Margaret Gaffney's Blog: The Writing World of Margaret Gaffney - Posts Tagged "writing-tips"

Hi again! It's been a minute since I've done this, cause it turns out grad students tend to have a lot of responsibilities -- who'd have thunk??

Though I write fantasy, I thought I'd put my practical skills to use and give some tips on what I actually do for work: history!

I graduated with a degree in history from Franciscan University and was valedictorian in my department, and now I'm in grad school for it, so my professors call me their "colleague" which is scary lol. But it also means that I'm taken seriously, so can trust me on this ;)

I read a lot of historical fiction in high school, and looking back, I realize how painful a lot of it was. Even if the author had minute details correct about clothing or food or transportation, the tone of the book would just be off.

That was because the book had committed the cardinal sin of history: presentism.

This is when a person takes concepts from their own time period and projects them onto people in the past. For instance, making a character an atheist in medieval France. Religion was so woven into every aspect of life in the medieval period, that atheism wasn't even formulated as a concept yet. So if you're going to write about that period, your characters must be religious, and they must be the right religion! If it's Europe, they're most likely Catholic or Jewish. Protestantism would not enter the picture until the sixteenth-century.

History is not just about knowing events or how people lived. It's understanding the world as the people in the past understood it. When you write historical fiction, you need to capture the spirit of the times in the interactions of your characters with their world, and appreciate that, even if you think its wrong or outdated, it's what they believed. Your writing will be impressive and satisfying if you do.

Next time I'll be talking about my favorite (aka least favorite) mistake in writing about history: creating feminist characters before feminism existed.

If there's something you'd like me to talk about, leave a comment and I'll do the research for you!

Hello again, fellow writers!

As promised, today I'm gonna say a bit about a peeve of mine: historical fiction misrepresenting women.

I tried writing about this topic from several angles and deleted all of them. There's so much I could say, but because people like short things, I'm gonna restrict my remarks to a few historical comments that I've corroborated in my own research and that defy the stereotype that women were completely subjugated by men before the modern period. This is deeply misleading, and it tends to make writers create feminist characters before feminism even existed. Just because women usually got married and didn't fight or hold political office until the industrial age and later does not mean they didn't contribute hugely to their societies.

So, in the name of history and with the goal of sparking inspiration in those who want to write historical fiction, I'm gonna give you some starting points to understand about different periods in history.

First of all, while women typically had less legal rights throughout history, so did most men. Legal power was in the hands of royal and Church authorities, and over time trickled down to the lower classes.

In the middle ages, from about 1000-1300, European women actually had a lot of rights. There was a general economic boom, people were healthier (there was no major black plague in Europe yet), and fact that serf women had to toil alongside their husbands on the land meant there wasn't as much division of labor between the genders. Everybody had to work, and jobs like brewing were actually women's work! Obviously this didn't apply to noble women, who often got educations, especially if you went to a convent, where you got a very good education. There were several powerful queens in these centuries, like Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Queens Melisende and Sybilla of Jerusalem. (Sybilla is featured in the movie Kingdom of Heaven, which is a disaster of a historical movie, do not take it seriously).

Now, the low middle ages were from 1300 to 1500, and these centuries brought famine, plague, war, economic hardship, and changes in religion. Life got harder, so laws became more strict for women as society tried to maintain itself. Men took more responsibility for their households and wanted women reproducing so people didn't die out. While these ideas might seem foreign to us today, they grew because of a general fear about life. However, women, especially those less wealthy, still worked alongside their husbands and helped run the family business. They were essential to hold the family together.

Now, the 1600-1700s saw more restrictions, with a few exceptions like the French Revolution, which in the beginning at least wanted to give more rights to women, though that got overshadowed with the increase in violence.

That leaves the 1800s onward, a time that included the industrial age, Victorian period, and Edwardian period. *sigh*

The reason I grow weary when I'm about to talk about these century is because it's what most people think of when they think of women in history. Women as the "angel of the house", told to stay in the home while the men went out into the world. First of all, even though the middle class was growing because factories and industry were making people richer, only a considerable amount of wealth could allow for a woman to stay home while her husband worked. Lots of mothers, sisters, daughters, toiled alongside the men in factory jobs. Even women who did stay home took their roles very seriously. They raised their children, which any mother will tell you is a full time job. So even though we'd see them as "repressed", they wouldn't see themselves that way until the end of the century,

In short, women did have important roles throughout history. Though this is a simplistic way of putting it, they were extremely valued. So when you're writing them into your historical books, don't make them do things they wouldn't have in the name of them being "strong women". Rather, make them strong in their own roles. They didn't see themselves as lesser because they weren't doing the fighting and leading roles of men. Oftentimes they were the behind the scenes leaders, the secret strength of their families.

As a final note, I don't want to say you can't have women suffering under unfairness in your books. Just like today, men and women feel the pain at the hands of forces beyond their control, and obviously the lesser role women had in law meant they could be taken advantage of. But the jobs they did have meant that they themselves were also strong, and they knew how to operate in their worlds. So when you're writing them, give them their due.

Francine RiversI'm not going to post every book review I do on my blog, just those books I feel strongly about, or those of new authors, cause lets face it, newbies like us could always use a little boost!

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I am not a fan of steamy love scenes, cause I just don't think they're necessary to a good story. It's much more powerful to write good characters and dialogue than throw in a description of a sex scene that you wouldn't be comfortable reading out loud to your parents.

That's the reason I've often turned to Christian fiction, because it tends to put a line at the bedroom door, which is as far as things need to go in literature. Like, we get the point. Seriously. Stop indulging your lower passions at the expense of a decent book. It's totally uncalled for.

Contrary to this, Redeeming Love is an example of book that has extremely sexual topics (including an 8 year getting raped) and the growing intimacy of a man and woman who get married and then have to get to know each other, but doesn't go too far in any direction. It takes them seriously, but Francine Rivers weaves the story such that you know what's going on without needing an explicit description of it. It actually makes it much more powerful when you only see the reactions of people before and after the fact, and have intense moments of dialogue when people become vulnerable, or attack each other in ways that break your heart.

Beyond this, the story is also amazing, because it's about a woman finding her dignity after being forced to subjugate herself sexually from the time of her childhood. Don't worry, feminists, this isn't the story of a woman who finds meaning in her husband and everything is happy. Rather, Michael Hosea first shows Angel (the first of many names for her) that she has dignity in the first place, a fact which she's forgotten. He holds up mirror to her, and at first she runs from the truth, preferring to conceal herself in cold cynicism and the abuse of other people as a result of how she was abused.

But Michael doesn't give up. He helps her find her way as her own person, and ultimately, it's her who finds her way to hope and freedom. It's a beautiful story of faith and courage, even for the non-religious person, because the religious aspects aren't clumsy or overwhelming.

Give this book a go. There's a movie coming out eventually and I'm super stoked.



View all my reviewsRedeeming Love

Hello, hello, and welcome back to my writing world, fellow bibliophiles!

I've noticed people taking issue with some of my stances in the past, and I just want to rehash a couple things. First, I'm a European historian, so that's the part of the world I'm usually covering. I'm not gonna attempt to talk extensively about areas outside my purview. Also, my historical interpretations are developed from my research and education, but like most academic topics, they are open to debate, so even if you don't agree, leave a comment to start a discussion! I don't mind! Just please be respectful and remember that we ought to be building people up.

I might take a break from strictly historical topics for a bit after this post, unless someone has something they'd like me to comment on, but for now I'm gonna talk about something near and dear to my own heart, and something I wish more historical fiction books would use! Women in the theater!

Specifically, I'm gonna cover the 18th century European opera, which was such a colorful and crazy scene it could make for some very fun source material in a novel.

Nowadays, opera is a pretty sober affair. You dress up, you watch the show in silence, you're polite and clap at the end. Not in the 1700s. The opera house was an enormous social venue, and it brought together all levels of society from the king to the poor who'd pay half price to get in halfway through. People treated it like going to a baseball game nowadays. They'd talk all the way through unless their favorite singer was performing, they'd eat and socialize and play games. Sometimes they'd riot if they didn't get an encore. And sometimes the performers would get into fistfights on the stage. I'm not kidding.

Singers were truly at the center of this craziness, because opera in the 18th century put heavy emphasis on highlighting the voice of the singer rather than the music itself. Women were especially notorious for abusing this power, and they'd make composers write music specifically for them, or even change the music in the middle of the show!

These women often had the title Prima Donna (think of the Phantom of the Opera Song), and were stereotyped as beautiful, demanding, vivacious, slutty, talented, petty, vain, and extremely temperamental. Now, of course we know stereotypes are broad brush strokes, but they usually have just enough truth to be telling.

The historical record is rife with stories of prima donnas arguing with composers, refusing to sing, going through strange rituals before performing, fighting for roles, cancelling engagements at the last minute, and basically driving their managers to contemplate violence because of their moodiness. This wasn't helped by the fact that these women were in an very unique financial position. The cream of the crop prima donna was usually rich and especially unique because she made money in her own right, without inheritance or business etc. That also made her independent.

This independence, coupled with a frequent level of promiscuity in the forms of well to do lovers, meant that female opera singers existed outside polite society. True, they were popular, but the world rejected them and made them stay in their place as outsiders. History shows us singers often did nothing to help this situation, as they usually lived in grand and wild life styles that made them seem questionable to polite society.

Still, female opera singers had a level of autonomy not available to most women in their time, and their lives were often so colorful whole books could be written about it. So the next time you're writing a period piece and need to think of an occupation for a type of lady, think about this.

If you want more specifics, I'm happy to share my sources and more stories. I could wax eloquent on this all day.

It all started when I went to make a literary Mother's Day post on instagram. I sat thinking for a while and even requested help on facebook, but I couldn't come up with more than five mothers from books that I could congratulate for their maternal skills. I ended up including Mrs. Bennet simply for her humor!

It has long been a joke of the internet that Disney seems to relish killing off the parents of it heroes or making them cruel, stupid, or generally disconnected from their children. As Disney, at least the Disney of the past, thrives off classic fairytales of good and evil, it's unsurprising that this trope is also found in many epic novels and stories. These include Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Cinder Linh (and every other main character in TLC), Katniss Everdeen, Tris Prior, Charlotte Doyle, and even Frodo Baggins, whose parents drowned when he was a young hobbit. Less "epic" heroes include Jane Eyre, Esther Summerson, Elizabeth Bennet, Huck Finn, and many others.

I too have given in to this rather exhausted trope in my debut work, All the Queen's Men, though in my own pathetic defense, I didn't realize how annoying it was until after the first installment was published.

So, I ask, why? Why do the parents have to be dead or emotionally unavailable? (I encourage anyone who disagrees or thinks my comments are insufficient to please comment below!!!)

My quick answer is I think authors feel taking their hero's parents is an easy way to put them through an early trauma they have to fight threw, and thus emerge more heroic. It usually means they have to teach themselves or work harder than everyone else, or have a level of emotional detachment that is excellent fodder for later romantic turmoil. This is is not to criticize authors who do it. I do, for crying out loud! I'm just wondering if we can do better...

The thing is, most of us do have parents or guardian figures who loved us. They impacted us positively, guiding us to find our futures and teaching us the values that we now have. I for one called my mom regularly in college, venting to her and feeling better just when I heard her voice on the other line, telling me I could do it.

My point here is, I feel like stories would be more relatable if they worked in the hero having a strong parental relationship that then guides them in their adventures. I'm sure there are already a lot of books that don't do this, but it's troubling to me that the NY Times bestsellers I referenced above lap up this tendency to kill off mom and dad before twenty pages in.

Moreover, one of my all time favorite plot lines is a mending relationship between a parent and child. The popularity of shows like the Mandalorian prove to me that I can't be the only one who loves this trope. The book Entwined is another excellent example. I can't help but tear up as I read about Azalea and her sisters realizing that their father does, in fact, love them.

In short, while I understand the temptation to drag your MC through the emotional mud by making their childhood lonely maybe think twice. How can you work this in so that it's more realistic and more relatable to the average reader?

Alright, time to get off my soapbox for the day. Happy reading!

I like it when I can find similarities between my favorite book characters and plot with my actual life. It helps draw me into the story more completely. One of my favorites, and one of the rarest, is books about characters with enormous families.

I myself am the eighth of nine, and I can't help but be intrigued when authors show scope of character between several siblings. An excellent example would be the twelve princess of Heather Dixon Wallwork's Entwined, the siblings of Georgette Heyer's The Grand Sophy, or the girls, and Ben, of the beloved The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy books by Jeanne Birdsall.

Unsurprisingly to authors, and perhaps surprisingly to readers, a common reason for this lack in storytelling can be a lack of understanding or belief in inability to create enough characters with enough personality for the reader. This can be especially challenging when trying to create siblings, as they might seem flimsy compared to your established MC, but they also require a level of similarity to the MC if they grew up together. Flat characters are the worst, but a fear of them shouldn't keep you from giving your MC half a dozen siblings if you want!

Writers tend to write what they understand, so today, I'm going to try to provide a few tips based on my own life experience as a sibling in a close knit family to give you some ideas about creating that literary family of your own. For these purposes, I'm not going to go into basic requirements, like giving your sibling characters motivations, private goals, mannerisms etc., that should be applied to other characters. This will focus on their roles in the family.

One of the first things to consider is place in the order. Siblings in a line of many are especially impacted by their location along the family tree. It can impact some of the most essential elements of their character. Obviously there is a common belief that the oldest children are the most responsible, but this isn't always the case. The oldest ones tend to be "the great experiment", meaning that they might be allowed to get away with more bad decisions than the younger ones. This also means the younger siblings are usually smarter about some things, like what NOT to major in, and whether dating in high school is worth it. As one of the youngest, you get to see the older ones mess up, so it's basically experience without the pain!

However, place in the line isn't as simple as oldest, middle, youngest. There can be mini clusters within these. For instance, there are 9 in my family, meaning 3 thirds, and me being the 8th means I'm the middle of the last third. So, in some ways I tended to feel like a middle child, especially because my brother right above me and my sister right below me are very similar in personality, and also very different from me.

Considering these kinds of dynamics, not only where precisely your MC falls but where there siblings are in the order can help you add aspects to their characters. I'm not saying that there is one way older and younger children are within a family, but I urge you to use logic to consider how placement in a family can affect.

Another thing to consider is how the parents might change in a family, and how that makes the children change, thus causing your MC and their various siblings to grow up to become different people. For instance, it's often that parents are more settled financially when their youngest kids are getting older, so they might have more opportunities for vacations and college etc. Parents might also simply be better at parenting later, like I said the oldest can sometimes be experimented on, so the younger ones have an easier time. However, the younger ones also have to deal perhaps with older parents, who maybe don't want to do certain things as much, meaning the children have to be inventive or become more independent so they don't stay in the house all the time.

A final thing to consider, and this does have to do with wider characters as well, is whether or not siblings get along. Perhaps there is one that is always difficult. Perhaps there tend to be two factions that form whenever an argument breaks out. It can have to do with placement in the family line, personal experience, and experience outside the family.

The thing that makes writing big families especially challenging is that they carry all the difficulties of writing normal characters, except that they have to have perceptible things in common to truly seem like family. They have shared experiences and sometimes they perceive those differently, so they grow to be different people, but that shared time is still there.

Large families are incredibly fun in real life and fiction, and I hope some of my commentary will help get those creative juices flowing and encourage you to be brave and expand that supporting cast. Onward, my friends!

Hello all, today I thought I'd provide some personal insight about an issue that will more often affect fantasy, sci-fi, and steampunk writers, or any one writing outside of the real world. That is the issue of exposition.

Now, exposition is a problem all writers face; how to get your audience quickly acquainted with the characters and world without overloading them with a ton of details that are awkward and cumbersome. This can be especially challenging when you are world-building and you must familiarize your reader with the rules of the world before they can understand the stakes of the plot. Obviously, you could have opening pages where your main character muses on their life and the circumstances, but this is a tricky line to walk. First of all, introducing too many new concepts at once can turn off the casual reader, and it can just be dull as you wait for the story to start.

So, here are some suggestions for ways to seamlessly integrate rules of the world into your work.

1. Have a short opening document or statement from your world (usually issued by the leaders) that gives some important information on how things are done in your universe. An intense example of this would be of course, The Fellowship of the Ring, which Tolkien kicks off with his famous passages including "concerning hobbits." But if you're worried your indie author publication might not have the same pull, I also used this tactic in my first book, Of Slaves and Exiles, giving a brief paragraph from a government document detailing the official passage of power to the human races. Also, I know I spoke of Entwined in my last post (sorry not sorry, I love that book so much!), but in that Heather Dixon includes a passage from the lady's dancing handbook, explaining the dance known as the "Entwine", and how it derived from the High King's practice of capturing souls. Spoooky...but effective!

It might be a bit much to explain everything about the specific rules of your world in an opening passage, but there are ways to integrate rules so your can stealthily catch up your readers before the plot thickens!

2. In that vein, a useful practice in stories can be to have an outsider of some sort, perhaps someone who literally doesn't live in the society, or for some other reason is an outsider. Now, this device is a fickle creature -- don't over do it by dumping the readers with a ton of information in one chapter. Dare I say, that almost feels cringey. But you can integrate the information in gradually. Perhaps the outsider character learns things while exploring on their own, or meets different people who provide information. An example of this is most obviously Harry Potter, who is taught things about the wizarding world by Hagrid, and then subsequently filled in by his friends, honestly through all the books. That way, the readers can feel like Harry, getting acquainted with the rules and taboos of magic.

However, your story might not call for an outsider character ... and I do not recommend putting one in simply for that reason! That is one of the main ways exposition can come across as painful or forced.

3. A final suggestion (for today) on how to explain your world is to have an immediate breaking of the rules! You heard me, write a character doing something that is a clear violation, and then have the other characters react to it. This can be good fun, because you might get to have some angry scenes, or comic scenes, and overall you make the reader care very quickly.

There are obviously lots of other ways to tactfully explain your unique world, so if you have other ideas, please comment below!