Historical Accuracy

After reading this blog post, I started thinking about how important historical accuracy is to me. I’m a bit of two minds about the topic, if I’m honest. On one side, I do love history - so much that I actually studied it for a while. On the other side, I don’t think not being 100% accurate with history when you’re writing fiction should be a crime. How’s that?

First of all, history as a science is still evolving. With new means of analysis and new historians who do not automatically assume the same things as generations before them, our picture of history is ever-shifting. There are truths which do not change, but there’s also an awful lot changing (especially as women and minorities are concerned, both were happily ignored by many historians and archaeologists in the past). For instance, it has recently come to light that there were female warriors among the Vikings, too, something a lot of historians would have laughed at in the past (because how can there have been a woman fighting alongside all those pillaging and raping men?). Female gladiators are also a historical truth - women were eventually no longer allowed as fighters in the arena (apparently, one of them kicked an emperor’s ass too hard in a fight, but that is legend), but for quite some time, they were not unusual. What is historically accurate by today’s standards, can be historically fictional tomorrow or in a few years.

In addition, there’s always the exceptions from a rule. For instance, as a rule you would not expect to find many people of colour in a small Norwegian Viking village. However, some people travelled far, even in the past. In addition, Vikings travelled all around Europe and even into the Mediterranean and they had a habit of taking slaves. A dark-skinned man or woman from North Africa could have come to that village. Perhaps they did something noteworthy (the Vikings clearly respected courage and honour, for one thing) and were freed and given the same rights as everyone else. So if you spin it right, it’s not impossible to have a person of colour in that village. Strangely enough, the audience doesn’t really question it when it comes to the ‘great white saviour’ trope where some white guy (more rarely a white girl) arrives in another culture and saves them from whatever the big problem is. But a dark-skinned woman who lives in a small Norwegian village with her light-skinned husband and their kids? That’s totally historically inaccurate and horrible and the author was just pandering to the Social Justice Warriors and nothing else.

The calls for historical accuracy often even come up when we’re clearly talking about fantasy which is based loosely on specific eras. A lot of fantasy takes clues from the European Middle Ages and when you ask why there’s no noteworthy female character in the book (or someone who is not white), you get the ‘that’s how it was in the European Middle Ages’ excuse. This is completely stupid for two clear reasons: first of all, this is a fantasy environment. There might be dragons or additional sentient races like dwarves and elves. It’s a completely different world, so who says that everyone has to be white? It’s likely, because this is biology and not history, that every world has climate zones and people in different climate zones have different looks. So chances are extremely high there will be non-European humans on this world. And there’s no reason not to include any, just because the European Middle Ages didn’t. Not to mention, as a second reason, that there were people of colour in Europe during the Middle Ages - as traders, as diplomats, as slaves, as descendants of all of the above or the Roman mercenaries (the Roman Empire recruited from everywhere and they held a lot of ground in North Africa, too). Not as many as white people, but the ‘there were none’ argument doesn’t work.

Again, this is not about writing a non-fiction book about history. If you write non-fiction about any historical era or topic, you need to keep to the facts. That’s the point about non-fiction, after all: there’s no fiction in it. But whenever you write fiction, you will take liberties with the truth. You will take liberties with historical personalities or events. You will have to, because your self-created characters can’t have been there. Because your plot might ride on something which did happen, but will, most likely, not have a huge historical impact. And that’s perfectly okay.

No historical novel does a perfect recreation of the times. There’s much we don’t know, for one thing. When it comes to the lives of the everyday, common people, we know a lot less than about the nobles and the kings and queens. For one thing, for a long while the common people mostly built with wood and wooden structures don’t last as long as stone structures. The common people didn’t write or read, so they kept no diaries and suchlike, either. And they had no scribes who would put down details about their lives and their possessions. So we have a pretty good idea, at least in Europe and some other parts of the world, of how the noble and rich people lived, those with influence and power. But it’s always a lot of guesswork when it comes to the lives of the peasants and the simple workers in the cities.

That leads to two possible kinds of stories: stories about invented or real nobles (usually taking a lot of liberty, despite the known facts) and stories about invented commoners (where most details of the lives of the people in question are guesswork).

And while I will buy the excuse ‘that’s how it was at that time’ to a certain degree, I do not buy the ‘it was like that in our history, so the alternate history with the dragons has to be the same.’ Dragons are very, very big lizards. Fire-breathing, very, very big lizards, to be more precise. We know that it’s often enough the little things (like a person being late or something of that kind) which change the course of history. How much must history change when we speak about humans taming and controlling fire-breathing, flying lizards? A lot more than just ‘well, it’s a little more sanitary than in reality.’ It’s likely the borders will be a lot different from those in our reality. Whole kingdoms might no longer exist. There might be areas which are just as uninhabitable as Nagasaki or Chernobyl, but for different reasons: because everything there has been turned to ash by a few dragons fighting (or, perhaps, courting - you never know with huge, fire-breathing lizards). Fashion will be different. Political alliances will be different. Society will be different, because those who tame dragons will, most likely, take the place of our nobles - they have real power in their hands. What if as many women as men have the talent to tame dragons? What if people from Africa or Asia excel at it? It would change everything.

Why do so many novels which use a historical background still feature the usual group of main characters, in which there’s mostly white dudes, nobody is gay, and the only woman is a love interest and future reward for the hero (see my ravings about damsels)? There were badass women in the past. Homosexuality has been around since the Stone Age. There have been people of colour in other areas of the world than just those where you would expect them. And why not revert the usual ‘great white saviour’ trope? Instead of having the white protagonist solve another culture’s problem, let a character from another ethnicity come to Europe and help a small community solve a big problem.

If you’re writing fiction, then the ‘it’s because of historical accuracy’ excuse doesn’t work. You will never be 100% accurate and quite some of the things you can do to make the cast more diverse actually did exist at that time, so there’s no reason to leave them out. It’s an excuse and nothing more.

Be brave. Dare to write something new. Dare to go past the way most people see a historical era and write a good story with strong, diverse characters. I’m sure you’ll find your readers - especially today, when you can always self-publish.

After reading this blog post, I started thinking about how important historical accuracy is to me. I’m a bit of two minds about the topic, if I’m honest. On one side, I do love history - so much that I actually studied it for a while. On the other side, I don’t think not being 100% accurate with history when you’re writing fiction should be a crime. How’s that?

First of all, history as a science is still evolving. With new means of analysis and new historians who do not automatically assume the same things as generations before them, our picture of history is ever-shifting. There are truths which do not change, but there’s also an awful lot changing (especially as women and minorities are concerned, both were happily ignored by many historians and archaeologists in the past). For instance, it has recently come to light that there were female warriors among the Vikings, too, something a lot of historians would have laughed at in the past (because how can there have been a woman fighting alongside all those pillaging and raping men?). Female gladiators are also a historical truth - women were eventually no longer allowed as fighters in the arena (apparently, one of them kicked an emperor’s ass too hard in a fight, but that is legend), but for quite some time, they were not unusual. What is historically accurate by today’s standards, can be historically fictional tomorrow or in a few years.

In addition, there’s always the exceptions from a rule. For instance, as a rule you would not expect to find many people of colour in a small Norwegian Viking village. However, some people travelled far, even in the past. In addition, Vikings travelled all around Europe and even into the Mediterranean and they had a habit of taking slaves. A dark-skinned man or woman from North Africa could have come to that village. Perhaps they did something noteworthy (the Vikings clearly respected courage and honour, for one thing) and were freed and given the same rights as everyone else. So if you spin it right, it’s not impossible to have a person of colour in that village. Strangely enough, the audience doesn’t really question it when it comes to the ‘great white saviour’ trope where some white guy (more rarely a white girl) arrives in another culture and saves them from whatever the big problem is. But a dark-skinned woman who lives in a small Norwegian village with her light-skinned husband and their kids? That’s totally historically inaccurate and horrible and the author was just pandering to the Social Justice Warriors and nothing else.

The calls for historical accuracy often even come up when we’re clearly talking about fantasy which is based loosely on specific eras. A lot of fantasy takes clues from the European Middle Ages and when you ask why there’s no noteworthy female character in the book (or someone who is not white), you get the ‘that’s how it was in the European Middle Ages’ excuse. This is completely stupid for two clear reasons: first of all, this is a fantasy environment. There might be dragons or additional sentient races like dwarves and elves. It’s a completely different world, so who says that everyone has to be white? It’s likely, because this is biology and not history, that every world has climate zones and people in different climate zones have different looks. So chances are extremely high there will be non-European humans on this world. And there’s no reason not to include any, just because the European Middle Ages didn’t. Not to mention, as a second reason, that there were people of colour in Europe during the Middle Ages - as traders, as diplomats, as slaves, as descendants of all of the above or the Roman mercenaries (the Roman Empire recruited from everywhere and they held a lot of ground in North Africa, too). Not as many as white people, but the ‘there were none’ argument doesn’t work.

Again, this is not about writing a non-fiction book about history. If you write non-fiction about any historical era or topic, you need to keep to the facts. That’s the point about non-fiction, after all: there’s no fiction in it. But whenever you write fiction, you will take liberties with the truth. You will take liberties with historical personalities or events. You will have to, because your self-created characters can’t have been there. Because your plot might ride on something which did happen, but will, most likely, not have a huge historical impact. And that’s perfectly okay.

No historical novel does a perfect recreation of the times. There’s much we don’t know, for one thing. When it comes to the lives of the everyday, common people, we know a lot less than about the nobles and the kings and queens. For one thing, for a long while the common people mostly built with wood and wooden structures don’t last as long as stone structures. The common people didn’t write or read, so they kept no diaries and suchlike, either. And they had no scribes who would put down details about their lives and their possessions. So we have a pretty good idea, at least in Europe and some other parts of the world, of how the noble and rich people lived, those with influence and power. But it’s always a lot of guesswork when it comes to the lives of the peasants and the simple workers in the cities.

That leads to two possible kinds of stories: stories about invented or real nobles (usually taking a lot of liberty, despite the known facts) and stories about invented commoners (where most details of the lives of the people in question are guesswork).

And while I will buy the excuse ‘that’s how it was at that time’ to a certain degree, I do not buy the ‘it was like that in our history, so the alternate history with the dragons has to be the same.’ Dragons are very, very big lizards. Fire-breathing, very, very big lizards, to be more precise. We know that it’s often enough the little things (like a person being late or something of that kind) which change the course of history. How much must history change when we speak about humans taming and controlling fire-breathing, flying lizards? A lot more than just ‘well, it’s a little more sanitary than in reality.’ It’s likely the borders will be a lot different from those in our reality. Whole kingdoms might no longer exist. There might be areas which are just as uninhabitable as Nagasaki or Chernobyl, but for different reasons: because everything there has been turned to ash by a few dragons fighting (or, perhaps, courting - you never know with huge, fire-breathing lizards). Fashion will be different. Political alliances will be different. Society will be different, because those who tame dragons will, most likely, take the place of our nobles - they have real power in their hands. What if as many women as men have the talent to tame dragons? What if people from Africa or Asia excel at it? It would change everything.

Why do so many novels which use a historical background still feature the usual group of main characters, in which there’s mostly white dudes, nobody is gay, and the only woman is a love interest and future reward for the hero (see my ravings about damsels)? There were badass women in the past. Homosexuality has been around since the Stone Age. There have been people of colour in other areas of the world than just those where you would expect them. And why not revert the usual ‘great white saviour’ trope? Instead of having the white protagonist solve another culture’s problem, let a character from another ethnicity come to Europe and help a small community solve a big problem.

If you’re writing fiction, then the ‘it’s because of historical accuracy’ excuse doesn’t work. You will never be 100% accurate and quite some of the things you can do to make the cast more diverse actually did exist at that time, so there’s no reason to leave them out. It’s an excuse and nothing more.

Be brave. Dare to write something new. Dare to go past the way most people see a historical era and write a good story with strong, diverse characters. I’m sure you’ll find your readers - especially today, when you can always self-publish.

Setting your hero up

When you plan on writing a story, you need to give your hero a background. Where do they live? How do they get by? What kind of work do they do? Do not underestimate the importance of their financial or social setup, because it can and will have an influence on the story at some point.

If you look at comics and pulp stories, where serialized heroes are fighting crime, you will find an abundance of main characters with what they call ‘independent wealth.’ Tony Quinn and Jim Anthony from my own past reviews, Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, and many others. Secret Agent X has twelve rich men backing him up and making sure he’s never short on funds for his war against crime. Brother Bones from my latest review is an odd one out, but only because he’s a zombie and has no need for creature comforts. He merely waits until he’s needed again.

So why are all the others wealthy or even outright rich? Because they need to be. For their stories, they need to be able to disappear or travel at the drop of a hat, something a person with a nine-to-five job can’t do. Clark Kent can only hold a steady job, because he’s a reporter - one of the few jobs were he can disappear with the excuse of following a story. If he were an accountant, he couldn’t be the Man of Steel at the same time.

In addition, many vigilantes work during the night, whereas most jobs are done during the day. That means a person doing a regular job and being a vigilante wouldn’t have time to sleep. Sleep is, however, necessary for human beings (zombies not included).

And even Brother Bones would have a problem, if his driver and sidekick Bobby Crandall didn’t work night-shift as a Blackjack dealer at the Gray Owl Casino. He might not need to sleep and rest, but his human helper does. Luckily, Bobby sleeps during the day, because he works at night - which is when most of the criminals Bones hunts down are active, too.

A few crime hunters, like Dan Fowler or the Germans Jerry Cotton and Larry Brent, do their work full-time. They are employed for it, so they get paid regularly. And, of course, they can travel whenever and wherever they need to.

This is something which will and should play into your story at some point, if you choose to write something in that direction.

If your character has to juggle their night-time hunting with a day-time job, there will be ramifications eventually. Falling asleep during work, for instance, which leads to trouble with the boss or even getting fired. Being that fraction of a second too slow to catch a criminal or avoid a bullet during the hunt, which leads to injuries or unwanted deaths.

On the other hand, someone with independent wealth also has problems to work out. Like having a certain standing in society. Bruce Wayne has to keep up the impression of being a playboy. Tony Quinn, working as a lawyer despite his wealth, needs to pretend he’s blind in public. Secret Agent X has far too many different identities to juggle.

Jane from my own Knight Agency series was set up in high society as the daughter of a rich man, because both her specialities, assassination and breaking and entering, may demand quick disappearances from her. She grew into her position more firmly that expected and has really become a member of high society through her friends and acquaintances.

When you set up your hero, think about how their position in society, their work, their family, or other parts of their background might hinder or help them on their adventure. A lady from high society in a Regency or Victorian period piece can’t act the same way a gentleman may. A man with a lot of family can always be threatened indirectly through them. Someone struggling to get by will be challenged by suddenly needing additional money or having to cut back on work for personal reasons. On the other hand, a well-connected socialite has all information about high society at her fingertips, because of her many acquaintances.

That’s usually not the main plot of your story, of course, but it can create a bit of additional friction. A little additional problem to spice things up. And if it is the main plot point of your story, then all the better: make sure the main character’s background and their ambition or current situation are as much at odds as they can be.

On the other hand, if you’re writing a series, you need to keep notes on the complete background of your main characters. You need to know who their friends and enemies are, whom they have dealt with in the past, where they live, how they live. You need to keep in mind when their background clashed with the story in the past. Did something change because of a past story? Did they make or lose friends? Did their wealth change one way or other? I admit I had to list who calls Jane what (Jane, Miss Browne, Agent Browne), so I got that straight as the series advanced.

Setting up your characters, especially the lead of your story, is very important. Some things might be obvious to you, because they’re part of the plot from the beginning, but others will become interesting or important over time. The sooner you are aware of who your character is and where they come from, the better for the story, because you can tailor it to fit with your lead much better that way. If you can create additional conflict through your character’s background, it’s all the better.

Sometimes, you might think you know the background, but during the writing process, it turns out you actually don’t. The background you’ve picked doesn’t fit at all with the story and always clashes with it in a bad way. The sooner you realize it when that happens, the better. Try to figure out what is easier to change: the background or the part of the story which clashes with it. If you’re writing a series, of course, you have to make changes in the story, because you’ve already introduced the background. But the better you know your character, the less likely it is for such problems to happen.

Setting your hero up is an important part of your writing process and you should not do it too lightly. Yet, if in doubt, go with your gut instinct, because it will help you create a character you can rely on and understand blindly. Try to use the background to make things more interesting, but don’t try to force that too much.

New Desk Who This?

While moving to a new flat, I also decided to finally exchange my old and far too small computer desk for a new one - a real desk, if one with a computer function. I’ve been annoyed about how small my own desk was for a long time, because I spend most of my day at it - writing, editing, surfing the net. Yet, I had a rather small affair which was crowded with my screen and my printer. I hardly had space to put something else down, was always at risk of spilling my glass of water … in short: it was way past time to exchange it for something a little more professional. The move was a good reason to finally do so, especially as my new flat is a bit bigger and I do have more space for a desk now.

My move isn’t completely over as I write this - but hopefully will be by the time this is published. Currently, I don’t even have internet, because my landline/internet connection won’t be up until about a week after the actual move. After the move, I will have to concentrate on editing first and foremost - the first John Stanton collection is supposed to be out at the end of May (I’m writing this on the 28th of April).

This month was anything but easy - my mother died, I had to quickly arrange this move, so my father can take over my old flat soon (the one I moved into is in the same house, but two floors up, and I want my dad to have his space on the ground floor, since he’s not getting any younger). I didn’t write much more than a few blog posts - this one included. But things will surely get better, once I’ve really moved in and my dad has as well.

The desk is only part of what is new, though. Of course, being two more floors up now, I have a different view than before. I have some more space, since the new flat is a little bigger than the old one was. And while I was preparing to move, I have thrown away a lot of my old stuff. I lived in my old flat for fourteen years, a lot of stuff accumulated over time. And I became very comfortable in it, too. Just as I became comfortable in my own life after moving out of home. A life which is changing now. But change is good. Perhaps, I had become too comfortable.

I’ve not been writing much in March, either, before all of this started. I think I was starting to feel caught in my project, in the series I’ve started already. I think I needed a new view. In May, I’ll be editing, apart from the ramifications of the move and the possible things happening downstairs before my dad can move in. It’s also a month for me to regroup. I usually want to write something after I’ve spent a month editing, because editing is what I have to do, not what I enjoy about writing. It’s part of the process, but every job has parts which you don’t like. With me and writing, it’s editing, proofreading, the whole shebang about turning the first draft, which I find fun to write, into something you can have other people look at.

In that aspect, editing has a lot in common with moving, as I’ve realized this month. It’s hard work, it’s no fun, but the end result is worth it. I’m not quite at the end of my move, but my new flat already feels like home. Most of the chaos has been curbed. Even if I’m without a couch for the next couple of weeks, because my old one didn’t make the move (it simply wasn’t in any shape for a couch any longer - 14 year on a cheap design will do that), I’m getting comfortable again. I can move through my bedroom without light already after two nights (even though I’m now under the roof with slanted walls). My muscle memory of this place is building (I’m not as good with it as Jane is, but I’m not a highly trained agent or criminal, after all). Moving is all about getting comfortable in your new place. Editing is all about turning the first draft into what you envisioned your story to be. Both is not easy, both is no fun, but in the end, you’ll have something you enjoy and, hopefully, others will enjoy as well.

The new desk is a symbol of the move for me, to get back to that topic. It was the first piece of furniture up here, because it came two days before moving day, while nothing except for a few boxes was already up here. It was also the second piece of furniture I chose without my mother (the first was the couch - my dad and I fell in love with the same one, so we’re getting two of them, one for each flat). I looked at it and I knew this was what I needed and wanted - it has space for my big desktop computer, it has space for my monitor, keyboard, mouse, and printer, but it still leaves me with enough space for a notepad, a reference book, my water glass, a few sweets (I’m reading out loud during editing, so during those months, I need a lot of peppermint candy), my kindle, and other things I might need (like DVDs at the moment, while I have no internet to stream my TV stations).

The desk also was the first thing I made myself at home at after the move, taking care of the computer, linking everything and getting everything to work. I’m feeling fine at it. I can cook now, my fridge was delivered today. I can sleep well in my new bed, I can sit at my table which looks much more inviting under one of the slanted windows in my big living room/study/dining room, I can shower again on Monday, after the repairs in my bathroom have been finished (but I can clean myself up old-school, so that works).

I also found something old, however. The first fountain pen I ever wrote stories with, before I started doing them on the computer, before I started writing ‘for real.’ A present from my dad, a very old one, but high quality. I got it while I still was in school, well over twenty years ago. I forgot about it when I moved into my flat fourteen years ago. I found it today, I filled it with ink, and it worked as if no time had passed. So now it replaces my disposable pens for my bullet journal. Not everything is wrong or should be thrown away, because it is old. The real art, I guess, is fusing the old with the new.

I have a new desk, a new flat, but an old fountain pen. My life is changing, but a lot of things will stay the same. Sometimes, though, new perspectives help with finding new ideas for writing.