair with Atia… for which I don’t believe there is any historical evidence. It made for great television, sure, but… you could have done a lot with Fulvia as well, yet remained true to history.
Ultimately, these are questions that every writer has to wrestle with every time he tackles a project of this sort. I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules, except maybe…
DON’T CHANGE ANYTHING WITHOUT GOOD REASON
Which brings me back to Livia, and one point on which I do think ROME erred. In the scene where she is introduced, a point is made that she is married (correct) and “proven fertile” (also correct). Octavian asks how many children she has, and is told “one, a son, Tiberius.” Tiberius, of course, will eventually succeed to the empire… but ROME has only two more episodes to run, and I will be very shocked if it shows us anything beyond the defeat and death of Marc Antony. (We’ll know soon enough). Will little Tiberius even figure as a character? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s hard to see how he could be an important character in the two hours that remain,
So really, all we’re talking about is a line here.
That being said, when, when Octavian asks how many children Livia has, couldn’t the screenwriters have chosen to answer, “Two sons, Tiberius and Drusus?” Just as easy, changes nothing in the action to come, and has the virtue of being true.
Okay, maybe it only bothers us I, CLAUDIUS fans who remember that Livia’s younger son, Drusus, would eventually be the father of the doomer Germanicus and the Emperor Claudius… but still…
March 18th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
You started this discussion at the point of not wanting to be “a lazy writer”. I think the essential question is: what effect are you trying to achieve? Not being a lazy writer doesn’t mean you get as detailed as you can, it means thinking every single one of your decisions through. If you don’t have the time to look up the furniture arrangement at Auschwitz, you should think about how furniture *should* be arranged at Auschwitz. That is, what does and doesn’t make sense? Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle is a huge favorite of mine, and while Stephenson’s research is meticulous, he sacrifices a good deal of it in order to tell an interesting story. (For example, when one of the characters is come upon by corsairs with Jewish slaves, he hears them approaching, singing “Hava Nagila”. The lyrics to “Hava Nagila” were written in the 20th century.)
So what should writers do? They should know enough to make judgments about what they’re writing about. Which means doing enough research to understand the underlying principles of what you’re talking about. So, in the tailoring case, unless you want to appeal to tailoring buffs, you should worry less about the specific brands, and worry more about describing the fashion accurately. Or know enough to realize that the brand names are either important or arbitrary (perhaps one of the brands was fantastically ground-breaking).
In my opinion, it boils down to two principles:
March 20th, 2007 at 10:33 am
So far we can’t see Rome here, but since German TV tends to buy everything from Desperate Housewives to Lost, the bet is we will soon. Looking forward to it.
But ignoring Drusus? I can thank that guy a there’s a - recently discoverd - Roman fort more or less at my backdoor, and I live near the Weser, not the Rhine.
George,
in case you haven’t read them yet and have time to work through 6 doorstoppers, may I recommend the books by Colleen McCullough (First Man in Rome, The Grass Crown, Fortune’s Favorites, Caesar’s Women, Let the Dice Fly, The October Horse). They cover the time from Marius and Sulla to the aftermath of Caesar’s death. Well researched, with interesting characters, and written in a racy style that makes for an easy read.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Ah, yes, Colleen McCullough. It was either George or Walter who got the NM crowd addicted to the McCullough Rome books. Yes, we’ve read them all. Until McCullough fell painfully in love with Ceasar they were great. George, is this the place where I/we make the deep, dark admission?
Okay, here goes. I’m in a role playing group with George RR, Walter Jon, Daniel Abraham, Jane Lindskold, and others who suffer with being our spice and have to endure this particular form of madness. We’re not playing so much now. Everyone’s been really busy. I do miss it though.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:46 am
I’m not writing any historicals right now. My current books are set in contemporary times, and it’s a lot easier. There are things I have to pause, and look up. The layout of the Smithsonian, the names of the various small parks along the Ptomic, etc. etc., but it’s far less intense then it was for ENDGAME.
That being said let me try again to express my concerns with overdoing research. I think your first obligation is to tell a ripping good story with characters people care about. You don’t want to make gross mistakes and you want to put in period grace notes like garnish through the prose. I also think they can be added later, and that ties back to a discussion on another thread about finishing what you start to write. If you are stopping your momentum to look up tiny details, and it starts to slow down the forward progress of the book I think you are in trouble. Writing, like sex, should be fun, but you do have to work at it. But if it’s all work you’re likely to end up not enjoying the act of writing. I think King in his book On Writing says that he just bulls forward, and puts in place holders like “Put in neat shit here”. He wants to get to the end of the story first.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I think Caesar’s Women is the weakest of the lot, the following two are better again.
I’ve tried place holders, but my brain doesn’t like them. I get blocked when I know there’s holes and muck behind.
What I have figured out works for me is writing out of order, and that sometimes helps when I get stuck on researching a detail - the basic research I do in the planning and outlining stage anyway. Though I had to add one rule there: if I abandon a scene more than twice, I have to finish it the third time before I’m allowed to move elsewhere.
I only write fiction since fall 2001 so I’m still sort of an apprentice, I’d say.
March 20th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Aaargh! Writing out of order. You and George. I stand in awe of people who can do that, but I can’t move forward unless I walk the path in a very linear way. The thing I love about writing is how totally unique it is to each individual.
(Hi, I”m up from a nap that never actually became a nap so I figured I might as well feel crappy while sitting up.)
March 20th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
My brain’s wired weird.
When I call a scene finished, it includes to replace facts like they rode along the Via Have to Look That Up by the real name, while I don’t mind things like …said Gisco, the Balearic slinger who during the desperate break through the German wall had joined the group, despite the fact he’ll get shown to join the breakthrough in an earlier scene not yet written. Only when I merge several connected scenes to a larger entity I’ll deal with that sort double info. Maybe it’s because I think in scenes while the overall outline is just that - a backbone to hinge scenes on. It’s probably also the resaon why I write in multiple/omniscient POV and tend to have several MCs.
Try a good Grog Hamburg style: lots of rum, some hot water, sugar if you want.
May 16th, 2007 at 10:47 am
I recently finished my second year of law school. On my constitutional law final, one of the multiple choice questions was something to the effect of: WHAT WAS HEINRICH HIMMLER’S FAVORITE MOVIE?
Forget the irrelevance of this question in the context of a Con Law Final exam for a second… Do you know of any place I might find out this “fact?” Thank you!
May 16th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Law School. I’m supressing a shudder. I did really well in law school and then I had to become a lawyer. Thankfully I escaped and now I get paid to dream and make up stories and write them down.
What a strange test question. I’ve loaned most of my WWII research books to my friend Ian. There’s a book called THE ORDER OF THE DEATHS HEAD about the SS that might have something that outre. I’m looking through one of my biographies of Himmler, and I can’t find anything. I would “do the google” as the idiot in the White House would say, and just see what comes up. Bearing in mind, of course, that there’s a lot of horseshit out on the web.
I’m betting Himmler’s favorite movie was something sappy and romantic. These guys would murder thousands in the camps, and then cry over a sick puppy or the beauty of a sunset.