The "language" debate -- again

Another bomb in the "language and authenticity war" has blown up in the blogosphere that caters to readers and writers of historical novels. Since I have one foot in that camp(and try to keep the "history" part at least reasonably accurate, and another foot in the "romantic science fiction" camp, I tend to follow such debates rather closely. And they do go on and on, seemingly forever But this one

One school of thought, and, contra the author of this particular blog, may be a minority, but it's certainly not slient. The followers of this school of though tend to be very vocal in insisting on usuing lots of "period" language, up to, and including, "old" place names, and deliberately "olde-tymey" langauage. Such usage isn't always appropriate; I recently tried to read a book set in Anglo-Saxon times which used this "olde-tymey" language, and it came out sounding like really bad imitation Shakespeare(and it wasn't meant to be funny, as the use of such language often is), but this author was dead serious.

In the case of the above author on the above blog, the person actually makes a case for this kind of writing. They admit, however, that one has to be careful about such language; there are words like "jet" and "go-cart", used for travel, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but 300-400 years later, they have quite a different meaning, and that is to be expected. Yet some readers reading the work where this kind of language is is used, claimed the usage was "too modern", even though the usage was authentic! Which is just one hazard in using "olde-tymey" words that are familiar to a modern reader.

But it's worse than that The author of this blog sets up a distinction betwee "writerly" and "readerly" books.. The former are somehow to be savoredfor their word usage and word play. The latter are "popular" -- the kind you would find in a drugstore or at an airport, which automatically implies, to the author, at least are forgettable things you usually just throw away. Many such books, whether historical novels, mysteries, thrillers, or something else, are basically "forgettable" in the way he describe. But not all. Because of this distinction, which is basically derived from earlier critics' dismissal of "genre" fiction, as opposed to a certan type of "literary fiction". The latter,is, in the minds of these sorts of critics, automatically "superior", the "only" kind of fiction anyone with a brain should read. In some circles, if you even admit that you like science fiction, or romances, or enjoy reading thrillers, no matter how silly the premise of any given thrilly, as opposed to, say, Jane Austen(no, I don't generally read literary fiction or Jane Austen; I just don't like either genre all that much, though some people are shocked, shocked when I tell them this) This author thinks "erudite" readers will "prefer" this kind of language-play and weird, or "olde-tymey" usages, place manes, etc. The blog entry also implies that readers and writers who "prefer" this kind of literature are somehow superior to those who want a good story. Whhich, IMO, is an incredibly snobbish way of looking at reading habits. My feeling is this: If you want "serious" stuff, get out a book on the history of any given period, read up as much as you can, while dipping into books written in your favorite time period or place. I also realize that what some historical fiction authors, in their heart of harts, really want to write a lightly fictionalized history text. And some readers like this, too, including, apparently, the author of the blog entry. There is nothing, per se, wrong with this, if you really do like this approach to historical fiction or any other genre. But it's not a matter of superior reading or writing habits v. inferior ones.It's a matter of individual taste. And it's not a matter of "good" or "bad", either/ there are, in general, no "good" or "bad" tastes in reading, or writing, just individual ones.

Which brings me to the blogger, and his "relationship" to Anya Seton's Katherine. For the blogger, Katherine basically falls into the "popular but forgettable" category. And the author goes after Katherine for what I think is one of the flimsiest of offenses, namely, what he considers to be "howlers", e.g., "mollycoddle", "chunky", and "scrawny", among other things. I don't know for sure about "chunky" and "scrawny" being used as words in the 15th century, but there are some who say they can make a claim for "mollycoddle". But, as the author of the bolg points out, most readers probably won't "notice" this. He does, because he says he cares; for him, the use of words like "mollycoddle" in the 14th century are just plain dealbraeakers. Fine, if that's what ye wants. But to argue against an author, and a book, which has been highly influential, often to readers and writers of historical fiction, in the nearly fifty years since it was first published, shows the blogger doesn't really really know, or care much about what many readers and writers like to read and write. Or if he does, he simply dismisses it. This is unfortunate. But perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Anya Seton was a woman, writing historical fiction at a time when most historical fiction writers were men, and those men may well have been jealous of her popularity upon writing Katherine.

I should also add that Katherine had a tremendous influence on me, personally. I first read it in my fifteenth summer, and I thought it was wonderful! I have reread it several times since then, and loved it, until the very last time, when it seemed a bit, um, "19050's-ish" to me. But in many ways, it was not only and enjoyable read, but in some ways, a highly influential one. Without having read Katherine the idea that I wanted to write a novel set in medieval England would probably never have occurred to me at all. Since I was also quit3e the science fiction reader at the time(and still am, to some extent), I never would have dreamed up the category "romantic science fiction" to characterize the "science" part of this historical fiction. Furthermore, I think I began learning a lot. I'd never heard of Katherine Swynford before, and ti made me want to learn a lot more about that, and the subsequent period that led to the Wars of the Roseses. I realize few readers would go this far, let alone end up doing some fairly serious historical research for the novel I"m writing now, but I"m hardly the only one so influenced. Katherine is hardly a "forgettable" book; it has sold steadily and appreciated by many since the day it was published. And I truly do not think one needs to be a snob about admitting this, whether reader or writer.

The bottom line here is, I really, really detest snobbish attitudes about anything at all. And when it comes to writers and writing, I practically hit the ceiling when I see evidence of this in writers or readers. Sorry, but I do. Such people may have cultivated "good taste", but they don't seem to realize that it is their tastes they are promoting. Which, in and of itself, is also not bad. If one, for instance likes books and movies with "weepy" endings, that's fine. I've seen at least one person who has explained why they do. And that is also fine. But they didn't attempt to impose their tastes on anybody else, nor did they consider themselves in any way "superior", though I still prefer "happy ever after", and that's the way I write mine.It is the assignation of certain kinds of literature that the truly "erudite" "should" enjoy, if they are truly "erudite", with its built-in attitudes, still sometimes filtered through departments of English in various colleges and universities, that does. I should add that though people who have gone through English majors, are exposed to a lot of "good stuff" , and this is sometimes visible in their writing efforts, most of these "English major survivors" are not snobs about their experiences, though their tastes in reading may be different from mine. In any case, it saddens me to see yet another opinion piece or blog space, still, in this day and age, expressing such opinions. But even then, I respect them, though I disagree.
Anne G

Independent publishing has promise, but also pitfalls

I recently read a book by a first time author, that was independently published, or "self-published" if you prefer.  I won't go into its plot or characters, except that it was a book I generally liked.  I then  let someone else borrow it.  I don't know whether this was a mistake or not, because the person who borrowed it, and then returned, who is a writer, gave their professional opinion.  It was not as good as mine.  Now I understand that different people have different tastes in fiction, and the reader didn't have any "trouble" with the substance of the story.  However, this reader was much more critical of things that I noticed, mostly about the struggles of this character in an alien environment, than I was.  The reader of the book felt that the author had just, as they put it, "taken a novel writing course and written a bunch of character notes, to fill in the character, but didn't really fill them in, in depth.  What I noticed was that the lead character seemed to have an awfully easy time adjusting to the alien environment in which they found themselves, which did seem somewhat "off" too me, and probably should have been shown more.  But the book was reasonably well-written, and enjoyable in its way, so I can say I rather liked it, even if my borrowing friend didn't, and I wish that author well in the future. 

 

There were, however, things about the book that were kind of annoying.  They weren't very obvious, if you weren't looking for them, but they were there, and I think this can be a real problem in "independently published" books.  In this case, there were paragraphs in the book that looked as if the line heights were somewhat different.  Only a little, but they kind of stood out, as if whoever was responsible for printing the book  had violated some computer code, or the code got oddly "translated" from one word processing program to another.  This sometimes happens to me, when, on occasion, I am sending copies of the second draft of the first book of my Invaders trilogy, to people I trust to tell me how well the story flows.  I should note that I need to know this so I know where to tighten, loosen, consolidate,etc, in the next draft, which, I hope, will be good enough to peddle to agents.  Naturally, I want the writing as smooth and polished as possible, so the agents will want to read it, and sell it.  It's hard enough as it is for a first time, unknown author, to do this. 

 

At this point, I should say that I think that "independent" publishing is probably going to end up being a pretty big chunk of the book business in the not-too-distant future.  It may not be for everyone, but because of the nature of the publishing business today, there are authors who may be able to make some money from the "niche" markets they write for, or their work just doesn't fit neatly into some category.  My fiction, for example, is set in historical time, but it's not strictly "historical novel".  And it's not set in ever-popular Tudor times(I think this time period is way overdone, myself, but that's probably just me).  I have a strong, and I hope, interesting female lead character, but Illg is not, shall we say, strictly "human"(at least not "modern" human, though she acts in recognizable and understandable ways).  So my book(s) might not "fly" with a lot of agents and publishers.  And I've heard similar things from other authors, and not just here in the US, either.  So, for many people, "independent" publishing might well be an option.  Whether it may be for me, I don't know. We'll see.  But in any case, I want whatever I finally get published, to look professional, as if a "real" publishing house did it. 

 

Which brings me to another problem.  I read another "self published" book not long ago.  The writing and characterization was much more to the taste of the aforementioned, nameless critic, I think, but for various reasons I won't go into here, the author felt that  their work was too "niche-y" to be "traditionally" published.  So the author published the book on their own.  Which was fine -- but. . . .

 

While the dialogue and paragraphs were recognizable as dialogue and paragraphs, they weren't formatted properly.  There were no indents at the beginning of each line, either in the dialogue or in  paragraphs describing actions or scenes.  It basically looked as though it had been originally published to some web page. 

 

Again, I'll recount my own experiences here.  When I first started writing, I "fully justified" my pages, more or less like a legal document.  I didn't know, at the time, that when writing fiction or most nonfiction, you are supposed to left-justify your writing, but in the first critique group I joined, someone who had once been a copy editor or the like, rather quickly pointed this out to me.  So I changed to left justification.  The other thing I did, which this copy editor didn't notice, was that I put "widow and orphan" spaces  in the pages.  Nobody pointed this out to me, but it began  "arranging" paragraphs in a really weird-looking way.  It was so weird-looking that I soon abandoned this, and my pages looked much, much more like a "professional" job, even though my writing at the time was hardly "professional".  Heck, I'm still learning.  But at that time, I was pretty much at the "apprentice" stage.  Or worse.  And if I'd been stupid enough to try to self-publish that material at the time, and then try to use that as a way to interest an agent, they probably would have thrown me out the door.  Professional agents notice these kinds of goofs.  And they don't like them.  Which is one reason why, still, many people who have self-published, don't get anywhere.

 

Maybe this is "too picky" on the part of agents, but I know for a fact that agents have to wade through a lot of literary "slop" before they find something they think they can sell.  Not only that, but they tend to complain about such things, though usually not from authors who are at that point, trying to self publish. 

 

But there is also something else going on here.  And it's my guess that a lot of would-be writers may just not know the "rules" here.  I also critique, and have my own work critiqued, on some web sites.  The critiquers are good at what they do, most of them not being "professionals" or published, but it kind of seems like  they don't understand certain formatting conventions.  And in some cases, they may not even care.  For example, I've read manuscripts where , when the author starts a new scene, they don't indent the first paragraph.  Why?  These people aren't writing "arty" stuff that deliberately defies literary convention; they're writing what are supposed to be readable, "popular" stories.  Some of these same writers do things like indicate scene changes by a space and asterisks -- in the middle of the page!  Again, I've been in other critique groups where the writer tries to justify this by saying they "like" it, but in the case where the author tried to justify this,they were writing something that was supposed to be literary fiction, with an overlay of "mystery".  The author deliberately wanted this "artiness".  But normally, when you shift a scene, you just leave several blank spaces, if it's in the middle of a page.  Only at the end of a page, or the beginning of the next, do you put asterisks if there is a "scene break".  That's because, when you turn the page, that's the only way you know there is a scene break!  Otherwise, this may confuse the reader.  They might start asking themselves, whether this is another scene!  And if you send this kind of thing to an agent?  It could possibly be a deal-breaker. 

 

I'm not against new ways of doing things, as long as they "do something" for the writing, and the person doing the writing knows what he or she is doing.  But these writers don't appear to have a clue about these simple conventions of formatting.  For a novel, you don't make your work look like a web page.  You don't  have lines that are different heights or sentences in formats different from one another(e.g. one paragraph in Times New Roman 12 and another paragraph in Arial italics, unless you're doing something like having the person write a letter or the writer visualizes, say, a poster or a sign at a demonstration or the like.  If  writing is self-published this way, it's very unlikely that any agent will fulfill their dream of picking it up and being impressed, and successfully peddling it to a publishing house.  However, if they pay attention to the normal conventions, and make sure that whatever they published doesn't look like an "amateurish" job, they may well have a chance, especially as markets change, open up, and readers become more aggressive about making their buying choices.

Anne G

The ultimate "accuracy obsessive"

Recently on a venue where people discuss historical mysteries, people got into a discussion about anachronisms in historical mysteries taking place in relatively recent times.  Somebody brought up a book they'd read, where the writer had the women wearing pantyhose back in the 1920s.  Nobody disagreed that this was anachronistic, even though women nowadays -- if they can possibly avoid it -- tend not to wear pantyhose at all(I know that in some work situations I had to wear pantyhose, and boy, even in a Seattle July or August, I hated them, and took them off as soon as I could after getting off work!).  Be that as it may, the anachronism here is this:  pantyhose weren't widely worn until the latter part of the 1960's.  I know, because I was one of the earlier adopters.  They were a lot more comfortable than girdles.  Before then, women generally wore girdles and garters to which they attached nylon hose.  These were uncomfortable in a different way, but women wore what they felt they had to wear, I guess.  So a woman wearing pantyhose in the 1920's would indeed be an anachronism, since pantyhose weren't yet invented.

 

Be that as it may,  and as is often the case in such discussions, it spawned another discussion about "anachronistic" language.  And this is where another "accuracy obsessive" person popped up their head.  It happened like this:  the person in question mentioned that they had tried to read Anya Seton's famous historical novel, Katherine, a story, more or less, about Katherine Swynford, who was an interesting personage living in the mid to late fourteenth century, and more or less important for who she married, and the descendants of that marriage(and other marriages of related people).  It seems that this person objected to the fact that Ms. Seton had someone (frankly, I can't remember who, at this point, it's been a long time since I read the book), uttering the word  "mollycoddle"  The poster said they were upset because "mollycoddle", they pointed out, was a nineteenth century word!  The result?  They put down Katherine and never finished it!

 

Here, I must , for the record, mention that I read Katherine for the first time, when I was fifteen. I loved it so much, that I think, even then, it gave me the germ of the desire to write a novel set in medieval England.  I didn't act on this desire for a long, long  time, and in the meantime, I reread Katherine several times, and still loved it.  The result, for me, at that time, was to get me reading all sorts of material about that period and some subsequent ones, and I kept on dreaming of writing a novel that romantic, set in medieval times.  The Gentle Reader of my blog may wonder why I didn't just start trying to write romances when those came on the scene.  I think that was because I loved science fiction even more.  It was only when I stumbled into the "modern human origins controversy", and decided that I had to write some work that would somehow make Neandertals respectable, that I finally found a way to combine the two genres, sort of, more or less, into my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals.  But it takes place in a far earlier time period than Katherine.  Still, the book was a tremendous influence at the time, at least in some ways, and I think it's doubtful that I would have even considered writing a Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals, if it hadn't been for Anya Seton and Katherine. 

 

So, having digressed a bit,. I come back to the subject at hand, which was the person who objected to "mollycoddle".  At no time, including the last time I read Katherine,  and put it aside, because by then I found the heroine just too darn "1950's" for my tastes, though it is still a very good read, did I ever notice "mollycoddle".  I had no idea until yesterday or so, that it was a "nineteenth century" word.  And even if I did, it wouldn't have mattered very much.  It is a word that is "old-fashioned" enough to (kind of) fit with a medieval character, even  if the word wasn't actually in use in the fourteenth century.  And so I sent a rather sharp reply to this person, suggesting that such an attitude was, well, snobbish, even for an "accuracy obsessive".  I stand by this, by the way, but I think that the moderator was right that I was overly sharp with this person.  In a more recent post, this same person suggested that  no one who has ever been exposed to literary criticism, should ever read historical novels, because, in essence, they will always find fault with them. 

 

This is an attitude I find even more distressing, because it suggests that anyone who has ever gone through certain kinds of college training, will never be happy with anything that isn't "deep" or "serious" or "realistic".  To a certain extent, this attitude permeates a lot of  writing, even some "genre" writing, where some readers apparently "prefer" what they consider to be "realistically sad" endings(For those interested, I've commented on this elsewhere). 

 

But why do most people read historical novels, science fiction, or any other "genre" literature?  Even when "lit-crit" trained, my guess is, they don't read such literature to get all philosophical .  They want entertainment.  They want to be carried away to another situation(even if it is somewhat "realistic".  They mostly, I think, don't read to "lit-crit" something.  And that, to me, is the problem.  Some people seem to be carrying their academic or other training to the point where they can't just enjoy a story for whatever it is, rather than weigh it against some standards they have learned in some classroom.  Writers, from Homer on, probably all the way back to whoever composed Gilgamesh, composed, and continue to compose, their material, to engage and entertain their readers, even if whatever they are composing, has deep philosophical meaning, or many layers of literary meaning embedded in their story.  In other words, historical novels, and other novels, are written to be read, not "lit-critted".  For those who just can't stand an unimportant anachronism like "mollycoddle"(all right, I'll be careful not to use it in my own Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals), I can only say that this is accuracy obsession carried way over the top, and is little more than, in my opinion, literary snobbery to boot. 

 

Sorry, but that's the way it is for me,

Anne G

Literary snobbery strikes again!

In a piece on her blog, The Disorganised Author, Anita Davison writes about an article she read in a British newspaper about historical fiction.  Perhaps, before I get into comments about anything here, I should state that although my Invaders trilogy is set in historical time, it's not strictly "historical  fiction".  I say this, despite the fact that I've always wanted to write a novel set in medieval England, so that's what I ended up doing.  And I've tried to make the history as accurate as possible, given there's not much "on the ground" in the period I'm writing about.  Still, I feel some obligation to at least try to get the basics right. 

 

I should also remind readers that I've written several blog posts criticizing what I thin as excessive attention to "historical accuracy", and claims about generalized "mindsets" for given historical periods.  I just don't think  there is any such thing as an overarching "mindset" for any given historical period, nor do I think, as some authors appear to, that you can accurately reproduce actual conversations of actual historical personages, unless these were written down somewhere, and I doubt very many of them were.  I  also have my opinions about the techniques some writers use to gain this supposed accuracy, but that's a story I won't go into here. 

 

However, my complaint is really about the article in the Guardian newspaper.  You see, it didn't take me very long to realize that Anthony Beevor, the author of the article, is basically another one of the, in my opinion, excessively large tribe of literary snobs who feel that people "really" shouldn't be reading anything but "fine" literature of the type they profess to prefer.  Beevor apparently thinks writers of historical fiction are doing historical periods and characters some sort of disservice by writing fictionally about them, simply because they are writing fiction.  Wow!  It also didn't take the article very long to clue me in on this; the moment he suggested that if writers of historical fiction wanted to write about a real person, instead of writing about the actual person, they should write a "roman a clef"!  Another wow!  This is just literary-speak for "write a tell-all set in historical time, but don't use anybody's real name.  And the arrogance of suggesting such a thing pretty much floors me.

 

I have suggested elsewhere in my blog, some reasons why I, myself, won't be writing any biographical fiction.  I find a lot of rather "episodic" and basically not too interesting. But that's just me, I suppose, and I've read some exceptions.  And I certainly wouldn't try to stop anybody from writing biographical fiction about some historical character, provided they do reasonable research into the period, and the life of the person they write about.  Most readers probably will read such a novel primarily for entertainment, as Beevor pointed out(and so did several comments on Ms. Davison's blog).  They won't be "fact checking".  Even if some readers get very interested in whatever period or person the writer is writing about, these readers themselves are perfectly capable of making the distinction between fiction and "historical fact".  But Beevor seems to think people are so stupid that they just can't do this.  Maybe some people can't, and there are some authors who apparently don't care what they put into their historical novels, regardless of whether it's accurate or not.  And here, I'm talking about really basic stuff, not just minor details.  This is something that really irritates me about Beevor's diatribe.  He brings up Shakespeare's plays, for example.  Many, though not all, people know that Shakespeare's "history" plays aren't historical, certainly not in the modern sense.  Shakespeare was primarily out to entertain the public, and he did a darn good job of it.  Besides which, the standards brought to bear on historical writing, as it was understood in his day, were not quite the same as ours, for a variety of reasons.  So what is this guy griping about?  If Shakespeare's plays aren't history, and half the audience knows they aren't history, how is this different from someone who picks up a book about, say Elizabeth I or Richard III(both fairly popular subjects for historical novels), which is marketed as fiction, any different?  Surely the reader knows, on some level, that what he or she is reading, is fiction.  Doesn't Beevor understand this?  And if so, why not?

 

I also have a feeling that, in terms of what he thinks people "ought" to read, he is not very far removed from that snobbish tribe of reviewers who trashed the Harry Potter series.  J.K.Rowling didn't pretend to be writing a "great" set of novels, nor, obviously, was she writing anything "historical".  But her literary crime was to appeal to a vast number of people of all ages, who became very engaged with Harry Potter's story, but whose writing wasn't "beautiful" enough to satisfy some critics, and whose plotline was too "ordinary" or not "realistic" enough to satisfy such people.  I think Beevor is basically in the same class, though he aims largely at writers of historical fiction.  Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Beevor, but if you don't "like" historical fiction, for whatever reason, if you think most readers are just too dumb to know the difference(or discover the difference for themselves) between fiction and fact,  you have another very  long think coming.   Given the opportunity, most people can, and sometimes do.  I'm one of them.  I'm sort of a "fact checker" myself, and I've read nonfiction biographies of a number of historical figures, and I've read nonfiction on any historical period that happens to catch my fancy.  I may not be a "common sort" this way, but I've done it.  And, apparently, so have a number of writers of historical fiction.  How dare you try to discourage some potential reader of a work of historical fiction, from doing the same thing?  People have minds, you know, and some of us actually use them!  Personally, I feel that, although I'm not, strictly speaking, writing "historical fiction", if I hadn't done this, I probably wouldn't be writing what I'm writing. 

 

I think Beevor's advice will probably end up being generally ignored.  People will read what they want.  Some authors will continue to be "compulsively accurate" and some readers will demand this of writers.  Others won't care, but read whatever historical fiction they read, primarily for its entertainment value.  Some readers(and writers) may decide they like the kind of "serious" fiction that Beevor himself apparently prefers.  Others will not.  The important point here is, readers and writers come to any book they read, or write, from any number of different places, and they're all good, in my opinion.  The Beevors of the world will pronounce and pronounce on proper "standards", but most people will probably continue to do what they always have when reading fiction:  get enjoyment out of whatever they are reading.

Anne G

This post may irritate some readers

Yes, it may.  And I hadn't even intended to blog about anything today!  Why will it irritate some people?  Well, let me explain.  I just stumbled across a blog with a post  entitled Why I love unhappy endings  The author was talking about how she was drawn to such "downer" endings.  Which would be fine, if it was just confined to her.  Every writer is different, and I can see why some writers might want to write about situations that are unresolvable and leave it at that.  What interested me was the comments.  No one  who commented, said they didn't like unhappy endings, either in historical fiction or other genres.  And a few of them seemed to prefer such endings because they are more "true to life", whatever that may mean, than what they describe as more "conventional" endings. 

 

I have mentioned elsewhere that this preference for "downer" endings is frequently a characteristic of literary fiction, though not always so.  And many writers of literary fiction, feel they have to write "downer" or ambiguous endings because they want to write fiction that is fiction, but is somehow "true to life".  That, too is fine, as far as the individual writer goes.  And some readers say they like "a good cry".  As I said, this is often a matter of individual taste or preference.  This certainly seems to be the case with Sandra Gulland, the author of Mistress of the Sun, and the blogger who wrote the above blog. 

 

However, I get the feeling, based, not only on the comments generated  by this particular blog entry, but by comments and writing I've seen in other places, that a lot of readers who call themselves "serious", have had it drilled into them(no doubt by high school and college English instructors), that truly "good" literature  must somehow be "true to life".  And since there is a lot of unhappiness in life, which is often not resolved, the truly good writer will "prefer" to write this kind of literature, and the truly "intellectually rounded" person will learn  to "privilege" what purport to be "realistic" endings and "realistic" stories over the the kind where a situation gets resolved, maybe not "happily ever after", but in a way that is satisfactory and perhaps leaves a ray of hope for the protagonists(many mysteries end this way).  But this is a  literary development that is quite recent -- it has occurred within the last 150 years or so.  And it has affected the way many readers, and some writers, approach their work.  In other words, "literary discourse" is heavily weighted toward these "serious" or "ambiguous" type "realistic" stories.  If you don't believe this, try to find long , penetrating reviews of mystery, science fiction. or romance in the New York Times Book Review, for example.  Or take the trashing of the Harry Potter series by at least one reviewer after the final book was written.  Stephanie Meyers' Twilight and the rest of that series has come in for similar literary trashing, but I haven't read the books, so I can't say whether or not this "trashing" has any merit.  To the millions of fans of Harry Potter and the Twilight books, it doesn't. 

 

I've also suggested that I won't write anything with a "downer" ending, partly for personal reasons.  I want to feel that there's the possibility of hope in the world, and at least some goodness there.  So, I think, do many readers.  Whatever one thinks of romances, don't any of these people who like "downers" ever wonder why they are so popular?  Yes, they are "unrealistic", but it is practically a requirement that the romantic hero and heroine live "happily ever after".  Life is messy and often ambiguous.  Writing about reality(which can be happy and fulfilling as well as sad and ambiguous anyway), may well satisfy some people, and I certainly won't discourage anybody from writing about "ambiguous" or "unhappy" reality, if that's what they want to do.  Nor would I ever discourage people from reading such literature, if that's what they want to do.  But many of us, both readers and writers, want a little escape from the often nasty, messy, and ambiguous reality that we have to deal with every day.  Life is hard enough as it is for most of us:  relationships, jobs, families, mortgages or rent to pay, food to put on the table, perhaps kids or relatives with serious illnesses, that temporary escape into a less ambiguous "writer's reality" may be what a lot of us actually need, in order to get on with our own quite realistically messy and ambiguous lives.

 

I don't know.  I like a good cry too, sometimes; unlike my writing partner, I don't want to read "downer" novels, ever, or watch "downer" films(she does both in the summertime, for "balance" as she puts it).  And I realize this is "just me".  But all I can say is, a widespread "preference" for certain kinds of "downer" literature, whether in historical novels, or in some other genre, may be a sort of learned response or an acquired taste, not a natural inclination.

Anne G

More "accuracy" debates

Over the past few days, more debates on the "accuracy" problem have come up on various venues that deal with certain kinds of fiction, mainly historical fiction. One aspect of this debate has been blogged on here and has inspired a number of comments, including one from Yours Truly.  Another, on Susan Higginbotham's blog, deals with word usage in historical novels.  There seems to be a rather sharp division of opinion about how much "accuracy" should be in novels with a historical theme.  On the one hand, the husband of one of the bloggers, takes the position that "it's a novel", and therefore, the "accuracy" issue isn't as important to him as "a good story".  On the other end, there are extremists who insist that the writer must get every detail "absolutely right. I'm somewhere in the middle, I guess.  For me, "story comes first", especially in situations where, as in the time period I'm writing about, there is little information on some of the historical characters that appear in my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece, and in some cases,no one really knows what happened to them.  On the other hand, I try to be as accurate about what is known about them as I can, getting them in the right places at the right times, as far as is known.  And especially since I am not, and probably never will be, writing biographical fiction, I do feel I can "invent" certain things, either when little is known about a real person, or when I have my fictional characters react to a real situation.  Since some of them have "crash landed" but are on a mission from a nearby planet in the galaxy(and they look an act perfectly human, though they aren't exactly "modern" humans), they can and do have attitudes that are not of that time and place, though they try to adjust their actions to the realities of that time and place.  What I don't do, insofar as I can avoid it, is have the people who were born and raised in that era, act like "modern" people of the 21st century.  Their motivations and thoughts are quite different, in some ways, from ours.  This, I think, is a reasonable approach to historical fiction(or, in my case, a "hybrid" that hopefully will appeal to those who like science fiction and those who like historical fiction as well).  I don't think it's a reasonable approach to insist on "absolute accuracy" in situations where many of the characters, particularly the main ones, are inventions.  It's also one of the reasons why I'm not writing biographical fiction; I've seen the efforts of some writers who are trying to write this kind of fiction, and the results are, well,episodic. But again, for me, "story comes first".  But also, this is not an excuse for a writer not to do his or her research -- and BTW, this applies not just to historical fiction, but all fiction that has a "background" or "theme" of some kind.

 

Let me give an example of what I mean here.  I'm currently reading the mystery novelist Nevada Barr's Winter Study.  It takes place on Isle Royale National Park in winter, naturally.  Ms. Barr makes the conditions under which this ongoing study takes place abundantly clear.  The team studies the conditions under which the famous wolves that live in that park, and their prey, the abundant moose,exist in winter.  No visitors are allowed in the park after October(it's frightfully cold there in the wintertime (but wolves and moose have fur coats, at least).  It's just the researchers, the wolves, the moose, and whatever other critters live there in the wintertime.  She also mentions that this study has been going on for 50 years, and lots of people follow the ups and downs of the wolf and moose population.  She also mentions the canid specialist Rolf Peterson, and the "granddaddy" of this ongoing study, David Mech.  These are all real people, the study is real -- they even have a website(try Googling for Isle Royale National Park some time, and  you will probably come across it.  And Rolf Peterson wrote an Introduction to the book, which I will be reviewing when I finish reading it. 

 

Ms. Barr has quite clearly "done her homework", and it shows.  She also knows a good deal about how the National Park System works, and what she knows, figures into her mysteries, which make them very, very interesting, especially for me, because as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm "into" wolves, and, by extension, "natural history" and environmental studies.  Though her situations are fictional, the background is quite real, and fairly easily verified. 

 

The same is true when writing historical fiction(or,for that matter, science fiction based on speculations derived from the study of molecular genetics, as the sci-fi writer Greg Bear has done).  It is imperative to get the basics right; if you don't, somebody  will notice, and complain!  Writers who don't get the basics right, often end up with glaring anachronisms or mistakes; I once read a very shoddily-researched romance(among other things, the names were all wrong for the period) that put a real historical person in the wrong part of England!  Ugh.  But that kind of egregious error is probably partly what prompted me to start writing this Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece in the first place(plus making Neandertals respectable). 

 

On the other hand, some people can and do go way off the deep end, in the other direction.  I think I've mentioned elsewhere, that Sharon Kay Penman, good writer that she is, has a tendency to "write forsoothly", which often makes me grind my teeth, because,at least for me, "forsoothly" language is just too distracting. Which brings me to the subject of Susan Higginbotham's blog -- language use.  She, herself, prefers modern language, because she notes, quite correctly in my opinion, that use of some words and phrases commonly used in the time she's writing about, would be quite confusing to a modern reader.  One example she gives, is a historical character referring to his "mother-in-law".  "Mother-in-law" is clear enough to a modern reader; the trouble is, this term was used for stepmothers(and presumably stepfathers) in the 15th century.   So she has this historical character refer to his "stepmother" rather than his "mother-in-law".  She also mentions that she feels silly using words like "certes", which is something Ms. Penman does all the time.  In this case, it would make absolutely no difference for Ms. Penman to have her characters(even if they're talking in Old French or Middle English, to just say "certainly", or "for certain", as the situation demands.  There are plenty of other ways to suggest the time period(e.g. referring to certain kinds of armor as "hauberks"), or describing something about the living conditions.  She actually does a lot of this, and quite well, and I think that's enough.  But she, along with some other writers of historical fiction, tends to be what Nan Hawthorne refers to as an "accuracy nerd", and to me, at least, this is silly.

 

For me, the bottom line is:  strive for overall accuracy in at least the basics(timeline, organization of national parks, molecular genetic studies, etc), and, if you're writing historical fiction, be sure your characters are in the right place at the right time, and are in the proper relationship to one another(yes, I've seen a lot of egregious mistakes here, too).  Get the details right as best you can, and do your research! Beyond that, again, at least for me, "story comes first"; write the best way you know how. Don't strive for a "style" , but write clearly and interestingly.  If you can do this, there is no guarantee that you'll get published, but at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that you gave the best shot to your effort.

Anne G

Flabbergasted again -- but maybe not quite so much

On the same romance readers' e-mail list where I reported that some people got all upset about the supposed lack of cleanliness in the Middle Ages, someone up and complained about romances where cousins get attracted to one another.  Her  reaction was "eeewwww!" She was complaining about this in Regency-era romances. Again, I'm somewhat flabbergasted, but not as badly as I was when I heard about the "cleanliness" issue. Well, at first I was.  Then I thought about it for a while, and after a while longer, I remembered stuff about kinship and marriage rules in various societies.  In the US, cousin marriages are mostly illegal, but in Britain, they are legal, but uncommon.  It isn't normally the pattern, any more, in the West, at least, to marry "family", which I suppose is why the woman had a "eeewwww!" reaction. I can kind of see this, if some romance writer tries to set this up in the modern US or the modern western world generally.  But in Regency England?  Jeez.  Cousin marriages were still fairly common.  Charles Darwin, at a slightly later period, married his cousin Emma Wedgewood(I mention this partly because it's the 200th anniversary of his birth, but that's another story).  Today, our culture considers "cousin marriage" pretty off-putting for a variety of reasons, but in other parts of the world, it's still going on, but has begun to decline, again for a variety of reasons. This is why I mentioned kinship and marriage rules at the beginning of this post -- in parts of the Middle East, cousin marriages are not only permissible, they are actually encouraged in some places, on the grounds that the man and the woman will probably be acquainted with one another to begin with, and doubtless reasonably compatible. A different perspective entirely, but perfectly normal in, say,Saudi Arabia, where(from our Western perspective, at least), most people don't have much choice.  Cousins from different lineages can marry in parts of Africa, too, and the rules can get awfully complicated.  And so on and so forth.  The thing is, every society has different rules and expectations about what makes a "good" marriage partner, and there are often other considerations as well(like keeping whatever it is, "in the family").  Plus, there may not be too many "suitable" marriage partners around, in a given "traditional" society, for a variety of reasons.

 

The point is, a lot of romance readers, even consumers of historical romance, just don't seem to  be aware of this.  It appears to me that many of them aren't even aware that societies and cultures around the world aren't "all the same" through time and space, and what applies in the modern West, doesn't necessarily apply elsewhere in the world, nor did it necessarily apply in earlier times. Cultures change and adapt.  But that isn't part of the "romance" world view, I guess, unless the writer is unusually sensitive.

 

Finally, if this sounds like I'm criticizing the romance genre, I'm not, really.  Basically,what appalls me is not the genre itself, although some romance novels are pretty silly, but the apparently limited world view of some "romance consumers".  It seems that these people can't get it through their heads that change happens, and that things like cleanliness standards and marriage rules change over time, too.  Which is ironic, because, in a way, romances are about change, especially if the writer has the heroine taking charge of her life in some way. But then, I'm not really qualified to comment further, as I'm not writing romance novels.  So I guess I'll shut up about this.  For now, at least.

Anne G

Flabbergasted

There's been a recent discussion going on at the Historical Novel Society e-mail list,which I frequent.  For anyone interested,it's at the Historical Novel Society e-mail list  The discussion started out with an observation that the famous archbishop Thomas Becket was found to be wearing a hair shirt and crawling with lice when he was murdered.  There was a general reaction of "eeeewwww", at least until someone knowledgeable about the period explained that some ecclesiastics of that period found it perfectly acceptable to engage in "self-mortification" ,the better, it was thought, to sanctify themselves.  Not everyone did this.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Most people, contrary to one of the most persistent myths about the Middle Ages, at least attempted to keep themselves somewhat clean, even if this consisted mostly of washing their hands and faces with some regularity.  Alexander of Neckham noted, at about the same period, that there were a lot of bath houses in London, which should tell the astute investigator something about how people felt about these things. 

 

However, the following day, I came across another discussion, on the site of a romance reader's, and author's site that I have frequented from time to time. It was part of a  blog post called Where Have All the Medievals Gone?  The! blog itself was unexceptional; apparently a lot of publishers just didn't think "medieval romances" sold very well-- at least in the US. What flabbergasted me was the responses to the post. A lot of the responders -- romance readers every one -- apparently couldn't get past the idea that people in the Middle Ages "never or rarely bathed"!  They all admitted that they had "cleanliness" issues, but romances, after all, are basically a kind of fantasy, and the readers regularly suspend disbelief as they read them.  So why can't they suspend disbelief here? 

 

Well, for one thing, this "cleanliness fetish" seems to be a peculiarly American attitude, e.g., "cleanliness is next to Godliness", and probably goes back to (some of our) Puritan ancestors.  Now there's nothing wrong with keeping oneself reasonably well-groomed and cleaned up.  This is one reason why, I suspect, that Alexander Neckham, who was more or less contemporary with Thomas Becket, wrote that there were a lot of bath houses in the London of his day.  It's also obvious that the readers who have "eeewwww" reactions to "medieval romances", simply don't know this. And, to be absolutely fair,I should note two things:  first, many of the responders also said that they liked medieval-themed romances, and many of them listed books, like Anya Seton's classic Katherine which, while not strictly romances, are certainly medieval-themed. Second,to be fair, I don't bother with "medieval themed" romances any more, either.  Why?  Because the authors of these romances(as well as many authors of historical romances set in other periods),simply do not pay any attention to the actual way people of whatever time period they're writing about, actually acted and thought.  One dead giveaway, in my opinion, is the use of "out of period" names, usually the kind that would be found in some contemporary "baby name" book or the like, especially for the female characters.  Thus, too many of these fictional "medieval" heroines have names like "Tamora" or "Candace",which don't fit the period.  And while the men have "masculine sounding" names, they're not medieval by any stretch of the imagination.  Just this past Monday, I picked up a paperback whose title and author I can't remember,whose hero character had the given name "Wulfson".  This was supposed to be taking place in Anglo-Saxon times, and you'd better believe that no English male of that time and place would have had the given name Wulfson! He might be referred  to as something like Edmund Wulfson, if his father happened to be named Wulf(except that's not how men in those times were named), but a given name??  Ugh.  As far as I'm concerned, if the names are "out of period" just about everything else will be wrong, too. And I won't waste my money on anything like that.  But that's another story.

 

To get back to the subject, it seems to me that this peculiarly American attitude is partly predicated on the idea that things that aren't somehow "American-related" just aren't very important, interesting, or worthy of notice. It's not just that the readers who won't read "medieval-themed" romances are projecting their own quite modern -- and culture-specific attitudes onto a period they probably know about only through the medium of Hollywood -- but it extends much farther:  few of these "medieval" romances get published, because they are too far out of the "range" of many readers'  ability to conceive.  Romance readers, on the whole, tend to like the familiar and the predictable,and while people from the Middle Ages are recognizable in their quirks, their "context" often is not.  And romance readers(as a whole), don't like "alien".  There does seem to be an exception made for "paranormal" romances in which vampires, werewolves, witches,etc. appear in modern contexts, but the reader knows this is fantasy, yet the setting and the "mores" are probably reasonably familiar(you don't have to try to understand "alien" mindsets, among other things).  A lot of this distaste for medieval-themed romance also seems to stem from what I call a "Hollywoodized" version of medieval times that a lot of people seem to have in their heads. While I, personally, enjoy the "larger than life" quality inherent in certain historical personages of the time,  I don't have any illusions that they would have exactly thought, or had the same attitudes toward, a whole range of things.  Including the "cleanliness" idea. It seems, again via the knowledgeable author, that many people in that era made an effort to bathe and wash, because doing so was a sign of "good breeding".  And given the difficulty of getting together enough hot water to bathe with, it is easy to see why this kind of thinking existed, though there is evidence that even peasants tried to keep themselves as clean as they could, given their circumstances. But as some other posters in the Historical Novel Society list pointed out, part of these "insular" attitudes may be a function of faulty educational systems as well. Combined with the apparently "conventional" socialization,and "conventional" attitudes that many of these romance readers seem to have -- but again, I must emphasize, not all of them -- there seems to be little interest in exploring a world that is somewhat, but not completely "alien". 

 

Of course, I'm "prejudiced" here.  I was not brought up "conventionally", and for a female of my time, I had somewhat "unusual" tastes.  Practically from the "get-go" I liked science fiction, though I liked historical stuff, too.  Thanks to Anya Seton's Katherine, which I devoured as a teenager, I wanted, then and there, to write something set in medieval England.  And, also apparently unlike most romance readers, I haven't led a "conventional" life.  But that's another story.  The point is, I think, that to read anything "different", or perhaps anything at all,one must be "open"  to new vistas. And if some romance reader can't get past the fact that they didn't have hot and cold running water, and scented soaps, and toothpaste and dental floss, in the year 1150, then, in my opinion, they are not doing themselves any favor, in the romance, or any other genre.

Anne G

Those pesky little rivet counters

Nan Hawthorn's blog Booking the Middle Ages has an interesting post today. She is commenting about readers of historical fiction, who seem to live to tear apart a particular piece of literature, looking for inaccuracies in historical detail.  Sometimes this kind of pickiness can get downright silly.  She mentions that some people have jumped on her for using the word "tavern" to describe an establishment in Anglo-Saxon England, where liquor was served.  For the record, I, myself, wouldn't use "tavern" here.  In my own work, which takes place at a slightly later period, though still in early medieval England, I use "alehouse" or "inn".  I think this works better. But I am not going to criticize Ms. Hawthorne, or anybody else, for using "tavern" in this time and context.  I fully agree with her, when she describes these people as "rivet counters".  Her post is worth reading, because it does point to a problem I've had in online discussions with readers of historical fiction -- some of them are absolutely "accuracy obsessed" to a degree that really bothers me, and in ways that suggest that they may be people who want to learn about "history"; they seem to want a good story, but only if it conforms to their idea -- assuming they know something about the time period they're reading about -- of what that time period was "really" like.  This leads some of them into some of what I consider fairly serious misunderstandings of whatever period they're "into", and to me, this is far more serious than "rivet counting", which is just plain silly. 

 

I'm not talking about writers -- and I've read a fair number of these -- who write hastily, don't research their period very well, and insert gross inaccuracies that even I can spot.  Some of these writers, in certain venues, have been extremely popular.  I'm thinking particularly of certain romance writers who basically just use a historical period as "wallpaper", and don't care, and/or perhaps don't think their readers care, about whether or not what their characters are doing re that period, or they put historical characters in the wrong geographical place, or write completely inaccurate descriptions of the events they purport to describe.  I'm talking about readers who read historical novels and then get upset because the description of swordplay isn't quite right -- or something like that.  The reader who came up with that one is also a member of a well-known recreator's society.  This is all well and good, but the recreators themselves tend to be, as far as I can tell, a bit overly obsessive about certain sorts of "accuracy" themselves -- an "accuracy", which, BTW, may or may not be all that accurate.  And then there are those who absolutely insist that people of a given period "wouldn't" have acted the way some historical fiction writer describes them as acting.  These are the ones who prattle on about "mindsets".  Now it's true that most white people, 100 years ago, thought that black people were just somehow "naturally" inferior, and "couldn't" be "civilized", whatever that was supposed to mean.  But there were enough people(Mark Twain, oddly enough, was among them, as well as some other writers and musicians, who actually tried to soften their plights when they interacted with black people), to suggest that the common "mindset" of any given time wasn't necessarily universal. 

 

The same is most likely true of every single historical period anybody wants to write about.  Not everybody, IOW, was a conformist.  Attitudes in the earlier Middle Ages, for example, even among the nobility and aristocracy, varied, though perhaps within a narrower range than we would expect today.  So when I hear people talking about "the medieval mindset", for example, I tend to cringe.  It's also true that in the past, most people had a much narrower range of life choices  than they  do at the present time. they until recently, even in the "developed" world, this was true.   If you don't believe this, just ask any woman who is old enough to remember how feminism developed, or, it they're younger than about 50, ask them what their mother's lives were like, and you begin to get the picture.  I myself can remember a time when it was thought that any woman in science, for example, was somehow an exceptional anomaly.  I had a ninth grade science teacher who couldn't fathom Marie Curie!  I was puzzled, because my parents certainly could.  But back then, a lot of people couldn't fathom a woman scientist at all.  There was a "mindset" in the middle of the 20th century that assumed that women were "meant" to be housewives and mothers,. and not much else, but not everyone bought into this.  As I say, the same is true of just about any era.  And this is where true creative writing comes in.  If you don't assume a universal "mindset" for any era, but recognize that yes, you will encounter  differences from "today", there is plenty of room for creativity.  Of course, some historical novelists don't write like this.  And some historical readers prefer a narrower approach, which is why I am sure some of them may not care to read my work, when it's finally fit to publish.  That is fine. People who write, must write in the way that suits them best, and I am all for the encouragement of reading in any form.  But, puh-leaze. . . . just don't get "picky" about minor things, or things that, if you think about it, may not be accurate, only what you might imagine is accurate!

Anne G

Obsessive veracity v. storytelling in historical-themed fiction

 

An interesting discussion has been going on among subscribers to the Historical Novel Society e-mail list .  Its about historical veracity.  I’ve written about this here, here, and here.  I’m not going to repeat what I’ve said in these posts; those who wish to read and link to the above-mentioned posts,will find my feelings quite clear.  What I find interesting to observe is, that there seem to be two camps among readers of historical fiction, and very few, like me,stand with a foot in both of them.  One camp, as one reader/writer put it, though not in exactly these words, likes a good story, with decent historical accuracy, but in which the story and its characters are the most important element, not the “history”.  If they want “history”, these folks will just get a history out of the library or buy one at amazon.com.  The other camp is larger, or at least more vocal:  these readers/writers insist that all detail be completely accurate, that the plotline follows the “history” exactly, and, in some cases, there should be no “afterward” explaining how the author “bent” the history for the sake of the story. 

 

I’m not going to make a judgment here.  To each his or her own.  At the extremes of each camp, there are writers who do things that essentially totally turn me off.  I’ve read all too many romance “writers”, who just set their novels in some historical period, yet had their heroines acting like “modern” woman.  Even allowing for the fact that, in every historical period, there are as many “takes” on whatever society you’re living in, as the people living in it, the writer has to understand that there are always certain limitations.  Suppose, 100 years from now, somebody decides to write a novel set in 1950’s suburbia.  And let us further suppose that this writer has people watching digital color TV, listening to the radio in stereo, and sending e-mail on computers. Anybody living 100 years from now, who read such stuff(probably on some future version of Kindle or the like), who knows about that time, will see the egregious mistakes and, if they’re smart, end up throwing said book at the wall(or at least deleting it from their files and cursing the money they spent getting it in the first place).  More subtle mistakes would be having the wife just up and leaving her stupid husband(if he is stupid, that is), and ending up as the top executive of some multinational company.  Heck, even today, there’s a “glass ceiling”, despite the fact that Hillary Clinton ran for President of the United States, and similar “ceilings” exist, to greater or lesser degrees, elsewhere.  It is easy to see why, therefore, some readers and writers get turned off by this kind of thing. I certainly did. That’s one reason I don’t read many romances any more.

 

But there is an opposite side of the coin.  My sense of the “veracity” issue is, that a lot of people who read historical fiction, really want “history” in a fairly easily digested form.  This is fine, if that’s what they want.  The trouble is, I haven’t seen it – yet – done in a manner that completely engages me – sweeps me away, turning page after page, wholly invested in the characters, with perhaps one or two exceptions, which I’ll discuss in another blog.  The writers at this “obsessively accurate” end of the spectrum often have many fans, and some of them write what is essentially fictionalized biography, which I have also discussed elsewhere.  But I don’t want to read fictional biography!  If I want that, I’ll just go to the library and check out a book on that historical figure.  On the other hand, a lot of people obviously do, otherwise, there wouldn’t be a plethora of “Tudor themed” books out on the market and in library shelves. Nor do I want to read some book that is as obsessively detailed as the writings of Dorothy Dunnett(I will discuss her more in another blog entry).  I have, in fact, read some of the writings of this author, and have found a lot of this detail just exhaustively offputting, at least to me.  She has legions of fans, however.  My feeling is, this amount of “veracity” and “detail” is simply just too much.

 

However, I think I see something going on here.  Historical novels are just as much a genre as, say, mysteries or science fiction, and all genres have basic rules and formulas. Historical fiction seems to have such rules, too, but they haven’t, in my opinion,  at least, until recently, been overtly articulated.  I believe that the “obsessive veracity” crowd is actually trying to articulate such “rules”, just as people who read and write the romance genre have begun to do, and they’re pretty clear for romance fans.  Violate some of them(e.g. have a “downer” ending to a romance novel), and you are likely to alienate a good portion of the readership of any particular gen, re.  Obviously, as the genre matures, more flexibility comes into play, but the modern historical novel, at least the more recent ones, have only just begun to articulate the “rules”, let alone allow for flexibility within them.  So the “veracity freaks”, again in my opinion, are actually doing this genre a favor; they are attempting, for better or worse, to lay out what the “rules” for writing such novels actually are.  That there is debate about how “rigid” these rules ought to be is, in fact, a good sign, because it suggests there is a wider variety of readership out there for good writing and well-crafter, well-researched work.  This can allow for the tastes of those for whom “story” comes first, while accommodating those who prefer their fiction about the past, to be as accurate as the writer can make it.

 

I will be writing more on this, and other related subjects somewhat later,

Anne G

Growing older, backwards

The film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button opens tomorrow, Christmas day. It is a strange time to open a film like this. It was originally a short story of the same name, which I first read years ago, and found it haunting, and slightly creepy, because it was about a man who was born 80 years old and "aged backwards". I don't remember where I first saw the story, except that it was in some fantasy/horror collection. Nor, despite the fact that I read it several times, could I recall the author, though I knew that he was someone well-known. It turned out to be F. Scott Fitzgerald. Once I discovered who the author was, I decided I actually wanted to see the film, though whether in a theater or on video, I don't know. The review in Salon seems to think it's an odd film, despite having Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in the lead roles. I've seen several other reviews which seem to suggest the same thing, so I have no idea whether it's a good adaptation or not.

 

Every time I read it, though, I kind of shudder. I think Fitzgerald intended it to be a short meditation on how transitory life is. Perhaps he had reason to, living as he did in the long shadow cast by World War I. A lot of people were confronted with the transitory nature of life, perhaps for the first time, in that war. And it made me shudder because it reversed the way we are supposed to think about the way life progresses. What's even worse, in this fantasy/meditation, is that growing younger, Benjamin Button loses and loses and loses, and is finally a helpless baby at the end of his life, just the way we are born. In any case, it confronts you and makes you think, however briefly, about these things.

 

You don't have to be a Great American Novelist to do this, though obviously, Fitzgerald did this extremely well. In my opinion, and decent writer can make you consider such things, at least momentarily. Few nowadays do, at least in "popular" literature, but that is another story. The point is, I considered life's transitory nature, however unconsciously and tentatively. I was young enough to draw back when I first read The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which, I think, is why I thought it creepy. My instinct is still to draw back, but having lived for a while, I'm more cautious about doing so.

 

Happy holidays, dear readers,

Anne G

Gender Genie, again

It seems like Gender Genie has been making the rounds in various places. Greg Laden's blog did an experiment with it, and so has Nan Hawthorne. Nan Hawthorne, or rather those who commented, came to the conclusion that this Gender Genie was a rather silly device. Greg Laden didn't comment, but given the writing samples he put up, and the results, he really didn't need to. I commented, and came to the conclusion that this is not only silliness, but sexist silliness. But I'm not going that way; that's another story.
Anne G

Gender genies(geniuses?)

 

A recent discussion about what I might describe as "gender-based" reading and writing preferences, on a historical novel e-mail list, was quite lively. It seems that some people like to read only works narrated by female protagonists, or only female characters, but some writers like to write only from a "male perspective". For me, this is kind of a "nonstarter". Though I have what might be called "feminist hackles", I am absolutely appalled when I hear somebody claim they won't read anything written by a man(if they're a woman), or the opposite if they're a man. I also wonder about women writers who can "only" write a "male" POV or find this "easier". To be fair, I've read plenty of works by men whose female characters are flat and forgettable, but write pretty good stories, reasonably well-told. I will comment more fully on this kind of thing in another post.

 
For now, I just want to mention that on this same e-mail list, somebody brought up something called the Gender Genie . This Gender Genie is a website. On this website, you can submit your own or others' writing samples to a little program that claims to be able to tell whether the work you submit was written by a man or a woman. The program, developed by a "genie" at Bar Ilan University in Israel, assumes that male and female writers use words differently.

Now I think it's probably true that men and women write somewhat differently, even in this, more equalitarian day and age(at least in the western world. Men who write, often write a lot about adventure and battles and exploration, in a way that many women still don't. And as a general rule, women who write, tend to be more focused on emotions and relationships and, perhaps "character development". But I don't think Gender Genie is really concerned with differences in subject matter, or the differences in style that may go with them. They are more concerned with the kinds of words that are actually used in the written piece. Even more interesting, however, is that about half the time, the Gender Genie gets the writing samples wrong. Several writers on the historical novel e-mail list, submitted samples of their own writing. They were women. But the Gender Genie "thought" they were men. I submitted some of my own current writing, and the Gender Genie "sexed" me correctly. Which again was interesting, because one of the samples I selected had a lot of action in it.

However, when I submitted a book review from this blog to the GeTnder Genie, I was a male! I thought that was very amusing. I thought that, since it was nonfiction rather than fiction, word usage might be different, and I was right.

Then I began to think about this issue. I know women who write(and talk, also), in a kind of "passive voice" style --- and sometimes this is deliberate. "Passive voice" as in constant use of "I had gone to the grocery and I had bought milk and other things, then I had gone to the bank to deposit my paycheck", etc., etc. You used to see a lot more of this kind of writing even ten of fifteen years ago, than you do now, along with a lot more "formal" usage(e.g.) "upon" rather than "on", for example. And people who wrote this way were almost always women. And generally women of a generation slightly older than mine.

I came of age, so to speak, in a period when feminism and women's equality began to be seriously considered . Feminism and its offshoots have produced a certain amount of silliness, e.g. women who won't read anything written by a man, no matter how sensible, or women who think the world should be run entirely by women. What it produced in me, though, was an appreciation that women and men both have interesting things to say and contribute to the ongoing discourse that's going on out there, in reading, writing, and speaking. And so, I've structured my stories that way. How important the sex of the main character is, depends on what I'm writing. I have a novel called Inside, Outside, narrated by a 15-year old Neandertal girl. It's science fiction, set in the near future, and thus not medieval. It's unfinished, because I couldn't figure out how to end it in a non-flabby way. Besides, my Invaders trilogy, which I'm now writing, tugged and tugged at me. And The Invaders, and it's sequels, have one female and two male lead characters, plus several "strong secondaries" of both sexes. The Gender Genie has always pegged my fictional material as "female", possibly because the way I use words, suggest emotional states, though I can write "action" when I need to.

 
But there are other, younger writers, who apparently write differently than I do. The current fashion is, especially for authors relatively new to the publishing world, to write tight, short fiction(it's less costly for the publishers), unless they are writing for young adults. I guess the Gender Genie "perceives" this as a "male" style(is this program channeling Ernest Hemingway?).

Combined with the willingness of some female writers to write from a "strictly" male POV, and I can see how the Gender Genie would not be able to match the sex of the writer with the style of writing. And about all this proves to me, at the end of the day, is that each writer is an individual, and each piece of writing is unique. That is something no computer program can calculate.
Anne G

Writers and their comfort zones

 

I've recently had some experiences as a writer and as a reader that have rather strongly suggested to me that it is sometimes difficult for some of us, both readers and writers, to get out of certain types of "comfort zones". I belong to an online critique group where the writers are all writing some sort of historical stuff. It's not all straight historical, and since my Invaders trilogy (sort of) crosses genres – in a way – I call it "romantic science fiction" because to me, that's what it is, some readers who do the critiques get confused. Some of them appear to get so confused they claim they "don't know the genre" and try to bow out. Never mind that I've tried to make what I'm writing as easy as possible to understand, these readers still don't feel comfortable.

 

The thing is, I'm not asking for an assessment from an agent here; if it was a potential editor or agent, I would expect a much higher, and more "critical" standard. Furthermore, a cursory look through the annual Writer's Guide will give the writer a pretty good indication of who takes what kind of genre literature, or if they take it at all. This actually helps the writer, since he or she then doesn't have to send hundreds of query letters, dozens of copies of manuscripts, etc., etc., to agents, publishers, or editors who aren't prepared to read them(even then, it's a "crapshoot"; there's at least one famous agent that's very "upfront" about his "gut feelings" about whatever is sent to him, and though this agent has sold a lot of work to publishers and is an agent for a number of best-sellers, I suspect he tends to prefer a certain kind of male-oriented "adventure" or "thriller" story. It's best for a writer to know these things in advance, so as not to get too disappointed, especially if one is a novice.

 

But critiquers? Hmmmm. . . .I kind of wonder. If they're in a critique group, even one that has writers who are doing more or less the same kind of writing(e.g. broadly, historical fiction), shouldn't they be prepared to get out of their comfort zone? It's fairly easy for me to tell, when I'm looking at something, whether it's Young Adult, science fiction/fantasy, romance, mystery, etc., and I can pretty much "work it" from there. If the story isinteresting, I've found I'm perfectly comfortable reading it and seeing how it fits together, and how the writing and structure of the thing could be improved --- and believe me, there's always room for improvement --- somewhere. This has certainly been my experience with "live" critique groups, though I found these unsatisfactory for reasons that had nothing to do with their ability to critique. About the only thing I would be uncomfortable with trying to critique, is certain kinds of more "experimentally" oriented literary fiction I don't generally read literary fiction because the authors who write it tend to prefer "downer" endings(see my blog post on literary fiction). I don't object to literary fiction per se, I just don't want t read "downer" stories. But if it's something else, I'm willing to read just about anything.

 

But it seems not everybody takes the advice of writers like Stephen King or Elizabeth George, who have both informed readers of their books on writing, that they should try to read all kinds of literary outputs. I can see why. I don't usually read mysteries or Young Adult material, but recently have read quite a few of these, and am finding I'm learning a lot about how various kinds of works are put together. I feel this has helped me in my own writing, even though I'm not writing mysteries or Young Adult(although there is one work "on the shelf", that might qualify and it's also in my fictional "Neanderuniverse". But clearly there are readers who mainly read romances or mysteries or "straight" historical novels, or whatever, and just don't venture much outside these "comfort zones". Again, per se, there's nothing wrong with this per se, but a potential writer should be able – in my opinion, at least – to see if the story "works", even if they're not familiar with it. This means, also in my opinion, that there needs to be a certain amount of "commitment" on the part of the potential reader. And for some, this will mean getting out of their "comfort zone"

 

Again, obviously, not everybody is going to agree on this. My general rule is, If I don't know much about whatever they're writing about – for example, a historical period I'm not familiar with or interested in – then I won't critique it. I don't think that's fair. But otherwise, I'll give it my best shot.

 

Finally, it's also interesting that readers have their "comfort zones". I've just been having an interesting e-mail conversation who didn't like Mistress of the Art of Death, by Ariana Franklin, who also writes historical novels as Diana Norman. In the book there was a rather nasty, to this reader, description of some child's eyes being pulled out, but as I recall, it was rather brief, and served to show just how nasty the person doing it actually was. It "creeped out" that particular reader, whose apparent sensitivity level was so high that they apparently forgot they weren't watching Nightmare on Elm Street. Again, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with anything here, just acknowledging that different people, as readers, have different sensibilities, so to speak. I would be just as bothered as the reader was, if some TV newscaster described such an act. But this was on the pages of a book, and therefore provided the necessary "distance". At least that was the way I looked at it.

 

I guess all of this is just part of the writer's learning process. Learning how people react, and what they're comfortable with is very much , I think, part of a writer's job. It's just as much a part of a writer's job, as putting together a coherent story. Not, mind you, that this will change the way I write my own stories; it just informs me of how varied the potential audience out there actually is, and what they may or may not be comfortable with.

Anne G

 

Guy readers and girl readers

I had an interesting conversation, earlier today, with some people on the forum Anglo-Saxon England. We were all discussing a book called Housecarl, whose author, Lawrence Brown, apparently needs an editor --- at least in my opinion. He wrote a sequel called Cold Heart, Cruel Hand, which I tried to read, but gave up on, because it had some glaring historical errors, and some pretty one-dimensional characters(including a rather clownish version of a historical character I'm using in my Invaders trilogy). He enjoyed lots of battle scenes. It seems, like a lot of "guys", he's really "into" historical battles, and will talk endlessly about them. Since Housecarl has a long description of one very famous battle, I guess he enjoyed it. But he also admitted that he doesn't read much fiction. However, one good thing about him is, he's very knowledgeable about some historical things, and he has access to material I just don't. So in that sense, he has an advantage.

However, my feeling is that you don't have to be a "guy" to "get" a well-written battle scene. Any competent writer can probably do this, and it's more importan --- at least for me --- to get into larger issues in historical writing, e.g. how the character or characters react to whatever situation they find themselves in, at least in the context of their times.

But it seems like some "guy" readers aren't all that interested in anything much but action, action, action. And "battle scenes", for these kinds of readers, are a big part of this. Some evolutionary psychology types may claim this is "in the male genes", and maybe, in a way, it is. But while there are a lot of writers of the male persuasion, who write books with "nonstop action", there are others who try to develop their characters a little more deeply. Bernard Cornwell does this, to a certain extent, at least in his Uhtred series, which has a lot of battles, and which, by the way, I quite enjoy. On the other hand, Lawrence Brown doesn't even seem to have bothered; still a lot of readers seemed to enjoy his books --- and it appears to me they were mostly "guys". And maybe they were or are mostly "guys" like my correspondent, who don't normally read a lot of fiction.

Don't misunderstand. I enjoy a good "battle scene", if the plot requires it. And it may seem contradictory for me to say, when I've explained several times why I won't be writing any "literary fiction", that I want at least some "character development". Because genre fiction just isn't very successful if it runs on plot alone, without any character development. Just as literary fiction is(at least to me) excruciatingly boring) if there isn't at least some sort of plot development.

But the trouble with a lot of "guy books" like Lawrence Brown's is, there's too much plot and not enough character. It's as if the writers are in such a hurry to write action, action, action, that they forget that people have personalities; they are not stereotypes. I discussed this problem in some depth in my post "Guy books and gal books", and I won't go into any further detail.

And, to be absolutely fair, I had another discussion, on a historical fiction forum, where I remarked that a lot of (American) romance writers(and romances are the ultimate "girl books"), simply don't pay any attention to, ar do any serious research into their historical settings. And I said that's one reason I don't read romances much any more. One lady on that forum really bristled, I suppose because so many brickbats have been thrown at romances, as well. I don't blame her, really. While it's true that there are some good romance writers out there, most of them (a) don't write historical romance and (b)they still tend to focus almost exclusively on The Relationship. This is just my opinion, but I think romances are only just beginning to "open up" the way, say the mystery genre has(science fiction is still dominated by fantasy, most of it bad, but some of it quite good), with a variety of settings, people, and characters. And that's one of the problems with the romance genre, again IMO. But there are lots of people who love romance novels, and a number of them I "know" who are trying to write them.

I think, still, the problem with "guy" and "girl" books, and "guy" and "girl" readers has to do with perception. Men(at least in the English-speaking world) are "supposed" to like lots of action and adventure, and women are "supposed" to like a lot of love and romance. I think the two sexes actually like both, but probably in somewhat different proportions and with somewhat different emphases -- e.g. most women will probably want more depth about relationships, and most men will still, to some extent, tend to prefer settings with a lot of action, but there's plenty of "crossover" here. Unfortunately, editors and publishers don't seem to have caught up with this, so the publishing houses still churn out "guy books" and "girl books", because they think it will make them money.

And yes, there are (sometime) readers, like the "guy" I was talking to, who just don't read much fiction, and fit this stereotype, just as there are "girs" who read nothing but romances(and have "autobuy" authors). For the record, my only "autobuys" at the present are (a) Ariana Franklin(her medieval mysteries) and (b) Terry Brooks(all his Shannara stuff). None of the other authors really interest me. No, I take it back. I will go out of my way to buy Judson Roberts' Strongbow Saga series, too. He is writing a (sort of) "guy book" for young adults, set in the "Viking era". And it appears he has done his research, and furthermore, his main character has some depth. Some of his other characters probably will, too, if they keep reappearing. The authors at the other extremes? Well, when they write something interesting, I may end up "autobuying".
Anne G

Fantasy? Or not?

There has been an interesting discussion going on at various historical writers' blogs lately, generated by a discussion on an e-mail list about the differences between "historical fantasy", "historical fiction", etc. I should note that, try as I might, I couldn't track the URLs down; I didn't save them. They're in some of those blogs, though.

But the gist of these discussions was this: Why some writers(and readers) don't like fantasy, and why does(or deosn't) certain kinds of fantasy work very well. In particular, "historical fantasy", which is defined as historical events "assisted" by non-means, or "alternate history"(which should be self-explanatory) came in for criticism.

Just for the record, I do read fantasy. I always have. I can't even remember a time when I wasn't reading science fiction, though there must have been such a time when I was very young. So, in a way, I can't understand why some people don't like fantasy --- except that some people don't, and I happen to live with one. In this person's case, I can understand why: it had a lot to do with the opportunities she had to read much of anything in the rural community she was brought up in. Besides which, her parents never had much money anyway, and the public libr4ary system in that area could only be described as "crappy".

But the author who said she didn't like fantasy(and who writes historical fiction), was another matter. She just never did like fantasy of any kind. Not even what are mistakenly called "fairy tales", even as a child. I can sort of understand; there are authors that some of these writers absolutely adore, but I can't stand(I won't go into that here, at this time, however). A lot of this is a matter of taste.

Unless the person in question never really, psychologically, was a child, or else was brought up to think that you "put away childish things" once you get past a certain age. There are a lot of people like that, and it's hard for them to give up their long-cherished beliefs about what is right and proper. And maybe we shouldn't even try.

Be that as it may, the discussion was quite interesting, because it touched on the kind of material I'm writing. It's set in medieval England, and closely(at least as closely as I can) follows real historical events. But three of the most important characters are Neandertals from a refuge planet, where they have learned space travel from "sasquatch-like" beings. They also have certain abilities not found in "modern" humans, though I(sort of) posit that these abilities stem from genetic material found in the so-called "junk genes"(which aren't all that junky, apparently). So my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpieces With Neandertals(it's turning into a trilogy)may seem "fantastic" to some people, and therefore may turn them off. This, despite the fact that there is no other "fantasy" involved, no "alternate realities" or "alternate history", just the factual history. So what would you call my book? I like to call it "romantic science fiction"; there's no such actual category, but it's very "romantic" and is somewhat like romance in that most of the characters end up happily.

Finally, I can see why some people don't like "historical fantasy"; certain authors try to "play" with historical characters and situations by adding "magical" elements. And unless the author knows exactly what they're doing, this just doesn't work. One quite awful recent example was Judith Tarr's Rite of Conquest. The premise was utterly ridiculous, if you know anything about the period involved. And Tarr is generally a good novelist. Even I, who am generally tolerant of fantasy elements, since I like good fantasy anyway, had trouble with this one.

None of this really answers the question of why some people don't like fantasy, but it raises a lot of interesting issues about what readers will tolerate, and what they won't.
Anne G