Writing a novel in a historical timeframe that is acceptable to readers is perhaps one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But even harder, both in my fantasy writing and in my hist.fict/hist romance writing, is the narrating of a credible love scene.
I’m a fiction writer. Till this point in my life, I have written fantasy based on myth and legend. Two years ago however, I decided to write a historical fiction based around the legendary Sir Guy of Gisborne from the Robin Hood saga. Those who know of the book and who are followers of this blog will know it derived in part from watching the BBC’s Robin Hood series.
Guy of Gisborne (Tiger Aspect Productions/BBC)
Twelfth century England – a time when status means power.
Guy of Gisborne – a man of disturbing secrets and subtle skills.
The New year introduces some changes to the Big Red Chair on Mesmered. Rather than limiting it to just indie writers, I have decided to extend it to people I meet in real life and virtually who fascinate me, in the belief that something of their choices and their activities will interest you as well.
Writing the last part of Gisborne, I’m second guessing myself constantly. Is my language anachronistic, are my facts solid, how much variation from the accepted history am I allowed?
Recently I was re-reading the dates of Richard 1st’s reign and found that he was crowned in September of 1189. So… the beginning of autumn. That now requires me to go right through the whole novel to change the season in which Ysabel travels through France and England with Gisborne from autumn to summer.
That doesn’t just involve changes to the settings (eg colour of leaves on trees) but the kind of foods available, the clothes one might wear, journeys on the high seas, how thick a horse’s coat is, what flowers might be blooming, the presence of certain seasonal ailments and so on. In addition, I am now having to do a lot of counting of days and months so that the story ends at just the right point of factual history.
For me, so new to this venture, I read and re-read what I have written. Anything I am remotely unsure of I will change to red type so that I can re-read my research and insert the correct fact in the next edit. Even so, I am aware the true historical fictionistas, those whose reading and knowledge is exceptional, will find plenty to dispute and argue about.
Blondel de Nesle, Richard’s troubadour, appears in this novel and I can find no account of his physical attributes. Because he is a favourite of the king, and because Richard himself is known to have been golden and attractive and potentially bi-sexual, I am taking a great liberty and making Blondel to be lithely good-looking, bordering on the feminine. I am waiting for the trip-up, I can tell you.
Writing hist.fict is wonderful satisfying but it’s also a terrifying prospect releasing a historical fiction novel to a reading public that may know as much as, if not more than you. So much is known, so much must be respected. In many ways I’m glad my main character is essentially a character of legend as that gives me room to play, but with others like Richard the Lionheart, I am hamstrung by history and can deviate little from what is known.
I’m just wondering what other little gems I shall find on tomorrow’s read.
Gisborne deserves to be placed in its timeframe. What began as a bit of fun has now moved from fan-fiction to historical fiction, historical romance and historical fantasy. Despite the fact that the legend is just that, a myth, Gisborne -the- man- of -folktale lived during the reign of Richard Lionheart and so must be placed within that period.
As the writer, I was beholden to research the period in detail: clothes, time, religious practice, food, habits, entertainment, sex, medicine, politics, trade. More and more detail to get a sense of where my protagonists lived and how they might feel in that environment at any one moment.
Stacking some of the books
The more I read, the more I found to read until I felt myself drowning in books and in PDF’S from online research.
Drowning!
So how does one sort the stuff out, how much does one use? Is too much enough, or is a mere snifter required?
To be honest, I am not sure I know. I ‘ve read the doyen of historical fiction, Dorothy Dunnett with relish and literally gorged on every glorious fact she included in every line of all of the books she ever wrote. And at the other end of the scale I’ve read authors like Posie Graeme Evans and YA writer Felicity Pulman who write with a deft and sparing hand, never drowning the writer in fact; delivering just enough to give an authentic sense of time and place.
So again I ask, how much is enough? I’ve been involved in a lively discussion on Goodreads with the Historical Fictionistas about just this and personally as a reader I know I’ll accept an average amount of researched fact that any writer might want to give. Not too much. The exception to this personal reading rule is DD because it is very much her style, her tone. But as a writer writing my first ever historical fiction novel, I am still unsure how much is required. Without doubt the research must be used correctly; there shouldn’t really be any excuse for saying the clock chimed if the clock didn’t exist in the timeframe. But equally do I really want to know the detail of the canonical hours and how they worked? I love to eat chocolate but I’m not in any great need to read how its created.
My absolute favourites.
My narratives are character driven and I am inclined to only ever give enough fact to give the scene and the character veracity. I’d love to know what other historical fiction writers and readers feel about this and welcome comment! How much, dear reader, do you want to read? How much dear successful hist.fict writer, do you use in your novels?
To date, I have read 48 non-fiction texts that I have either bought, borrowed from the library or researched within the Reference Library and I’ve read over 20 PDF’s online. If nothing else, I shall have a head full of leads for another story and know the difference between chausse and bliaut!
Addendum: You might like to look at :
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/1124578-facts-in-fiction
and also:
Terrible introduction for a writer, isn’t it? Even if he is sitting in my Big Red Chair. But in truth, the main protagonists of S.J.A. Turney’s novels would have worn exactly that. If they valued their future. I’m talking about soldiers of the Roman Legion as Simon is a writer of historical fiction set in Roman times. Liviu from the highly regarded Fantasy.Book.Critic said of Simon’s first book ‘Interregnum’:
“I could not put this novel down unless I *really needed* to since I was drawn into its world and wanted to find out what happens. The novel has a combination of the expected and some twists and turns I did not see, so while I could glimpse where it goes, there were quite a few surprises on the way. The characters are well drawn and believable. It is also a blood and guts novel, brutal at times with quite a lot of fighting, gore, summary killings as well as drawn out crucifixions and as it behooves such, the main characters are men…’ Not bad for a first ever review for a first ever release. Enviable.
I approached Simon and asked if he would be willing to answer my Ten Writerly Questions to which he agreed. Despite the seriousness of his subject matter, he is a quirky man and I swear there must be convicts in his family tree because such humour obviously made it across the seas to build a foundation for our Australian wit .
Please make welcome Simon James Atkinson Turney.
1. To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I am the world’s most Yorkshire Yorkshireman. I was born in the ancient city of Ripon, in a maternity unit now sadly long gone and I was raised and schooled there, in one of those old fashioned Grammar Schools where children were still instilled with a sense of discipline. My grandfather, however, and great aunt, lived in a village seven miles away in the countryside, and I spent much of my free time there too, or at my grandfather’s photography shop when on summer holidays. It is no surprise, then, that despite decades during which I have lived in cities in several different counties, I ended up living back in Ripon and then afterwards in that very village, where I now live, married to a girl who came from the same place and went to the same school and whose family also live there.
2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?
At 18 I intended to live abroad. I pictured myself by the time I was 25 or 30 living in the hills of northeastern Spain in a secluded villa while working for the Archaeological division of the Patrimonio de Catalunya, possibly unearthing the Roman city of Empuries. That was my long term plan (see above for career options: archaeologist.) I am now far too tied to family and my village. While I love to travel and would like to spend much of my time abroad, I know that this is my place and where I will always come back to. Satisfied.
4. What were three big events – in the family circle or on the world stage or in your reading life, for example – you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced you in your career path?
5. Considering the innumerable electronic media avenues open to you- – blogs, online newspapers, TV, radio, etc – why have you chosen to write a book? Aren’t they obsolete?
Hmm. I also write a blog, as do you. In fact I was blogging before I wrote a word of fiction. I have in no way ruled out any other format. I would love to write a screenplay. In fact, I would love to turn my book ‘Interregnum’ into a movie. But no matter how many avenues open up, there will always be a need for books, even if they are becoming ever more electronic in nature. Books store the knowledge of the world. Without them, our past is so much less meaningful. How would we know about the Roman soldier at Vindolanda who sent home asking for spare socks, or the garrison commander’s wife’s birthday party, without the written word of the Vindolanda Tablets. Our main source for the history of Roman Emperors is writings of people like Cassius Dio and Suetonius. The written word should never become obsolete, for fear that the human race goes with it.
6. Please tell us about your latest book…
Ah. A choice. Dark Empress was released recently, while Marius’ Mules III is in progress. Dark Empress is the third and final book in the fantasy series ‘Tales of the Empire’ and follows Interregnum and Ironroot. It is a departure for me, being a darker tale than usual, set over much of the lifetime of three people in the form of a saga, rather than a straightforward tale. It explores new elements of the world that was formed in the first two books, such as the southern, desert-dwelling peoples, the navy and piracy, and the relationship between boys and girls as they grow into men and women. Moreover, it contains more elements of the supernatural than previous works. I wait with interest, and a little trepidation, to see how such a different work is received.
7. If your work could change one thing in this world – what would it be?
I would like to think that my work contributes to expanding the genre and drawing new fans to the subject of ancient history. If of every hundred readers of Marius’ Mules, for instance, one new reader is sufficiently taken by the setting to further delve into the world of Roman history, I will consider my work worthwhile. Despite the focus given to the ancient world in fiction, movies and documentaries, it still astounds me how such a tiny space is devoted to it in the school curriculum. Certainly in Britain, the whole Roman era is glossed over in a matter of days. A sad state of affairs, given that Britain was Roman for four centuries, their empire lasted over a thousand years (or even two thousand with Byzantium), and probably had more of an impact on the direction the western world moved for the rest of time.
8. Whom do you most admire and why?
Once again, we’re back to my grandfather. He was a man of infinite jest and astounding knowledge. He taught my father about ornithology and nature and the countryside. He taught me about photography and history. He was a pilot in the second world war, took photographs so impressive that they now form a collection held in a library, travelled extensively, brought my mother up as a single father in an era when such a thing was virtually unheard of, rode motorcycles around the wilds of Scotland, and could take an intelligent part in a conversation on almost any subject from Victorian politics, to the nesting habits of hawks, to the difference between single and dual prop aircraft, to the motives of Wile E Coyote. In fact, during the war, he suffered from Pleurisy and was moved to a ward where he was left to die, having been written off by the doctors, but where he made a full recovery on his own. Quite simply, I can’t imagine a better person, and I hope that I become even half that man to my grandchildren.
9. Many people set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?
I am no longer truly ambitious. Apart from finally removing ourselves from debt (which is rapidly approaching) and having a comfortable income, I have achieved most of the goals I set: married with children, living in the country, having a pleasant and interesting career (now), and having good friends. In my heart of hearts, there is actually still one ridiculously ambitious goal that I doubt I will achieve: to visit every Roman site in the world. Slowly I am working on it, but I hope for reincarnation, since it may take several lifetimes! Probably next time I’ll come back as a blind stoat who, as I earlier intimated, would at least be more mathematically competent, but such would endanger my travel goals.
10. What advice do you give aspiring writers?
I actually started by answering this one, since I was thinking about it this morning before you showed me the questions. This is the easiest, I think, and it comes in three parts:
Do not give up. If you believe in what you have and what you can do, fight to get it out there. Try every traditional method possible, but don’t be disheartened by rejection. There will be a lot of it. If traditional methods don’t work for you, be creative. Find new avenues to push the work down. Never stop. I have seen it said by even the most successful writers that the writing is the easy part. The hard part is promotion and marketing…
I’ve read all of Simon’s books except Dark Empress and it’s on the to-read list. I’ve just finished Ironroot which I have to say made me glad to go to bed every night so that I could disappear into my Kindle and read on. It’s truly my favourite Turney novel to date and I recommend it and then some! I fully expect Dark Empress to raise the stakes even higher.
Simon, thanks so much for revealing yourself through Ten Writerly Questions and may I wish you and your novels an onward and upward trajectory. (Even though I am seriously jealous of your prolific output!)
The most curious thing has happened. For days I have been thinking of writing a post on grief, on the positives and negatives, as part of the Pillowbook of Prudence. I began it today and was three quarters of the way through and Word froze… I had to force quit and lost the whole thing. I sat and looked at the computer and decided that Fate was taking a hand, that I am not meant to write such a post. That last week when I wrote about Spot it was enough. That it is better to move on. Not with denial, but acceptance.
To those who’ve been reading Gisborne as it appeared on the blog, I thought you might like to see how its changing as it travels through its first edit. The first thing to notice is that the story now begins right when Ysabel first meets Guy of Gisborne at the time she receives news of her mother’s death. That convoluted back and forth style of previously has now been replaced by a plain linear narrative.
