(no subject)

My web access is slow and my email a tad unreliable. This seems to happen to me from time to time. If you don't hear from me, this may be why.

I took two hours off last night and watched TV (ABC decided that it would actually let me see it, for a wonder) and then I thought "Let me just go to sleep." So I did. It turns out that I have a very mild version of the virus my mother has just got over, so I'm going back to bed for two more hours. Then I shall work furiously. Then I shall rest again.

I got entirely up-to-date on the really urgent stuff before my body became so insistent on rest. If I can manage eight hours of work today (maybe in several batches) then I should remain on top of the urgent stuff. Now, however, I am going back to bed.

(no subject)

My internet is getting shakier and shakier today, so of course I am posting. I am logical in that very particular backwards fashion.

What's prompted this post is something Monissa said, which fitted closely in with related things other people have said to me recently.

How do you know what a character knows? How do you then depict it? It's the same question I get asked when people want to set novels in, say, the Middle Ages. The first thing you do is find out who this character is. The absolute basics. Where were they born, and when? Then you can move to the next stage: what education did they get? What shared knowledge does everyone have from that place and time?

Asking someone in the US what a character born in 1931 France would know at age 45 about Jews is only useful if your informant is an expert on the subject of French knowledge of Jews, or the French education system, or something related (eg pop culture, key headline stories from that character's adulthood). Start with when and where the person was born, and then find people who are likely to have the right knowledge set to answer your question.

It's the same as researching a setting because "the Middle Ages" isn't nearly as handy as a starting place for knowing what people eat, what the ground is like underfoot, whether there is a local pollution problem for, say "Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert in 1305." Pollution in Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert is one of the things I'm looking at tomorrow, in fact, all going well. Or all going better than today, at the least.

Start with the precise person and build up from there. Start with the precise place and time and build up from there. It makes writing history into fiction a great deal easier! If you don't have a person and if you don't have a place and if you don't have a time, then you need a reason for not having those things and that reason should carry some of your answers. If it doesn't, what are you writing? It may be that you're not writing something that needs history or personal history or memory at all*.



*This is a worry for me, personally, but I'm like Alice in her need of pictures and conversations in books - I need memories and people. it's not a worry for all books, just if you want me as a reader.