Answering the post on describing locations it occurred to me that literature deals with locations in different ways. Some novels use entirely real places, names and descriptions, the lot. You can go there and see the things being written about. Others use entirely fictional towns and villages. Yet others use a mixture of the two - a fictional name but a real town, a real name but not accurate and so on.

What's interesting (to me at least!) is the 'rules' governing this, at least in fiction. Capital cities seem almost always to remain 'real' - London always seems to be London, for example (unless the plot is based around some sort of oddity, of course!). On the other hand it seems quite common for smaller towns and villages to be at least partially fictional.

Is this to protect the locations involved - and possibly the author? Or is it that smaller locations need more elements 'made up' to fit the story, where, for example, the town is fine but needs a pub or a shop or an estate that doesn't exist in reality?

Jon

I think it’s a matter of the author’s choice whether they use real or imaginary places. However, if a real place is used, it must be accurate. Many people will read a novel simply because it’s based in their local area, and they will notice any errors – and they’ll be sure to let you know!

Getting real details correct puts the reader into a trusting frame of mind and they’ll believe the most outrageous fiction – yes, they’ll accept that London has been taken over by brick-eating bleurgmonsters, but they won't accept that they drive on the right-hand side of the road.

I find a middle ground works well. I’m careful to get the real details of an area correct, but will happily implant fictitious buildings (like the Winter House, for instance). In PFTG, I used the real setting of the Yorkshire Dales, but created an entirely fictitious village where the action takes place. It must have worked, because one or two people have said they know where the real village is…

I imagine that, for instance, setting a novel in a real small village would make the inhabitants nervous – especially if it was a murder mystery. Using a large place – like London – you can be specific about the reality, but it’s sufficiently big and anonymous to be vague about the bits you make up.

Is this any help? I think I'm starting to babble… late night last night…

Dee

And it helps that the tourist industry can latch on to your success - Lorna Doone country springs disturbingly to mind...

L

What really turns me off in a story is finding a name like Bradfield, usually described as a gritty northern town. It’s so obviously a mish-mash of Bradford and Huddersfield, I can't understand why the author has to be so coy.

Dee

Dee, yes, I agree about how irritating this is; better to be more inventive about the name, or more honest about which you're using.

What's interesting (to me at least!) is the 'rules' governing this, at least in fiction. Capital cities seem almost always to remain 'real' - London always seems to be London, for example (unless the plot is based around some sort of oddity, of course!). On the other hand it seems quite common for smaller towns and villages to be at least partially fictional.

Jon, this is parallel to how people think about what you can and can't invent in historical fiction - you can't invent a monarch, you can invent her servant. It seems to be largely an unspoken set of rules, but very strong.

With cities, maybe we feel that London et. al. are public property, and we can all use them for our own purposes, though there are limits to how much you can change public fact: you can't move the Tower to Richmond. But a village, or a street, belongs to the inhabitants, who have a right not to be mis-represented.

Emma

Emma

Bradfield is a real place in South Yorkshire .. though rather prettier than the blackened town its name evokes.

<Added>

I use real place names in poetry a lot because so much is communicated in a single word.

Emma,
do you think that, because Hollywood writes its own rules regarding historical accuracy (I've just finished watching Braveheart, blimey what was Gibson thinking?)this attitude slowly filters down to some writers of historical fiction?

As a keen reader of historical fiction, dodgy facts and bad research can kill a book quicker than a trebuchet full of manky horsemeat.

just wondered if people felt the same way - ie that novelists work damn harder that movie scriptwriters (sorry any Hollywood scriptwriters out there!)

Well, I've got mixed feelings about this one. Certainly Hollywood plays fast and loose with history, but then so did Shakespeare, very: try comparing the historical facts of the Wars of the Roses with his History plays. But they're no less wonderful for that. And the Cate Blanchett film Elizabeth was very factually inaccurate, but wonderful, capturing those terrifying, passionate, dangerous times in all sorts of ways that might have been diluted if they hadn't been able to mess about with strict chronology, making what I thought was a very convincing version of the historical character live as few others have managed, and developing really interesting themes in the same way. I do think it might be significant that the director was Indian, and had never heard of Elizabeth before he was sent the script.

I agree that it jars when you meet a fact you know is wrong. And since we go looking for truth of many kinds in fiction, to realise that facts are wrong can undermine the kind of faith we need to have in the storyteller we're listening to. But of course we all know different facts: as a writer the best I can do is guess what 'matters' and what doesn't, and I may be wrong for you, though right for myself and someone else. On the other hand, we're not writing history, but fiction. Really quite often I find myself wondering just how far I'm morally obliged to go in checking that there's nothing on the record that contradicts the thing I want to say. And then I think, 'But hey, I'm telling a story here, and I'm playing by story-telling rules. If you want history, go and read a history book.' It gets hardest when you're writing for an audience who are particularly keen to get their fact-fix from your fiction (I'm thinking naval history here - Hornblower has a lot to answer for!). And unless you're as good as C S Forrester, or perhaps Patrick O'Brien, I can't help wondering if the writers have actually been hampered in their creativity by the necessity to Get Everything Right.

This question has become particularly acute in my new novel, as a large part of it deals with real historical characters. I won't knowingly contradict a fact that I know, or a basic thing that I ought to find out. But as long as I know that X wasn't actually in France, and I don't happen to have read of a major event that he attended in London, then I'm not going to waste time calculating if he could have been in Norwich, where I want him. I'm just going to put him there, and the world expert on this guy will no doubt write a stinker of a review in the TLS because of it.

Emma

There is an old novel based on/inspired by the life of one of my former relatives who came to a bad end way back when.

The historical facts can be written on the back of a postcard and the author makes no bones that he altered local history to fit the story.

I am fine with most of that - even the psychological implausibility of anyone in the family ever doing anything because they had their arm twisted and his unlikely religious streak.

What really gets me is him being given black hair and green eyes!

Sarah

Is it perhaps this element of what you can 'get away with' that defines the rules around towns and cities (and people - nice link Em)? Is it about suspending disbelief?

If I wrote about a city in Chile called Kovacic how many 'western' readers would know if that was real? However, if I say there's a city called Pondoon in Leicestershire I'd be caught out immediately (in this country at least). I HAVE to use the proper names of cities because if I don't it'll confuse the readers (and again we'll ignore fiction that has valid reasons for changing names) but if I create a village that doesn't exist few will know that and others that live in the area might actually find it interesting to try and guess where it 'really' is.

Of course, all this assumes that a writer is a) writing with wide success in mind and b) writing specifically for a UK audience, neither of which I believe is true for most.

I don't know, it's interesting that it seems to be a rule well known and adhered to without any concrete logic behind it.

Jon

Helen Cross calls Beverley 'White Horse' in 'My Summer of Love' and I'm not sure why - but then it was filmed somewhere completely different (a village in the Dales?)

I suppose because the setting is fictionalised to some extent? And the description unlikely to appeal to the tourist board?

Sarah

I think the concrete logic is that maddening one called 'it depends'. And yes, it being a UK audience makes a difference too. I loved Franzen's The Corrections but it's so state-of-the-nation American that I was aware that quite often something that surprised me and seemed significant might be just normal, and not meant for me to draw any particular conclusions.

And I've had readers of my things sometimes be taken much by surprise by some piece of 'normal' 19th century life that I hadn't meant to be particularly significant.

Of course, one of the pleasures of historical fiction - and an important aspect of what I'm always trying to do - is exploring and enjoying the otherness of other times, while also trying to pin down what the constants are in human behaviour and human nature.

Emma

Emma, have you read 'Sexing the cherry' by Jeannette Winterson?

Very interesting play with time - and place. I'm intrigued and will have to read again.

She was talking about 'Romeo and Juliet' on TV the other night - fascinating.

(sorry, off thread but blend of
historical/fantasy)

Sarah

I read it years ago, and enjoyed it, though not as much as The Passion, which I absolutely adored. She's always interesting to listen to, too.

Emma

<Added>

And yes, what she does with hist fic is absolutely fascinating, and I more and more feel myself drawn down that road. Robert Nye's novel about Walter Raleigh, Voyage of the Destiny first showed me what a real writer can do with history.

Emma

The work by De Certeau underlines the question of 'fact' and 'truth' in the writing of History. Most 'facts' are verifiable while 'truths' depend much upon the interpretation of the writer, specifically when it concerns people, their relationships in the social sense and the effect of their actions upon their own times and on future events.

Freud's work on Monotheism is an interesting work in which he questions whether Moses was an Egptian highlights the conflict of opinions among the most respected of intellectuals and also among the writers of History.

'Facts' have a way of being questioned - such as whether Elizabeth 1 was indeed a virgin or whether she had a son by Dudley. Historical fiction can therefore have a very wide playing field but, in my opinion, it needs to impart that ring of authority from which 'truths' are born. In that lies the skill of the writer of historical fiction.

Len