Bittercon links: AH
brisingamen finishes up her Bittercon questions with one about fiction and history.
This paragraph will be running through my mind as I do the morning chores in a minute or two, here.
To be a trifle provocative, I might just start by asking what the difference is between history and fiction anyway, given that both seem to me to be all about the narrative, ( Read more... )
This paragraph will be running through my mind as I do the morning chores in a minute or two, here.
To be a trifle provocative, I might just start by asking what the difference is between history and fiction anyway, given that both seem to me to be all about the narrative, ( Read more... )
In most cases we're rearranging furniture.
No, really. The larger the piece (move the sofa over here--what if Germany won WWII) the more apparent the changes are. We are pretty clear that the Nazis were defeated, so saying they weren't opens up a whole new range of possibilities (wait! if I move the sofa there, I'm going to have to move where the TV and the end tables are, which means taking down that painting and omigod, those curtains aren't working and what the Hell am I going to do with all the books?). In some cases, a moving really big piece of furniture may require knocking out a wall or putting in a new window. Me, I tend to like smaller deviations from history because I'm a contrarian, and because the smaller deviations tend to make for less broad-stroke, but no less significant changes along the time line.
To be perfectly tiresome and bring up my own work, my first reason to make Queen Charlotte Regent in the Sarah Tolerance books came from a desire to suggest a climate more favorable to individual female enterprise, and I always intended to make the alternaty "heal" itself in 1811, with her illness and the Prince of Wales becoming Regent as he did in real life. But once I made her Regent (and came up with a reason why it was the Queen and not one of her sons) that opened up a huge range of options, political, social, and sociological, for me to play with. By rehanging that one painting I had a chance to move a whole lot of small stuff in a way that pleased me.
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Finally it comes down to whether or not the reader is convinced--whether or not the historian, or storyteller (story being the central concept in both those words) has given convincing detail.
A lot of ah's toss me out because I'm not convinced, the "but what if?" chain reactions overwhelm me so much I'm tossed out of the story they want to tell. If it seems the author has addressed the what ifs in a way that convinces or delights me and keeps me questioning, I get drawn in. And I find that true of history as well as fiction. The thing about getting old, and having read a lot is, one accrues more and more detail so that it is tougher to be convinced. But the payoff is sure fun.
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