Elliott’s Comments (group member since Sep 26, 2011)

Elliott’s comments from the The Role of History in the Making of Stories: A chat and Q&A with authors Andrew Williams and Aly Monroe group.

Hi Andrew,

Sorry for the typo-fest above, this thing really needs a preview button. I lost internet for a while so this has been bouncing around for a few hours.

Getting the chronology right is so far the most difficult thing about plotting out historical fiction. I think it's pretty normal to plot the way you're describing Andrew; I'm doing something similar, winding everything around a few fixed points. The historical record of some of the people I'm using is actually helpful in this: there are long gaps where history doesn't really know where they are, and then suddenly they pop up again.

The problem I'm having is that history is too slow sometimes. The Erie War I mentioned in the last post actually takes place over several years. There are long stretches where nothing happens, and then a Board election or a court ruling causes the whole thing to flare up again. I don't think readers expect or particularly like that kind of dead time, even if it's skipped over and referred to. Real people have long periods of inactivity, from a dramatic standpoint, and it's an interesting challenge to make the reader realise that.

Hi Aly,

My historical characters aren't on the page for very long but are very important in story terms. I am less focused on getting their words right rather than their essential character. If they were major characters I think I'd feel different, and would spend a lot more time reading primary sources.

I do agree tangents are half the fun, but I think it's a larger problem for me than it normally would be because of the variety of topics I'm trying to knit together. To take an example from Jay Gould, he is involved in one of the great corporate struggles of all time, the Erie War, which pitted him against Cornelius Vanderbilt for control of the Erie Railway, a vital transport link for New York. It's one of those great stories that no one would believe if it weren't true, involving duelling corrupt judges, bribing and the re-bribing pretty much everyone in government, and Gould living for a time in exile in New Jersey to avoid a contempt of court warrant.

The problem is, it doesn't work in chronological times with most of what I'm doing, except for some important events at the end. I'll refer to some of it, but I don't think I can afford to portray them directly without derailing my relevant.

I'm really starting to understand why Victorian books end up being so long...

Hi Aly and Andrew,

It was a bit weird using rela people at first, as if I'd dug them up and was making them dance for my amusement. I came to a similar conclusion, Andrew, that this is an integral part of literature (it's not like Shakespeare was mates with half of English royalty) and it needs to be approached with care, but not anxiety. Using real people from the 19th century is something I feel I can get away with more easily than someone who is still within living memory. I think that would place a far greater burden making sure the small details of that person was right.

The question I wanted to ask you both is how often do you find your own narratives being hijacked by the historical one? I'm trying to blend a series of historical events -- the second opium war, the Taiping rebellion and American railway speculation, among others -- and I've found myself drowning interesting things. There have already been several times where I tried to shoehorn some part of history in my novel because it's so interesting, not necessarily because it fits with what I'm trying to do.

Have you both had similar experiences?

Laurence,

You're right that that there's probably no person who has no defenders or no detractors, even Gandhi.

I don't think you could get away from colouring novels with your own impressions. What we choose to talk about is as important as what we say, and that selective editing makes a huge difference in how a event is seen by a reader.

It's another easy way to tie yourself in knots, but I think worrying about accuracy is more productive than worrying about 'balance.' The former is thinking things through properly, while the latter is just making sure two sides are presented, even when both don't deserve an equal hearing. I don't think that works in literature any more than journalism.

The thing I was alluding to earlier is that this whole idea of accuracy is based on having an absolute standard of history to measure against. There are definitely certain facts you can get wrong, like your Mahjongg example Andrew, but I think those kinds of things aren't the problem.

One of the real people I plan to use in my new book is a financier called Jay Gould. He was known as 'The Mephistopheles of Wall Street' to give you an idea of his reputation, and was later grouped with Carnegie, Rockefeller and others as one of the 'Robber Barons.'

In the last twenty years or so there has been an attempt to rehabilitate Gould, a new biography arguing he was not nearly as corrupt as first alleged, that he didn't steal from the railways he managed among other things. I think this rehabilitation is as much about the present as it is a man of the 19th century. Some want to see 'creative' financiers like Gould as great businessmen, the way society treated senior bankers as masters of the universe until they blew up the world economy.

So in trying to not only use him to move the story along, but create a version of Gould as a character, I walk right into the middle of this fight. How can I be accurate, when some fundamental aspects of the man's character are in active dispute?

I think the dispute gives us the alibi we need. When plotting something out I don't ask 'did this happen?' but 'could this have happened?' which is the real question.

Hi Aly and Andrew,

I'm coming at this from an interesting angle, as I had been writing in the near-future, and I'm now writing something new set in the 1850s-1870s.

The Strange Trilogy, though nominally set in the future, was really informed by totalitarian movements in the 20th: the Rapture by Stalin's Terror, and the Children's Crusade by Mao's Cultural Revolution. I used them as guides to understand how mass movements developed, and also as borders, to make sure I wasn't writing something ridiculous. After researching them my mind was put at ease, as I was confident I couldn't dream up anything half as crazy as what had happened then.

The new book I'm working on uses actual people and events, and the anxieties about accuracy you've been talking about were a new adjustment. With the trilogy almost all my research was for inspiration; now I am making what amounts to historical assertions. I was really paranoid at the beginning, trying to hold my work against some absolute standard of historical accuracy that we all know doesn't exist.