If you are writing fiction about real people how much licence are you allowed about their behaviour? Assuming you don't say anything about them that puts them in a bad light compared with their reported behaviour.

Best

Prosp

That's a bloody good question, Prossers, and one that I think you're best asking Emma about.

I'd always advise to have actual once-living characters appear only briefly and on the edge of the story if they have to appear a tall, but that depends on the context of the story, so it would a) seem authentic (no one going, but she would never had said that); and b) be less likely to cause offence/any legal issues.

That said, I'm really not qualified to give any advice cos I've never written anything like it, so you'd probably do best to ignore this.

Who you thinking of writing about?

Nik.

I’d say it depends on the prominence of the real person, how long they’ve been dead, and the likelihood of them having surviving relatives who might object to a distorted portrayal.

I just read somewhere recently – might have been on here – that you can’t alter known facts, but you can embellish the truth with things that cannot be proven or disproven.

Dee

Well you can't libel the dead, so though it might be unkind to living relatives to misrepresent a person, you couldn't be sued.

Helen Dunmore says writers are drawn to the white spaces between the facts, which is true. I think there's a feeling that you shouldn't contradict known facts, but that leaves unanswered the question of how hard the writer's obliged to try to get at the facts before they write. On one hand, readers need to have faith in their storyteller, and anything said which the reader knows is wrong, shakes that faith. On the other hand, dammit, (I find myself thinking, while wondering if I should try to chase down... whatever obscure thing it is) this is a story; if I'd wanted to write biography, I would have. Somewhere, again recently someone (Colin? On the thread about using real or imagined places?) pointed out that there is a sort of ethics that everyone tacitly more or less agrees, about what must be faithful to the facts and what can be invented.

Where along that spectrum from biography to fantasy you stand as you write your 'real people' is a decision the writer has to make.

Emma

Hi Nik

I was thinking about the shootings at Kent State in 1970. My research indicates that people are still hurting and I don't want to contribute to that but say someting about the loss of confidence and innocence that resulted from that event.

Best

John

you can’t alter known facts, but you can embellish the truth with things that cannot be proven or disproven.

That's more or less what I thought Dee.

The known facts ground the story in time and space, the embellishment is the fictional part that adds the drama and sense of immediacy. I believe as long as you don't step outside what would be a reasonable extrapolation of a person's behaviour then that should be acceptable.

However, at the end of the day it's only a story and there are others.

Best

John

Hi Emma

We cannot be absolutely true to anything we write about because if we are we will never finish the story. Even if I begin describing you now by the time I have finished you will be a different person. A pedantic viewpoint, true, but nonetheless a defensible one.

Thus as writers we present a representation. At best an acceptable facsimile. As readers we should accept that what we read is a distortion. The problem comes when we start believing the distortion is the truth.

Best

John

John, you're right. What shook me on this subject was going to the Historical Novel Society conference, and finding that most people there seemed to feel what they wanted from historical fiction was history - history lite, as it were - having been turned off it at school. They were therefore obsessed with it being 'true', whereas I more and more regard myself as a storyteller - that I get my stories from history, not my history from stories. From my position anything goes in stories, or at least, anything I can get away with... which brings us back to 'acceptable' or the phrase I like, 'authentic-seeming'. We can only get that right for ourselves, and to some extent for our own contemporaries; what's necessary to make a tale of 1685 'authentic-seeming' will be different for Dickens from what will be for us. (God, I hate constructions using different, they always get complicated.).

Apologies for an ancestor-dropping moment, but it's relevant: when English Heritage were doing up Down House, they had Emma Darwin's letters and diaries to help them get it right. But she records that she had the drawing room was decorated in purple, with the mouldings picked out in gold. Eng. Her. decided that if they did this in this early 19th century house, no visitors would believe that they'd got it right, so they had to go for a later, more 'authentic-seeming' though not authentic, colour scheme. How's that for 'truth' winning over 'fact': the 'truth' is as much about our image of the past as about literal historical truth.

Emma

the 'truth' is as much about our image of the past as about literal historical truth.

Absolutely! It always drives me crazy when I see so called historical films where every one looks band-box fresh. No one has disfiguring skin diseases or missing limbs or rickets or... well you get the idea.

I remember recently seeing photographs of late Victorian Leeds with women delicately picking their way between piles of horse manure and puddles of urine. That's how it was.

In my young day, in the mid fifties, you had a bath once a week and a shared outside toilet. I now have five loos in my house and I now shower at least once a day.

I am not wedded to perfection on this point, but I think we should try and reflect as accurately as possible what life was really like, otherwise what is the point of research. We may as well make the whole thing up

This is a tough one, and I agree with a lot of what has already been said.

I co-wrote a play about Sophie Scholl (a German student who stood up to the Nazi's) a couple of years ago, and I pondered the same thing for ages. She is one of the best known figures in Germany, and getting it wrong would have been a disaster. Then I realised that the most important thing was to be true to what it was she did. Having sorted that out, creating the dramatic character was easy, as her actions informed so much of it, and I was able to 'let go' a little. Fortunately the piece was well received, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

I've recently had a similar problem. My new novel is inspired the actions of a real man in a Japanese POW camp. I agonised for ages about how to best portray him, then I realised that what he had done - although by far the most famous example - wasn't unique. So I've just created an entirely fictional character that does something similar, inspired by what he hears the historical character is doing in another camp.

I still toss and turn at night about whether I'm doing the right thing, but the man in question wanted his work to inspire. So I sincerely hope he would have approved - if not of my writing - then the spirit in which I undertook it.

Good luck, Prospero.

Harry

reflect as accurately as possible what life was really like

Absolutely… but it’s the transition period between invention and lifestyle that are so difficult to get right – at least they are for me, which is why I've avoided the issue. For instance, we can easily find out when a ball-point pen was invented, but when did it become a common household object? I can remember when my parents got their first vacuum cleaner, first cooker, indoor toilet, fridge. They had all been in existence for many years but were a luxury most people couldn’t afford. My grandparents had a bathroom – with a bath and hot running water – but still had an outside toilet because it wasn’t considered entirely sanitary to have one in the house.

uh-oh... late for work!

Dee

We may as well make the whole thing up

But isn't that what we do, as fiction writers? What's interesting is that some things readers expect to be made up, and some they expect to be 'true', and what should be which is largely assumed, by writers as well as readers. Everyone gets very bothered when the rules are broken, but actually, nobody knows what the rules are, except that very subjective criterion of 'convincing'. I think (but then I would, wouldn't I) that historical fiction is particularly odd and interesting in this respect, because readers want 'real'; they want to experience a world that did once exist. After all, if they wanted stuff they knew didn't exist they'd read sf/f. And yet we can't do it, we can't supply real, only a chimera, an impression, an authentic-seeming illusion. As Jeanette Winterson says in The Passion (one of my favourite historical novels) 'Trust me, I'm telling you stories.'

Emma

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but it’s the transition period between invention and lifestyle that are so difficult to get right

Oh, so true. Fiction of the period comes in handy here, and people's memories, but that only takes you back so far. Anyone struggling with this problem might be interested in Judith Flanders' study The Victorian House which is a fascinating exploration of the really nitty-gritty (and boy, was it nitty and gritty) of homes - and therefore lives - at that date, both how they were supposed to be, and how they actually were.

Cheers Harry, for your good wishes, if you want to read the story it is called May 4th

I sincerely hope he would have approved - if not of my writing - then the spirit in which I undertook it.

Exactly so. The spirit, the zeitgeist, if you will. Capture not the thing but its essential qualities. Like the old advertising adage' Sell the sizzle, not the sausage'.

It could almost be likened to painting and drawing. A novel is a large scale work, Flash is a cartoon. Each has its adherents, each has its unique qualities. You can write a novel and a Flash about the same event and make them equally satisfying for both yourself and the reader

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Sorry, I meant to say good luck with your story. My father was a Chindit on the second expedition with Wingate. So I have heard such tales as he would tell me about Burma and the Fogotten Army. Write your book, keep the memory of these brave men alive.

Best

Prosp

Yes, I know what you mean Dee. I well remember my mother getting her first washing machine and that must have about 1959. We got our telly in late May 1953 so my parents could watch the Coronation.

Biros only became common in the early sixties and were banned at our school, we had to use fountain pens. God, you don't realise how you have been living history.

Best

John

and boy, was it nitty and gritty

Oh dear me yes. The nit nurse was a familiar figure at my junior school and on refection I understand why I usually had a crew cut in my formative years and this was theh 1950's.

Apropos of nothing at all. I remember discussing at a literature seminar during my degree a letter written by a Victorian servant girl that had '&' (ampersands) all the way through it. And discovering that the ampersand used to be a apart of the alpahabet. It got its name thusly. When a class was reciting the alaphabet they would say 'exe, why, zed and per And'. This over time and much chanting became corrupted to Ampersand.

Best

John