Laurence O'Bryan runs the excellent Books Go Social site where he previews indie novels by sharing their opening pages. Tinderspark is on there. Anyway, this week Laurence kindly let me post as a Guest Author on his main blog.
The article was hacked down (by me) to a couple of hundred words and in hindsight seems to me to read more like a poem than a discussion. Nevertheless, I'm reposting it here with some extra thoughts but advise anyone interested in indie publishing to check out Laurence's site.
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All fiction is borrowing, but there’s a sense in which historical fiction is rattling old bones. Some writers build ossuaries, beautiful shrines where the bones can be respectfully displayed. They still charge entry though.
I’ve been writing about the 17th century witch trials, but fictionalising the Somme or Pompeii raises the same worry. I’m digging up dead people. Is this right?
I think two things set me off thinking about this. One was the actual historic sufferings of the victims of the Witch Trials - tens of thousands of people. They weren't witches or members of some conspiracy. I personally don't believe they were adherents to some pre-Christian religion. So telling a story that suggests that, in some way, they really were "up to something", that in some way they brought it on themselves, were in some sense guilty of the (shocking) crimes of which they were accused... well, that sits uncomfortably with me.
Then there are actual historical individuals. In Tinderspark the character of Fra Von Spee the Jesuit is introduced. He really did campaign, successfully, against witch trials, but inspired by his own rational judgement and Christian faith, perhaps his own innate decency. Suggesting, as happens in Hexenfire, that he's subjected to a quasi-mystical interrogation by actual witches seems to shortchange the historical man and diminish his achievement.
Some people don’t see the problem. “They’re dead and don’t know they’re in your book. Anyway, they’re from centuries ago. They didn’t have novels then.”
This is true, but one reason I write fiction is to respond to historical individuals as distinctive, demanding entities – not as types or statistics. Otherwise, why not write advertising copy?
“As long as it’s done respectfully.” Shakespeare can transform a shabby Egyptian queen into an icon of complex womanhood, but I’m not Shakespeare. Respectful is actually asking a lot.
It’s worse with historical fantasy. Now the victims aren’t even being resurrected through art. They’re being transformed, caricatured. How about a story where Anne Frank is a rogue cyborg or the citizens of Hiroshima are possessed by demons? It sounds tasteless and it condones what was done to the real Anne Frank, the real Hiroshima. So how can I recast the victims of witch-trials as fantasy heroes?
There’s always the disclaimer: “No resemblance is intended…” But some of these characters are the historical unfortunates who suffered – or at least, fiction aims to gain some lustre from the illusion that they are.
I introduce deliberate unrealities. Titles and places that are explicitly fictive or introducing characters that actually died the previous year. I’m implying: this is alternate history, it’s the history of another world, not our world.
These fictive discrepancies also insure me against being 'caught out' by history boffins. Because there are genuine historical untruths in the story I can always pretend inadvertent ones were intentional too. Har-har. One example from Tinderspark is the fate of Fox Von Dornheim. The real Fuchs fled Bamberg to a cosy retirement in Austria and died peacefully a couple of years later. I prefer to see Quality execute him in a wood, partly to get a hunting motif out of his 'Fox' name. Funny, isn't it: I have few qualms about distorting the history of genuinely bad men. It's as if, for his crimes, Fuchs Von Dornheim deserves to be misremembered. There's no shortage of alt-history fiction that casts Hitler as a vampire, space alien, robot or member of the Illuminati, but we still shrink from giving Anne Frank superpowers or making her a terrorist.
Maybe it’s the nature of fiction to gobble up misery and spit it out as light entertainment. The Romans had no problem with the Colosseum. Or maybe I’m being too pious – part of me is intrigued by Anne Frank the rogue cyborg… Are there tragedies that demand to be presented as they happened or else left respectfully alone?
Or are old bones there to be rattled?
The article was hacked down (by me) to a couple of hundred words and in hindsight seems to me to read more like a poem than a discussion. Nevertheless, I'm reposting it here with some extra thoughts but advise anyone interested in indie publishing to check out Laurence's site.
***
All fiction is borrowing, but there’s a sense in which historical fiction is rattling old bones. Some writers build ossuaries, beautiful shrines where the bones can be respectfully displayed. They still charge entry though.
I’ve been writing about the 17th century witch trials, but fictionalising the Somme or Pompeii raises the same worry. I’m digging up dead people. Is this right?
I think two things set me off thinking about this. One was the actual historic sufferings of the victims of the Witch Trials - tens of thousands of people. They weren't witches or members of some conspiracy. I personally don't believe they were adherents to some pre-Christian religion. So telling a story that suggests that, in some way, they really were "up to something", that in some way they brought it on themselves, were in some sense guilty of the (shocking) crimes of which they were accused... well, that sits uncomfortably with me.
Then there are actual historical individuals. In Tinderspark the character of Fra Von Spee the Jesuit is introduced. He really did campaign, successfully, against witch trials, but inspired by his own rational judgement and Christian faith, perhaps his own innate decency. Suggesting, as happens in Hexenfire, that he's subjected to a quasi-mystical interrogation by actual witches seems to shortchange the historical man and diminish his achievement.
Some people don’t see the problem. “They’re dead and don’t know they’re in your book. Anyway, they’re from centuries ago. They didn’t have novels then.”
This is true, but one reason I write fiction is to respond to historical individuals as distinctive, demanding entities – not as types or statistics. Otherwise, why not write advertising copy?
“As long as it’s done respectfully.” Shakespeare can transform a shabby Egyptian queen into an icon of complex womanhood, but I’m not Shakespeare. Respectful is actually asking a lot.
It’s worse with historical fantasy. Now the victims aren’t even being resurrected through art. They’re being transformed, caricatured. How about a story where Anne Frank is a rogue cyborg or the citizens of Hiroshima are possessed by demons? It sounds tasteless and it condones what was done to the real Anne Frank, the real Hiroshima. So how can I recast the victims of witch-trials as fantasy heroes?
There’s always the disclaimer: “No resemblance is intended…” But some of these characters are the historical unfortunates who suffered – or at least, fiction aims to gain some lustre from the illusion that they are.
I introduce deliberate unrealities. Titles and places that are explicitly fictive or introducing characters that actually died the previous year. I’m implying: this is alternate history, it’s the history of another world, not our world.
These fictive discrepancies also insure me against being 'caught out' by history boffins. Because there are genuine historical untruths in the story I can always pretend inadvertent ones were intentional too. Har-har. One example from Tinderspark is the fate of Fox Von Dornheim. The real Fuchs fled Bamberg to a cosy retirement in Austria and died peacefully a couple of years later. I prefer to see Quality execute him in a wood, partly to get a hunting motif out of his 'Fox' name. Funny, isn't it: I have few qualms about distorting the history of genuinely bad men. It's as if, for his crimes, Fuchs Von Dornheim deserves to be misremembered. There's no shortage of alt-history fiction that casts Hitler as a vampire, space alien, robot or member of the Illuminati, but we still shrink from giving Anne Frank superpowers or making her a terrorist.
Maybe it’s the nature of fiction to gobble up misery and spit it out as light entertainment. The Romans had no problem with the Colosseum. Or maybe I’m being too pious – part of me is intrigued by Anne Frank the rogue cyborg… Are there tragedies that demand to be presented as they happened or else left respectfully alone?
Or are old bones there to be rattled?