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more from think.com
Aug. 15th, 2005 02:43 pmBrian Wainwright (we share a publisher!) followed up the discussion on history and fiction with this post.
"I suppose there's quite a few things we leave out of novels - perhaps, apart from delicacy, because it doesn't advance the story. It's not our job (is it?) to show every aspect of life - we're story tellers, not reconstructionists.
You know, one thing I find hard is to find something for characters to hold in their hands. Cigarettes are out! A real pity, as I can just imagine a laid-back character like Philippa in _Fetterlock_ in one of those 1930s silk dresses smoking a cigarette through a holder. Boxes of chocolates are out too. So my people often stuff themselves with various sweetmeats and the like, though some of this was cut out at the edit stage due to advice!
Period detail is fine - it helps to set the scene. But is there not a danger it becomes an end in itself? That we end up with a sort of literary re-enactment rather than a story? Just tossing ideas around. What do others think?"
So far I'm the only person to have had a thought (it being my site I have a home advantage in seeing posts first). My answer was that "I am fascinated in the way historians use fiction as proof of what people did in the past. As a writer, I know I don't describe things in a "true" way - telling a story and introducing people and events are way more important than being too precise. But as an historian I have used fiction written in the Middle Ages as evidence to show things about people's mind sets and lifestyles.
I don't think writers should think like historians when they write - that would be very boring to read. I do think that writers and readers and historians always need to remember that our description of the past is only as good as the sources we use. With the Middle Ages, for instance, for hair washing (which is where we started), our sources are really bad."
From here, though, things got interesting. Stewart Ross questioned a basic. He asked " Does the term 'Middle Ages' actually mean anything? Aren't we better off ditching it because of the vast baggage of misleading preconceptions it brings with it? (eg 'medieval' as a term of abuse.)"
Naturally I argued this (I would - it is like telling a doctor that the term 'doctor' needs to be dumped) but I do hope that someone else backs me.
In the meantime, one of the students posted something quite, quite different. I want to know more about this!! Michael (from the US) asked me, in a sticky, if I knew about Codelyoko. I checked his site and found I didn't, but that it looked interesting. He kindly posted this on the blog zone. (In case you were wondering, student surnames are not given in think.com - as I said in an earlier post, it is a safe zone.)
Michael tells me (typing cleaned up a bit - his enthusiasm is like mine - it shows in the typing) that "codelyoko … is a tv program about 4 kids is high school go into a virtual world they get to the virtual world by going into a factory and go into scanners then they get transferred to the virtual world and the name of the virtual world is lyoko the names of the 4 kids is Jeremy, ulrich yumi and odd and there is a girl that is programmed into lyoko and here name is aileta the whole reason they met aileta is because of xana … and jeremy is trying to materialise aileta."
For lucky souls with Sky Digital, you can find it there. I don't get Sky Digital, so Michael is sending me pictures.
"I suppose there's quite a few things we leave out of novels - perhaps, apart from delicacy, because it doesn't advance the story. It's not our job (is it?) to show every aspect of life - we're story tellers, not reconstructionists.
You know, one thing I find hard is to find something for characters to hold in their hands. Cigarettes are out! A real pity, as I can just imagine a laid-back character like Philippa in _Fetterlock_ in one of those 1930s silk dresses smoking a cigarette through a holder. Boxes of chocolates are out too. So my people often stuff themselves with various sweetmeats and the like, though some of this was cut out at the edit stage due to advice!
Period detail is fine - it helps to set the scene. But is there not a danger it becomes an end in itself? That we end up with a sort of literary re-enactment rather than a story? Just tossing ideas around. What do others think?"
So far I'm the only person to have had a thought (it being my site I have a home advantage in seeing posts first). My answer was that "I am fascinated in the way historians use fiction as proof of what people did in the past. As a writer, I know I don't describe things in a "true" way - telling a story and introducing people and events are way more important than being too precise. But as an historian I have used fiction written in the Middle Ages as evidence to show things about people's mind sets and lifestyles.
I don't think writers should think like historians when they write - that would be very boring to read. I do think that writers and readers and historians always need to remember that our description of the past is only as good as the sources we use. With the Middle Ages, for instance, for hair washing (which is where we started), our sources are really bad."
From here, though, things got interesting. Stewart Ross questioned a basic. He asked " Does the term 'Middle Ages' actually mean anything? Aren't we better off ditching it because of the vast baggage of misleading preconceptions it brings with it? (eg 'medieval' as a term of abuse.)"
Naturally I argued this (I would - it is like telling a doctor that the term 'doctor' needs to be dumped) but I do hope that someone else backs me.
In the meantime, one of the students posted something quite, quite different. I want to know more about this!! Michael (from the US) asked me, in a sticky, if I knew about Codelyoko. I checked his site and found I didn't, but that it looked interesting. He kindly posted this on the blog zone. (In case you were wondering, student surnames are not given in think.com - as I said in an earlier post, it is a safe zone.)
Michael tells me (typing cleaned up a bit - his enthusiasm is like mine - it shows in the typing) that "codelyoko … is a tv program about 4 kids is high school go into a virtual world they get to the virtual world by going into a factory and go into scanners then they get transferred to the virtual world and the name of the virtual world is lyoko the names of the 4 kids is Jeremy, ulrich yumi and odd and there is a girl that is programmed into lyoko and here name is aileta the whole reason they met aileta is because of xana … and jeremy is trying to materialise aileta."
For lucky souls with Sky Digital, you can find it there. I don't get Sky Digital, so Michael is sending me pictures.