Emma
That's a good point, about the sheer range of reactions to fiction.
I find it oddly interesting, when someone disagrees strongly on a book or film. It's hard to remember all this though, when those horrible SAEs slither through the front door.

It's hard to remember all this though, when those horrible SAEs slither through the front door.

So, so hard. But it's worth remembering, (and I know I've said this on WW before) because then you might remember (well, okay, when you've stopped beating the walls and sobbing) that you don't have to convince the entire trade that your stuff is wonderful, only one person. It's easier bear the getting-stuff-out-there process when you can see it as a search for that person, rather than as randomly picking a new part of the brick wall to bang your head against.

Which should all probably be on the rejection-pledge thread, not here...

Emma

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I find it oddly interesting, when someone disagrees strongly on a book or film

Yes, and so often you disagree based on completely different aspects of the film; you say, 'I really believed in him as an artist so I loved the film', while they're saying 'I hated it because I hate films with wobbly camera work.' Actually, I think that might account for Fredegonde and me disagreeing - correction, having different responses to - Elizabeth.

Don't get me wrong, Emma, I actually enjoyed Elizabeth quite a bit, as I'm a big Cate Blanchett fan and it was certainly a feast to the eyes -- and like you said, the atmosphere was intense. It's just that afterwards I started wondering why they'd made certain choices and sighing over how much better it might have been, which probably isn't a very productive thing to do... (By the way, they're making a sequel, I've heard -- whatever my doubts about the first film, I'm certainly looking forward to it!)

I went to the Historical Novel Society conference and was suprised and slightly horrified by how strongly everyone felt that everything must be dead accurate, to the point where I felt there'd be no room for imagination. Whereas I write history because that's where my imagination works best.

Me too. But I usually get round the more restrictive facts by making up my own. My characters are often inspired by real people, but I think I'd be hesitant to write about them -- I know my idea of them is far from the truth, so it doesn't feel right, somehow -- I'm rather afraid of doing what The Hours did to Virginia Woolf. (At the same time, though, I think it's a perfectly legitimate thing to do, and I don't blame Cunningham for doing it... I'd just feel a little uncomfortable doing it myself.) And what I do even more often is to make up, say, places, instead of doing painstaking research on real locations. For example, I wrote a story about 18th-century tourists in an Italian coastal town called Adorno, which obviously doesn't exist (or at least I think not!), and I enjoyed writing it tremendously because I could make use of everything I knew about 18th-century English tourists and 18th-century Italy, without having to make sure that all my streets and palaces were in their right places. I think I managed to capture a certain mood much better this way than if I'd tortured myself about the geography and society of Naples in 1782. (Though if I had access to a library full of maps and memoirs and prints of 18th-century Naples, I'd probably feel differently!)

I don't know if it might be considered the easy way out, though? Laziness? Cowardice? Or 'historical fantasy' instead of proper historical fiction? I don't know. I suppose the fact that I mostly write with my tongue veering towards my cheek might have something to do with it, though. Whenever I write something very serious, I tend to be more serious about facts, too. (Which is probably why factual matters in Elizabeth bother me but when I'm reading or watching Orlando I don't stop to think, 'Wait a minute, there was no such ambassador in Turkey! How dare they!!'

Hmm...

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My characters are often inspired by real people, but I think I'd be hesitant to write about them -- I know my idea of them is far from the truth, so it doesn't feel right, somehow...

But strangely enough it gets easier when the facts about the real people are obscure. (I've got an insistent little urge to write something about Lady Mary Wroth, and I don't know if I should obey it!)

I think this is related to the Sarah Waters quote Caroline mentioned -- when the 'truth' is more detailed and established, you feel a greater responsibility to get it right?

Wow, thanks to everyone contributing to this thread... it has been really interesting and useful to me! In particular, I'm going to take on board the suggestion to read fiction of the place/period I'm researching (so if anyone can suggest any London based fiction of the late 50s, 60s and 70s that'd be great!). I think it'll be a great way of tapping into the period.

Cymro, you could do worse than dip into Lynn Reid Banks's The L-Shaped Room, which I remember being very much of its time (?1961) in terms of manners, mores, and bed-bugs.

Fredegonde:

Me too. But I usually get round the more restrictive facts by making up my own.

I suppose I'm particularly twitchy about this issue at the moment as I'm dealing with real people in a particularly ill-documented and long-time-ago period.

I heard Helen Dunmore/Michel Faber/Anna Enquist talk about being able to write in the 'white spaces' left between the known historical facts. Rose Tremain says you have to break free of the research, and she makes up things deliberately (even weirder food and medicines, say, than actually happened) in order to do this. I remember during her talk thinking of Hamlet - 'they do but poison in jest, no offence i' the world', for some reason. Something about us not taking our fiction as anything other than storytelling, where anything goes, I think.

Emma





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Some thoughts around this from Michel Faber, author of The Crimson Petal and The Rose:

Those who learn too much about the past are condemned to repeat it. That is, those who have carefully studied eg. 17th century Flemish butchers as "background research" for their story are often condemned to tell us every little thing they have learned about butchery, the Flemings, and the 17th century in general...When writers of historical fiction do this, it's not because they've gone mad. It's because they fear - quite reasonably - that if they don't keep reminding you of the past, you will get lazy and see the present... What then is the secret of a good historical story - a story that keeps us securely inside a bygone world, while not annoying us with constant reminders of where we are supposed to be?

Cymro
Glad the suggestion helped. You could try reading Elizabeth Taylor for the 50s and also Phillip Larkin wrote two beautiful books (in my opinion, anyway) set during the late 40s or early 50s.They're called A girl in winter and Jill. I second the L-Shaped Room and would have said Stan Barstow for the 50s too, but maybe his work is a bit too Northern. Quite good on morals/social acceptability and whatnot of that time though, which probably applied everywhere.

On Michael Faber, did anyone else think The Crimson Petal was just fabulous?

There's at least one (two?) more with the L-Shaped Room characters, and also there's the earlier end of Margaret Drabble or even P D James. Also plays - Wesker, for instance, and Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey.

Caroline - haven't read The Crimson Petal yet because when it came out I'd just read Fingersmith, and couldn't face another post-Dickensian fattie, but having heard him read short fiction, I want to. He's doing a collection of short stories now taking various minor characters from it and writing other parts of their lives.

Emma

Cymro, I don't know if they're the sort of books you normally read, but the 50s and 60s have never felt more real to me than in the novels of Barbara Pym. Of the ones I've read, Excellent Women, No Fond Return of Love, and Less Than Angels are set in London. (The sociological spectrum isn't very wide, of course -- they're about the lives of a certain type of middle class people. But such as they are, they're very real. And delightful!)

Rose Tremain says you have to break free of the research, and she makes up things deliberately (even weirder food and medicines, say, than actually happened) in order to do this.

That's interesting, and it makes sense, too -- not only in terms of breaking free of research, but because there is room for exaggeration and quirks in individual behaviour, habits, beliefs, tastes, etc. People rarely are 'typical' specimens of their period, at least not in every way. (And what's typical isn't always what seems typical: people like to believe that in the 18th and 19th centuries an unmarried gentlewoman of 25 would be considered 'on the shelf', but I was surprised to read in The Gentleman's Daughter by Amanda Vickers that among the genteel families whose lives she studied for the book, most women didn't marry before the age of 25!)

Caroline, I read about one third of The Crimson Petal and thought the beginning was excellent -- what a way to draw the reader in! -- but eventually stopped reading for an odd reason... I grew tired of the narrator's voice. (Well, that, combined with my fits of prudishness.) At first I thought, 'Oh, how clever!' and then 'Yes, yes... very clever...' and finally, 'How condescending. Can you really reduce a whole time period to this?' But I'll try again when I'm in a better mood

I seem to remember that there was a huge social survey thing that might cover part of your period. The one where thousands of people kept diaries and submitted them to a central resource. I cant for the life of me remember what it was called though and a quick couple of googles hasnt turnrd it up for me.

I like diaries and letters for getting texture for a period. I would think tat newspaper archives would be good too. What were the issues of the day, etc ?

mas

a huge social survey thing

Mass Observation?

Emma

Aha - Yes thats the thing. Contemporary opinions and comment.

And it looks like they are still at it, if not with quite the same np zeal.