Writing Right with Dmitri: Messing About with History
Created | Updated Sep 30, 2012
Words, words, words. That's what we're made of. Herewith some of my thoughts on what we're doing with them.
Writing Right with Dmitri: Messing About with History
You live in the 21st Century. What a vantage point you have. Now, mind you, we don't know how much longer the human race has got: maybe it's millions of years. Maybe not. Heck, we don't even know how long this civilisation has got. After all, most civilisations in history last about a millennium, then go down for the count, ushering in another 'dark age'. But, while we've got the lights on, we can at least enjoy our perspective, which means as writers that when we want to set our characters up in interesting and believable situations, we have a lot of historical knowledge to choose from, and we can expect our readers to have at least some idea of the historical background.
The question is, if we're doing fiction, just how much licence do we take with the material? After all, we don't know everything. Fortunately, neither do our readers, who probably won't get too annoyed if we move the medieval baker's shop to the other side of the street. But how much finagling is, strictly speaking, legal? What to fiddle while Rome burns, and when to point out that that fiddle was really a lyre?
Over in Peer Review, there's a great entry coming up on Horatio Hornblower, CS Forester's naval hero. Florida Sailor has pointed out that Forester took some liberties with history: for instance, he invented a sister for the Duke of Wellington, just so Hornblower could 'marry up'. Some people may find that acceptable, others, not so much. Bernard Cornwell, who deals with the same period, didn't involve his hero, Richard Sharpe, in any marriage shenanigans that high-flown. Cornwell stuck to real battles with real outcomes – he just took the liberty of making Sharpe the saviour of the day. Fair enough.
Most of us don't really remember exactly who, what, when, where, unless a certain period of history is our specialty. In his brilliant novel, Time and Again, Jack Finney uses human imagination and the perdurance of physical objects, such as buildings, to effect a form of machine-free time travel. It's effective, and a lot of the book is taken up with recreating New York City in 1882. Finney admitted to a cheat, however: it was really important for his story to take place in 1882. He needed two things: an historical fire, and the location of the arm of the Statue of Liberty, which that year was sitting in the middle of a square in the city. But his hero was going to use the Dakota Building to time travel, and the Dakota wasn't finished for two more years. He fudged, reckoning that it wouldn't bother us too much. It doesn't. 25 years later, Finney revisited his concept, sending his chrononaut back to mess about aboard Titanic. You can guess how that comes out. Never try to steer Titanic, it doesn't work.
Ah, Titanic. We know it so well by now. We could probably find our way to the dining room – and know what we wanted the band to play. We might disagree as to whether Molly Brown looked much like Kathy Bates (she was a handsome woman, though), but we will admit that James Cameron managed to stay out of the way of the world's largest metaphor by inventing a couple of lovebirds who weren't on the passenger list.
The main problem with a Titanic novel occurs if you want your character to survive. For females, this isn't too hard: about three-quarters of them made it. The survival rate on males, however, was much lower, and if you don’t want your guy to look like a heel, you've got to find a way to get him safely and honourably to the Carpathia. Most writers recommend Collapsible B: it was the upturned boat on which, originally, several dozen men stood, rocking the boat from side to side to keep it afloat. Eventually, 14 of them made it to rescue. Over the years, so many fictional characters have left Titanic via Collapsible B that they could probably fill a deck of the Queen Mary. So it goes.
If you want your character to be a POW in the US Civil War, take your pick: Andersonville had 45,000 prisoners. You can't go wrong. If your character is a Confederate, the first question is: why? Oh, you want a Reb, anyway? Try Elmira, another hellhole.
World War II? You can cheat and put your British officer in Colditz. It's a fun place – really. (Not so much, these days: it's a medical clinic.) Or play it safer: put him in Stalag Luft III in Silesia. The place was huge, and lots of escape attempts took place, including the infamous 'Great Escape'. Can you do the same if your character is German? Ayup. Think of the book The One That Got Away, the true story of Franz von Werra's daring escape from Canada. Has this sort of thing been done fictionally? Sure. One writer even had his Germans escape from a POW camp in Arizona. Quite realistically, they'd been reading far too much Karl May, which completely befuddled the Indian tribe they tried to move in with. See? You can find all sorts of niches for your characters, if you look around a bit.
Historical fiction doesn't have to be dull. And it doesn't have to take too many liberties. A lot of strange things have happened in the last several hundred years, and not all of them are well-known and thoroughly chewed over. Try strolling through the Library of Congress photo collections – if you run across an intriguing picture, try researching the background. Better yet, pick a year, any year. Find some old pictures, and write a story about the people in the pictures.
Some historian may carp, but historians don't buy all that much fiction. Your audience might find your take on things refreshing.
For extra credit: Here's a Library of Congress photo, public domain. Try writing a story or poem about it. You know you want to. Come on, I dare you.
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