What’s your fiction worth?
Katharine Kerr September 5th, 2006
After Lois posted her excellent two-parter , “Genre don’t get no/want no respect”, there was a certain amount of nasty reaction out on the ‘Net. I’m not suprised, being as I have gotten the same thing for years for daring to suggest that published genre work could stand some improving in matters of style and structure.  Such observations trigger what I call the “Slan shack” reaction — a sense of betrayal by people who feel part of a beleaguered, misunderstood community. This sense of belonging to such a community is so important to many genre writers that they keep it alive by constantly reminding themselves how academics and others hate them so {sob}. No one wants to believe that now and then, these Dreadful Others are right.
Another powerful motivator for the abuse is, or so I personally suspect, simple laziness. If some authors can get a little money selling a book without the revision it needs, then they can convince themselves it didn’t really need the revision. In the past 20 years I have heard an amazing number of excuses for not revising. I shan’t bore you by repeating all of them here.  One of the most common is “I’m not getting paid enough to do extra work.” Extra???
A related attitude concerns research. Recently someone (who shall remain anonymous) posted a comment that has been bugging me for days now.   Â
“I don’t really care if it’s accurate–it’ll say “fictionâ€? right there on the cover, after all–I just need the overwhelming majority of readers to believe that it’s accurate.”
What the author of this quote, and all the authors I have obliquely referred to above, are really saying is, “Fiction isn’t worth hard work.”  Fiction is crap, basically, because it’s not “true”? That’s what I hear loud and clear, as Yogi Bear was wont to say. Even more to the point, it says, “MY fiction isn’t worth hard work.”
There is such a thing as pride in your craft. A craftsperson works hard to do the best job he or she can because of this pride, a sense of honor, if you will, motivated by love for what he or she does. Secondarily, an honorable craftsperson believes that those who buy the crafted object deserve the best the craftsperson can give them.  We don’t have to talk about “great art” here. We can talk about doing a job well because the job itself deserves to be done well.  Selling a sloppy book for a small advance is not a sign of a job done well. Â
Selling a finely-crafted book for a small advance is a fact of life these days, on the other hand.  Here’s another fact of life: authors will never get a large advance if they don’t work hard for a low one. But is it truly a matter of money? I see it as a matter of self-respect.  If you as a writer don’t respect your own worth, you will find you have lots of company to help you dis it.Â
Usually I dislike Ernest Hemingway’s attitudes to Life, Art, Women, you name it. But I did read one anecdote a while back that resonated. A reporter was interviewing him about, if I remember rightly, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. The reporter announced that he’d heard that H. had rewritten one section 16 times.  Why? he wondered. Hemingway gave him a look of pity and said, “To get the words right.”
Not everything needs 16 revisions. Not every story requires years of top-level research, either. But every single story and novel does require effort to reach that simple goal: getting the facts straight and the words right.Â
Amen to that, Kit.
One other thing that I think marks the craftsperson is the pain on reading older work, even published and well-reviewed work, and you find a spot where you got the words wrong, or worse, where you got the facts messed up, having learned in the interrim some important detail you could have used when crafting the earlier work.
There’s an advantage to fantasy worlds where you’re allowed a certain muzziness, letting you have, for example, faceted gemstones centuries before faceting was invented (which is a heck of a lot better than someone pulling out the supposed 10th century crown with 19th century jewerly technology) but it’s no excuse for being deliberately sloppy.
Just so, Kit.
It doesn’t have to be Art, but it ought to be Craft.
I’m the one who said: “I don’t really care if it’s accurate–it’ll say “fictionâ€? right there on the cover, after all–I just need the overwhelming majority of readers to believe that it’s accurate.â€?
I certainly didn’t mean, “Fiction isn’t worth hard work,” and I think I’m a better judge of what I meant to say than you are.
I want to say several things here about research.
First off, you’ve taken my quote out of context. The context was a discussion of writing first drafts. First drafts of first novels, in particular.
Since this is my first novel, I’m trying to avoid trying to bench-press more than I can lift. I’ve intentionally chosen a setting, storyline, and characters where I already feel that I know a lot about them before I go in, so I don’t have to do special research and can focus (at least for now, at least this time around) on getting the novel out. The setting is made-up, and derived from a sufficient number of historical and made-up sources that I feel I can write around what I don’t know. I don’t know much about horsecraft, so the action all takes place in a city. I don’t know much about military history, so there are no battles or military action–except for one, very small and simple battle at the end of the novel. And so on.
Most of my Internet-based research has been on costume and clothing. Costume and clothing doesn’t figure much into the book — my protagonist noticed those things only slightly — so I’ve relied on a few Web pages to get some details, which will be mentioned in passing. I may go back and beef up the research later. For now, it’s only a first draft, and it’s more important, for now, to get the words on the screen.
The question of of how much research is enough, and when you can just make stuff up, is a complicated one. Kevin touches on it here: “There’s an advantage to fantasy worlds where you’re allowed a certain muzziness, letting you have, for example, faceted gemstones centuries before faceting was invented… ” In that example, does it really matter whether the writer knows that faceted gemstones are anachronistic?
Now, of course, you didn’t know any of this, but you would have if you had asked me to elaborate, instead of holding me up — even with a veil of anonymity — as an example of All That Is Evil In Genre Fiction. In other words, you didn’t do the research.
Hmmm. How about instead:
A) a studied indifference to how academics and others hate them so {sob}
B) some amusement at (once again!) the conflation of “what certain academics and critics believe is good writing” with “good writing”.
You’re quite right that most published SF & F work could “stand some improving in matters of style and structure.” But that holds true for every other genre, including the “literary” genre. {shrug} Not that it isn’t fun to continually torment ourselves over our inferiority.
I’m selling a lot more historical fantasy now, so that’s what I’m going to stick with for the short term. It certainly slows the process since I find (in my case) 60% of the work is research and 40% is writing and editing. I’m not complaining; I’m one of those weirdoes who likes library work. And having been to a number of cons, I know there are fans and other writers who will rip you to the giblets if you get things wrong. I also know that, hard as I try, I’m going to get something wrong; there’s always someone who’s smarter that you. (In my case, there’re a lot of people smarter than me) But I can limit that number with diligent research.
Katharine also mentioned revisions. As a new writer (OK, I’m 44 and I’ve been writing for 10 years, but I’m just now breaking in) I wouldn’t think of saying a knee-jerk ‘no’ to an editor concerning a revision. When I sold my first work to GVG, he said he had a few revision suggestions he wanted me to review. Well, it turned out to be four pages of suggestions and quite a lot of work. But I rolled up my sleeves and jumped it. If I’m going to be a writer, I figure I’ve got to revise and prove that I can work with editors.
Mitch,
I think you’re running afoul of the “We can always revise!” school of writers versus the “Get it right the first time!” school of writers.
Yes, all authors do revisions. However, some do more than others, some do more headwork before than others, and others do more research beforehand so they don’t have to do more painful revisions.
Which is another way of saying that, what I consider a first draft and what you consider a first draft may be and likely are entirely different things. I’ve sold first drafts, but these were first drafts where I meditated on each line before commiting it to paper or pixils or else revised each sentence and paragraph elaborately before putting the final period in place. To a careful and considered writer, the thought of a sloppy first draft is anathema, and the thought of putting a sloppy draft in front of a reader is worse, especially when you say things like “I just need the overwhelming majority of readers to believe that it’s accurate.”
That strikes nerves in the careful researcher and prose writer because, quite honestly, we do a lot of our research by picking up details from fiction rather than non-fiction books. Someone who’s just pulling shit out of his ass is also throwing it into our workbox, and that pisses us off. There’s a difference between making an honest mistake and making shit up because you can’t be bothered to look it up.
Besides which, your ability to bamboozle the reader collapses if they catch you in even one lie. Especially in fantasy, science fiction and horror, because you’re already asking them to believe six impossible things before breakfast, and after swallowing that, they don’t have room for any more unbelievable things.
When I was working in comics, a refrain I heard from several of our writers was “the kids’ll love it.” What this meant was not “the kids’ll love it.” What it meant was “hey, they’re just comic books, and no one who reads comic books reads anything else, so they won’t know that this is a derivative plot with crappy science or inconsistent worldbuilding.”
Ahem.
I got my start doing textual analysis by reading and commenting on comic books. At age eleven I could not only catch a derivative plot, I could cite where I’d seen it used. The first time I bounced a plot because the science was bad and the plot derivative, the author bounded back at me, filled with outrage. “But the kids’ll love it!” These same people were deeply envious of Neil Gaiman’s success with Sandman, and never understood how much of it derived from the fact that it didn’t just reference other comic books, but drew from literature, history, pop music, mythology….
I love to research because it means that I have a better chance of looking smart in print.
Mitch, how could you have been talking about a first draft when you said, “I just need the overwhelming majority of readers to believe that it’s accurate.â€? Who are all these readers of your first drafts? The context was your saying that you looked things up in encyclopedias online because it was — I think you meant this — easier. I could be wrong about the “easier”.
I can’t imagine you looking up a bit of computer lore in Wiki for one of your technical articles. Ergo, my conclusion was that you value your fiction less than non-fiction.
Madeleine, “but the kids will love it!” is exactly the attitude I mean, yes indeed! As an older kid myself I could always tell a good Batman from a weakly done Batman.
I actually have seen a case of someone trying to turn in a book that was unpublishable while making huge excuses as to why it didn’t need revision or further work of any sort. Said author ruined Its career, too. It didn’t publish for years and years, until It wised up. (I say it because I’m not gonna give clues as to who this was.)
Actually, I wasn’t holding you up as an example of All that is Evil. I was holding you up as an example of one thing that’s Evil. (This is a joke. )
I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. Writing is one of the few — no, it’s the only thing in my life that I take really really seriously.
I wouldn’t say that the ‘muzziness’ in fantasy actually out weighs the benefit of writing in the world the audience is reading from.
I mean in order to outline say London for a reader in vivid terms for most English readers you just need a few sketched ingredients and then move on to its significance. Also researching modern London is much, much easier than even 16th century London and even there you have plenty of museums and tours around what it would have been like. In a fantasy world you need to work harder to make those places as real in the readers mind (if you are going for realism that is) than writers in a contemporary world who have the luxury of letting their audience fill in the gaps. Just looking back to Shakespeare you have to do a lot of research now to understand what his audience would have immediately.
The term true fiction may sound like an oxymoron, but a reader really can tell when a writer is not being true and honest, even in fiction. If I start including inaccuracies in a story because I think they sound good, the reader is going to pick up on those false pieces of prose – and that’s going to be what he remembers about my writing. It took me awhile to figure that out.
Eventually, I realized that although I am writing fiction, I should at least try to get the real things right, so my readers will be more willing to suspend their disbelief when I present them with vampires, spaceships, wizards, etc.
Personally, I feel you should aim for Art. Even if you miss, it will be better than just aiming for commercial. The question, though, becomes “What Is Art?” And that’s where a lot of confusion enters into the discussions. I’ve talked to a lot of wannabe writers who believe that “Art” is a euphemism for flowery prose, incomprehensible storylines, or lexical nativation. Some then dismiss it, others try to immitate it based on those misunderstandings.
Two components seem to be important at this stage. First, what is it you’re trying to portray and what’s the best way to do that?
Second, what is it you’re trying to evoke and how can you blend that with your portrayal?
They are related, but not the same, and the best work is built on solid graps of the difference and how they work together. When you get a handle on these, you’re on your way to Art. Keep paying closer and closer attention to them, and you’ll get closer and closer. Some may never get to “Art” but their work will improve.
But it’s necessary to pay that continually closer attention, otherwise there’s this rut waiting for you and it becomes…well, less and less as time goes on.
I meant ’solid GRASP’ and mistyped me phrase. On the other hand, I occasionally do feel finely in the cultch of the graps…
Katharine Kerr said:
Kit, people often speak carelessly in online forums, and say X when they meant to say Y. If you were going to hold me up as an example of an idiot, I’d like to be an idiot for something I actually believe in, rather than some remark I made carelessly.
Actually, I often use Wikipedia as a resource for researching articles. I’ve found it to be pretty accurate, especially in matters of the history of the technology.
In other words, “I didn’t do anything wrong but I’m sorry you feel bad.” A classic example of a non-apology apology.
What particularly boils my butt about this is that you specifically asked me to participate in that discussion.
Let me be explicitly clear about this: I do think that research is very important in many cases.
Two specific examples:
- Writing historical fiction, historical fantasy, or fantasy or science fiction that’s based on historical events.
- When writing in detail about people whose professions you’re not very familiar with, particularly in contemporary fiction.
However, I do think it’s possible for a writer to write fiction where little or no research is required, espcially if the writer is widely read and has lived a reasonably full life. And that task is a little easier in science fiction and fantasy, where the writer has more freedom to make up details about background and technology.
Nothing smug in this post. Nope. Not a thing.
I’ve never heard anyone say that there are no bad books in genre. Ever. Every reader has books they like to point to and say “This is crap.”
What people are tired of, is that the so-called Dreadful Others try to define the entire genre by its worst examples.
Mark - yeah, to pay continually closer attention. I think that’s the crux.
The question of “What is Art?” is a good one that I think should get its own discussion.
Kathryn, indeed, and I think one of the risks with fantasy (or sf) is when the writer spends too much time describing the landscape so that the reader can understand it, and thereby bogs down the story. That balance between description and narrative drive is tricky to pull off.
Mitch–
Being widely read and living a reasonably full life is part of research. I spent days playing in tidepools as a kid so it’s damned easy for me to write a scene involving them.
Trouble is, “making up details” is often used as a cover for technobabble both for science fiction and fantasy, or worse, the “We don’t need to know how it works–it’s magic!” school of writing.
Hell if I can build an internal combustion engine, a microwave oven or a computer, but I accept that if I applied myself, I could learn all these technical things and without much trouble I could turn up someone who would be able to explain bits of the mechanisms in greater detail than I currently understand. If I go to a magical fantasy land, I don’t expect the wench on the corner to understand how the charms she’s peddling works except as much as she needs to sell them, but somewhere there’s going to be someone who knows and should be able to explain it.
Lack of research murders immersiveness.
I’m happily reading through your latest science fiction book and then you bust out a very dated technical term (the ever-popular ‘mainframe’ is my favorite). I was on a spaceship in a galaxy far, far away and then, bam! I’m on my couch in my living room frowning at the words on the page thinking, “When was this published? 2004? Mainframe? Goodness. ” I put the book down and go do something else. I might pick it back up. I might not.
You don’t have to be an expert on server architecture to include it in your novel or short story. But if you are going to include it, it makes sense to do a little research so that your speculative technology is plausible and the jargon you’re using isn’t 25 years out of date. Besides, if it’s 25 years out of date in 2006, how much more archaic would it be in the year 28320 in your galaxy far, far away?
If the merits of craftsmanship and taking pride in your work are lost on you, consider this: I may buy the first book you put out, but once I see you have no interest in doing your homework - and I feel that you assume I’m too stupid to know better - I won’t be buying the second book. So, it is in your financial interest to do at least the bare minimum.
Mitch, rant all you want here. I’m taking this to email, however.
Kate, I agree. “What is Art?”, in respect to writing, would be a great topic.
As well as the “Slan shack” reaction, posts such as mine also seem to generate the personal attack reaction with words like smug. I should mention that the next time.
{sob}
Laurie said:
Damn! There goes my idea for a swashbuckling space-opera about a two-fisted COBOL programmer in the year 4006 AD!
The scene with the punch-cards alone would have had readers on the edge of their seats.
I agree that getting it right is better than getting it wrong. But whether getting it wrong throws me out of a story depends on what else is going on in the story.
In the case of the word “mainframe,” it’s such a common mistake among civilians that it probably won’t throw me out of the story. It’s just a little speed bump. Or pothole.
Here’s a little bit of business that impressed me recently. It illustrates the value of getting it right. Wasn’t from written prose — it was from a TV show. Specifically, Homicide: Life On The Streets, which I’m catching up with on DVD (never saw it when it was on TV).
Detective Munch, played by Richard Belzer, is interviewing what they now call a “person of interest” in a crime — he might be a witness, might be a suspect, Munch doesn’t know yet. The person of interest is a white Supremacist.
The person of interest asks Munch: “Are you a Jew?”
Munch stiffens very slightly and says: “Yeah, I’m Jewish.”
It was just perfect. Because Jewish people prefer to be referred to as Jewish (the adjective) rather than Jews (the noun). The overwhelming majority of non-Jews don’t know that, which is why we mostly don’t make a big deal out of it if the person talking or writing seems to be friendly. But it’s sometimes an indicator of anti-Semitism.
Don’t believe me? Google “Jewish,” and you’ll find a list of perfectly lovely sites about and for Jews. (Uh, Jewish people.)
However, if you Google “Jew,” you’ll get so many hate sites that Google itself felt the need to post an explainer and apology at the top of the page.
(This kind of thing is not unusual — for instance, searches on “William Clinton” used to turn up anti-Clinton sites, and “”William Jefferson Clinton” used to turn up deranged anti-Clinton sites, because Clinton’s opponents tended to use his full, formal name. Whereas searches on “Bill Clinton” and “Clinton” were more likely to include positive references to our ex-President.)
Regarding the comments quoted, I would also add that the thread on research originated with an individual experiencing writer’s block due to a fear of including an inaccurate fact (I hope I paraphrased that correctly). This is a fear I share, and have to remind myself that at some point I have to stop researching and start writing and drawing.
The research question is certainly valid–hell, it’s one of the more important ones in a field that prides itself on a certain kind of verisimilitude. I once began research on a Civil War novel and abandoned the project because, after reading damn near seventy books, I realized that I would never know enough–and i had soured myself on the project by overdoing it. Some people thrive on research.
I’m writing a historical murder mystery now. I have acquired some books that give the basic background. I have other books that provide details. I know I will have to look for more, but for the moment I’m just writing it–errors and all–because I can always–always–fix it later–and I will–but I won’t always be in the frame of mind to write it.
I do find that there are times when if I stop to research something while writing first draft, I kill my forward momentum. That’s when I put in the famous “holding description.”
Alas, every once in a while some element of that description doesn’t get caught and taken out during revisions, and remains there, leering at me for all time.
I’m one of those very reluctant to tackle historical fiction for fear of the inevitable inaccurate facts - or the accusation of an inaccurate fact, since sometimes we get accused of putting in something wrong that isn’t actually wrong - like the guy who said that my armies in Crown of Stars were too small - or putting in something about which there is a reasonable difference of opinion. Or something.
I’m such a wimp on this matter. It must be a youngest child thing.
I had a two-part article in the SFWA BULLETIN a while back on researching historical fiction.
I agree that writing speculative fiction should be approached as an art, as something that deserves a writer’s best. That being said . . .
My biggest gripe with the speculative fiction genre is that this genre in particular is justifiably infamous for sweating the small stuff and letting the big stuff go to the dogs. I can’t begin to count the fantasy books I’ve tried to read that have intricate world-building and beautifully thought-out details that add up to NOTHING. And why do these books add up to nothing? Because there are plot holes so big that I saw the answer to the protagonists “dilemma” before page 50 and it took our hero three 700 page books to work it out. And don’t get me started on science fiction. Television sitcoms have characters with more depth than half the science fiction books that are published.
Speculative fiction is too often written to serve the BIG NIFTY IDEA (bni). Intricate plotting, character development, great dialogue? Who needs it as long as there is a BNI? At least half of the stuff I read very clearly got published because it had a BNI and not much else.
Fan-boys and girls totally feed this problem by worrying more about historical accuracy or technological viability than, say, whether or not the story rocks or whether the character is believable. I’m telling you, sometimes it’s like watching a bunch of people eating dog sh*t and complaining because there isn’t enough salt.
I know it sounds like I hate this genre. I don’t. I LOVE it. That’s why it drives me crazy when readers and writers sweat the details at the expense of the nuts and bolts of good writing. You know what? I don’t care if Prince Fluffy has shoelaces in a world resembling a real-life time period that was pre-shoelace. Gimme a break. If the character is complex and the plot is interesting and makes sense and the setting isn’t actually so illogical it makes things nutty, I can let the shoelaces thing go. But sometimes I think this genre is driven by a lot of fans who can’t let go of the shoelaces. And that’s too bad.
Sidenote: the bashing of literature and academia by some posters is downright silly. Sure there are some academics and lit critics who look down on speculative fiction, but spec fiction has frankly earned some of that. And there are TONS of academics and lit crit people who take speculative fiction very seriously and who respect it and promote it.
I once sat through a (brief) explanation by a FAN as to why Tim Powers’ The stress of Her Regard wa shopelessly flawed.
“You saw the fatal error, didn’t you?” says fan.
“What?” asks I, expecting something to do with where Byron really was during those two weeks in Switzerland.
“Page something-or-other, where the line reads ‘Sure,’ said Shelley.”
I looked at him blankly. I’m sure I did.
“They would never have said ’sure’. It should have been ’surely’.”
“That’s b.s.” I said, “and don’t call me Shirley.”
I mean–What?
It does seem sometimes that Length has become a problem. Silverberg has said–often–that the natural length of a science fiction story is the novella. Back when I was a kid, books ran to 140 or 160 pages. Writers, therefore, told a story–OR, if all they had was the so-called BNI, it worked adequately at that length. It didn’t run on so long that we got bashed over the head with the fact that there wasn’t anything other than the BNI and the BNI was, therefore, cool.
But that, too, is another thread altogether.
“I’m telling you, sometimes it’s like watching a bunch of people eating dog sh*t and complaining because there isn’t enough salt.”
I love this quote. Mostly because it applies to so many aspects of life and not just genre fiction.
I can’t really comment on the research question. What I’m working on now borrows from Native American mythology and Alice in Wonderland, but is mostly a personal creation. Whatever I write after this, however, will be probably require research. I don’t know enough about anything, and that scares me.
Whether what I’m working on is Art or not? Now that’s an interesting question, and my answer is, “I hope it will be.” Being true to the story, not getting in the story’s way, and crafting it to a decent enough standard - I’m guessing those are the keys.
I’m basing that on my experience writing poetry. I’m a total newbie when it comes to fiction, but I’ve written enough poetry that I suspect there’ll be some overlap.
Well, as someone who writes stuff set in the early 1800s (when Shelley was alive) I would myself be very careful about using “Sure.” I won’t say that I wouldn’t use it–it would depend on the situation and the speaker. And one misstep in terms of dialogue would not make a book “hopelessly flawed” for me. A wholesale, systemic disregard for period voice (in a book which up to that point had had at least a transparent voice) would probably knock me out of the book. And there are words I won’t use–like “dude,” which was an acceptable Regency-era slang term–specifically because it breaks the sense of time and place. I was reading a book set in 1650 Germany, which was proceeding along pretty well up to the point when one character said “And you’re all right with that?” to another. At which point I wasn’t all right with the book.
Worse than stories with wobbly voice and diction, though, are historical or fantasy or SF stories which ignore the implications of their worlds. I cordially loathe stories set in historic or quasi-historic venues where there is lip service paid to male/female behavior taboos, which get dropped entirely when the main characters sleep together. In a sense, my Sarah Tolerance books are a direct result of my irritation at such stories. I dislike it when an author forgets (or doesn’t understand) the pervasive influence of religion in the middle ages, or forgets about class issues.
I once taught a worldbuilding class for middle-schoolers. It’s a great subject to teach at that level, because good worldbuilding requires synthesis, and kids at that age are just moving from concrete to abstract thinking. But I had to keep reminding the kids that if (as one girl did) you create a world in which pink flying horses live in the clouds, you have to think about where their food comes from; where the horsies themselves come from, how they manage to live in the clouds, what sort of culture they have, what their “origin myth” was, and so on. The girl with the horsies thought I was being mean, but good worldbuilding takes thorough think-through and research (to bring it all back to the topic at hand).
[...] 3 - What’s your fiction worth? “Here’s another fact of life: authors will never get a large advance if they don’t work hard for a low one. But is it truly a matter of money? I see it as a matter of self-respect.” Katherine Kerr on the value of self-editing in genre fiction. (tags: sf scifi fantasy fiction science books novels stories literature genre writing advice) [...]
There it is, the story of my life in a nutshell!
There’s research, and then there’s research. At the U. where I work, I see two very different methods of research employed, and both seem to work well for the people who use them.
One I call “placeholder” research - you take a quick look at basic information so that you can get started or continue an early draft.
The other I call “pre-writing” research - you do the research before putting any words on paper because you want to be thoroughly immersed in a topic before you start to write about it.
There is of course the middle ground of pre-writing research for the major topics and placeholder research for minor details.
It’s a matter of personal style and choice, which one a writer uses.
But to do research right, either way, you have to go to sources that are accurate and authoritative at some point.
I spend time at a reference desk in an academic library, where I explain to students whose professors have told them to use “authoritative sources” why wikipedia and Google are not authoritative sources. Yes, you can use both to find information, and you may get lucky and it may be accurate, but for the most part the Web is the most misinformation-infested source in the world.
Darcy, hear hear! Or is that, here here! I’m never sure.
I also use place-holders when the flow of story is going well and I don’t want to stop Right Then. But I have also had at times to change that nicely-flowing story afterwards because a nasty fact has slain the premise. Such is life.
Madeleine, a lot of fantasy authors don’t want to come to terms with the lack of reliable birth control in low-tech worlds, either. I am just old enough to remember the days when the Absolute Worst Thing for a girl would be to be pregnant and unmarried. This AWT was held over female heads for centuries. I’m glad it’s not any more, but there’s no doubt that it was a very real inducement to chasity for a very long time.
There’s a story thread in Deverry where a woman’s husband realizes that he, as a decent man of his time, must stop having sex with her because she suffers terribly from childbirth, and they do have enough heirs. This upsets her, as she loves him deeply, esp. since he then takes a mistress. I’ve gotten so much flak from readers, of the “why can’t you invent a magic herb or amulet?” variety over this!!! Some readers just plain didn’t understand that historically there would have been no birth control in those days and no incentive to use it, really, in the upper classes, where heirs were precious.
It’s as Kate says, sometimes when you get the historical details right, you get nailed for it anyway.
Well there was a plant in what is now Lebanon that worked quite well as a herbal birth control. The problem was that it was harvested into extinction.
I think when an artist has respect for their work it shows, and gives the work something else. Maybe more depth of feeling. Here is a vintage sci-fi print which captures the enthusiasm for space travel iconic to earlier decades. (Scroll down a bit to 01 septembre, 2006)
Of course, it seems likely this ship is breaking a few laws of physics, but I don’t think this is what Katharine meant by getting the facts right. (Sorry if I am putting words in your mouth) In our universe the ship may be an impossible construction, but it is perfect within this image.
Good lord, the magic birth-control herbs and amulets. They crop up again and again. And while they’re fine if you want a world with a modern sensibility, like for example Liavek, they’re one of the quickest ways to kill believability in pre-modern setting.
There are forms of birth control that were in use in pre-modern times; they weren’t foolproof, and some of them were damned dangerous, but they were out there. I wasn’t just talking about the danger of pregnancy or disease (although both of them were obvious pitfalls), so much as the socio-economic consequences of virginity and its loss. Depending on your social and economic status and the religious beliefs and the local taboos about women, loss of virginity could be a rite of passage or an epic tragedy–which is why any Regency writer who has read Pride and Prejudice and then writes a book in which the heroine blithely surrenders to sex outside marriage had better have a pristine setup if they don’t want to lose me.
The Greeks and Romans had a variety of birth control devices, but I’ve not heard of any of them being in use in the Middle Ages except for anal intercourse, which of course the Church condemned. Some of the ancient ones, like the herb Dani referred to (found in Greece, actually) did work well. Others, like an olive pit wrapped in linen that was soaked in vinegar or lemon juice, worked as long as they were not dislodged from the mouth of the cervix, but as you can doubtless imagine, they often were dislodged. Which is why the classical Greeks practiced infanticide in order to keep down the size of their families.
The unmarried pregnancy had socio-economic consequences — I was mostly agreeing with you, Mad, from another direction. but there’s no doubt that mere loss of virginity in most societies of those times was enough to produce the same consequences.
It seems to me that the necessity of research and accurate details can really vary pretty wildly depending on what sort of story you’re writing. I’m not overly concerned with accuracy when I read, which may make me easier to please than a lot of fans. My paramount concern when reading fantasy or science fiction is more about internal consistency than about consistency with historical reality. I can understand the viewpoint that if you’re asking us to believe unbelievable things, then you’d better not have a setting that is itself unbelievable.. but does that necessarily mean that your setting has to be historically accurate? If the characters are unconcerned by the anachronisms among them, I’m not entirely sure why I should also be upset about them.
There’s a great series of Sci Fi books I love, where the technology and such are really just there to be in service to the story. I don’t know anything really about theoretical physics, and so when this author tells me that something is possible, I believe her. She invented all kinds of whacky new technology in order to write the story she wanted. I’m sure if I showed these books to my physicist friends they’d tell me why her theories are wrong, but that’s not important to me. As long as that author then doesn’t contradict herself, she can violate all the laws of physics she want. This is the author’s world, they write the laws, they ARE the laws.
She in fact violates or at least severely bends genetic laws all the time, something I actually do know about, but it doesn’t really bother me. In this world, this is how she says genetics work, and so I take her at her world.
On the other hand, you could make the argument that if you really put a lot of effort into making things accurate, your book will appeal to a wider audience, not just those of us who are willing to completely suspend all our belief in the service of a good story. At the end of the day though, no one’s perfect, and you’re not going to get everything right or please everyone. So you may as well write the book you want to write, and try not to worry too much about the book each of your readers would like you to write, because everyone will have a different idea about what that book should be.
Forms of birth control were known in the Middle Ages; the question as always is effectiveness, which is why the magic herb/magic amulet method used sometimes in fantasy novels - a version of the Pill, really - is a way of avoiding the issues raised by Mad and Katharine.
One reason I like research is that it forces me to confront issues I do not myself necessarily have to deal with in my own (modern American) life.
Lyssabits said:
The characters may not know better, but the author probably should. If he busts out the proverbial COBOL programmer with the punch cards (I laughed out loud at that, btw) in his futuristic landscape, it had better be an episode of Duck Dodgers in the 24th (and a half) Century.
Mind you, in movies, it doesn’t bother me. Like in Independence Day when Jeff Goldblum and WIll Smith upload a virus to the mothership via their Macbook. I got a good laugh out of it. I guess I just take books more seriously, and expect a higher standard of the written word. I realize that’s silly, but I still feel that way.
Laurie said,
Heheh, that’s funny, in movies and TV shows it bothers me a lot when they get stuff wrong. I can forgive them the little details, but when when their plot revolves around something that so obviously wouldn’t work, then I get pretty irritated. I guess since movies tend to be more “realistic” than my books which are filled with dragons and magic, I feel the need to be more strict with them than I do with books. I suppose we all have our own, unique sets of standards we apply as we see fit.
I think that’s true for many things, not just birth control. Gunpowder, amputation, surgery (sure, Caesar’s mother survived the surgery that later became known as cesarean, but most women didn’t), etc.
For me, it’s not the “big things” (like using a MacBook to upload a virus to an alien ship), it’s the “little things” like having muskets that always seem to fire reliably, or wounds that never seem to get infected, etc. that knock me out of the story.