There's also always the people who just write the historical stories without research, but that just hurts me so unbelievably much that I can't even count them as real writers
Absolutely. [cringes and reaches for a blunt weapon] I used to OD on historical romances pretty regularly and since I started when I was twelve I didn't always realize when a writer was taking liberties. [cough] Looking back, though, it was pretty grim sometimes. And the ones I read later, after I'd actually started studying history, were pretty bad.
For example, I mean, OK, I see the reason why someone would mess with this particular historical reality, but just once I want to read a medieval where the Lord and Lady of the castle slept in a curtained niche in one wall and everyone else had a pallet on the floor of the great hall. There -- let's see you hide your illicit sex in that environment! :P I mean, you could, but you might actually have to get creative, what a concept. And it's just amazing how many of these fourteenth century castles came complete with a dozen private bedrooms. [facepalm]
there are of course people who deliberately mess with history, but in order to do that they still need to have done the relevant research
Absolutely again. [nodnod] I love alternate history, or even a historical story where the writer changed some particular thing or a few things, deliberately and to support the plot. But to do it well you have to know how things were to start with so you can make intelligent changes. And it's nice when the writer owns up to the changes they made -- Judith Tarr does that in a lot of her books, in the Author's Notes. Too many "historical" writers just change whatever out of apparent ignorance, though, because it's easier to do what five hundred other historical romance or fantasy writers have done than to actually look something up. [sigh]
So what I'd like to do is explore how a story is formed out of events, how it is related and which bits are remembered. Who are painted as the villains and who are the heroes?
That could be a very cool story. [nodnod] Mercedes Lackey did something like that in a short story once. She had this series of short stories about two female adventurers, one a mage and the other a mercenary, and there was this minstrel guy who wrote songs about them but got everything wrong, painting them as impossibly heroic when the actual stories had been very down-to-earth. She did this one story about the first time he actually caught up with them on their travels and was able to observe them in action for himself, rather than relying on travellers' tales. It was hysterical -- she showed what actually happened and then how he wrote the song, and all along the way we were in his POV so we saw how appalled he was about exactly how un-heroic his great bardic heroines really were. It was a great comic treatment of the subject. :)
Doing something serious would be cool as well. It's an important point to make, that stories are told and later written for different reasons. Everyone knows the old "the winner writes the history books" thing, but there are other factors as well. If you're telling a story as a cautionary tale or a moral exhortation or an explanation of some rule or doctrine or principle, then you've got a specific purpose you're trying to achieve in the telling and changing details, even fairly major ones, in service to that purpose probably won't seem like a horrible thing to do. You could make a great story out of how the story of some event changed and why.
Good luck with the next couple of days. Hang on, hon -- it's horrible being disconnected but it is survivable! ;)
no subject
Absolutely. [cringes and reaches for a blunt weapon] I used to OD on historical romances pretty regularly and since I started when I was twelve I didn't always realize when a writer was taking liberties. [cough] Looking back, though, it was pretty grim sometimes. And the ones I read later, after I'd actually started studying history, were pretty bad.
For example, I mean, OK, I see the reason why someone would mess with this particular historical reality, but just once I want to read a medieval where the Lord and Lady of the castle slept in a curtained niche in one wall and everyone else had a pallet on the floor of the great hall. There -- let's see you hide your illicit sex in that environment! :P I mean, you could, but you might actually have to get creative, what a concept. And it's just amazing how many of these fourteenth century castles came complete with a dozen private bedrooms. [facepalm]
there are of course people who deliberately mess with history, but in order to do that they still need to have done the relevant research
Absolutely again. [nodnod] I love alternate history, or even a historical story where the writer changed some particular thing or a few things, deliberately and to support the plot. But to do it well you have to know how things were to start with so you can make intelligent changes. And it's nice when the writer owns up to the changes they made -- Judith Tarr does that in a lot of her books, in the Author's Notes. Too many "historical" writers just change whatever out of apparent ignorance, though, because it's easier to do what five hundred other historical romance or fantasy writers have done than to actually look something up. [sigh]
So what I'd like to do is explore how a story is formed out of events, how it is related and which bits are remembered. Who are painted as the villains and who are the heroes?
That could be a very cool story. [nodnod] Mercedes Lackey did something like that in a short story once. She had this series of short stories about two female adventurers, one a mage and the other a mercenary, and there was this minstrel guy who wrote songs about them but got everything wrong, painting them as impossibly heroic when the actual stories had been very down-to-earth. She did this one story about the first time he actually caught up with them on their travels and was able to observe them in action for himself, rather than relying on travellers' tales. It was hysterical -- she showed what actually happened and then how he wrote the song, and all along the way we were in his POV so we saw how appalled he was about exactly how un-heroic his great bardic heroines really were. It was a great comic treatment of the subject. :)
Doing something serious would be cool as well. It's an important point to make, that stories are told and later written for different reasons. Everyone knows the old "the winner writes the history books" thing, but there are other factors as well. If you're telling a story as a cautionary tale or a moral exhortation or an explanation of some rule or doctrine or principle, then you've got a specific purpose you're trying to achieve in the telling and changing details, even fairly major ones, in service to that purpose probably won't seem like a horrible thing to do. You could make a great story out of how the story of some event changed and why.
Good luck with the next couple of days. Hang on, hon -- it's horrible being disconnected but it is survivable! ;)
Angie