Development - Historical Study, Real History

11 May 2012, Development - Historical Study, Real History

Introduction: I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21st novel and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.

I'm using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published. I'll keep you informed along the way.

Today's Blog: To see the steps in the publication process, visit my writing website http://www.ldalford.com/ and select "production schedule," you will be sent to http://www.sisteroflight.com/.

I'm writing about sources of historical research and how to make historical research. These apply to any novel or any subject you might wish to study. Here is a list:

1. Primary source documents or artifacts
2. Secondary source documents or artifacts
3. Tertiary source documents or artifacts
4. Quatriary

Real history is not politically correct.  Real history doesn't try to teach a lesson about the evils of the past.  Real history attempts to project what actually happened in a time, culture, and society, and allows the reader to decide on their own about the ethics or morals of that society.  All people in history think their culture and society is good, and all people recognize their society and culture has problems.  Did you get that--all people? 

I know it is popular to present certain groups and societies in a certain manner.  For example, concerning the Soviet Union, it is popular to consider the entire society as evil, or it is popular to believe that the people were not like that, only the government was.  The same is true about Nazi Germany and Pol Pot's Cambodia.  In Ayn Rand's, We the Living, we see that the Soviet State is indeed evil and the people within that state are at odds with themselves and others.  The culture and the society of the Soviet Union were tainted by the government--yet we correctly see, in a historical view (which Rand gives us) that their were those fighting from the inside.  An accurate historical view, like Rand's, shows us the society and culture without making any declarations about them and allows the reader to form their own conclusions.

In my novel, yet unpublished, Shadow of Darkness, I write about a person in the Soviet State.  I researched this era and the USSR for years.  In the novel, I don't say anything negative about the Soviet State, but you see an accurate picture of the horrible lives the common people and the Orthodox Church lived under that government.  There are many people absolutely cowed by the society.  Likewise, there are many who are actively and not so actively fighting it.  In the novel, we learn of the many nuns and priests who were tortured for no other reason than they were nuns and priests.  We see the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) and its leadership who torture and murder citizens routinely as part of the government. 

In writing your historical novel, don't try to tell us how bad (or good) something is--provide evidence through showing and that evidence must be gathered in the manner I already discussed.   

I'll explain more about historical study tomorrow.

I'll explain more about tension and first scene development. I'll talk about characteristics that make a bad first scene/chapter eventually.

I'll repeat my published novel websites so you can see more examples: http://www.ldalford.com/, and the individual novel websites: http://www.aegyptnovel.com/, http://www.centurionnovel.com/, http://www.thesecondmission.com/, http://www.theendofhonor.com/, http://www.thefoxshonor.com/, and http://www.aseasonofhonor.com/.

Development - more Historical Study

4 May 2012, Development - more Historical Study

Introduction: I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21st novel and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.

I'm using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published. I'll keep you informed along the way.

Today's Blog: To see the steps in the publication process, visit my writing website http://www.ldalford.com/ and select "production schedule," you will be sent to http://www.sisteroflight.com/.

I'm writing about sources of historical research and how to make historical research. These apply to any novel or any subject you might wish to study. Here is a list:

1. Primary source documents or artifacts
2. Secondary source documents or artifacts
3. Tertiary source documents of artifacts

I looked at primary source documents yesterday--I'll get more in depth about them later.  Today, I want to define secondary source documents.

A secondary source document is the direct report of an eyewitness account from someone who was not an eyewitness.  In a legal court this is called hearsay evidence.  In history, secondary sources are some of our best sources.  Generally, they are documents like these:

1.  Newspaper accounts
2.  Official biographies (written from interviews of a person)
3.  Interviews
4.  Reports on actual events post the event (part of such a report can be considered primary)
5.  Court reports
6.  A painting or sculpture made from an actual person or place

A secondary document or artifact is never considered more accurate than any primary document or artifact.

All secondary accounts are considered interpretive.  Since they are not the actual eyewitness to the event they may or may not accurately portray the event, but like I mentioned, sometimes secondary evidence is the best we have in history.  For example, before photography (which is a primary source, unless reenacted), painting and sculpture was about the only visual witness we had to history.

I will use secondary sources when primary sources don't exist, but they are always considered less accurate and less reliable than any primary source.

I'll write more about this and the study of history, tomorrow.

I'll explain more about tension and first scene development. I'll talk about characteristics that make a bad first scene/chapter eventually.

I'll repeat my published novel websites so you can see more examples: http://www.ldalford.com/, and the individual novel websites: http://www.aegyptnovel.com/, http://www.centurionnovel.com/, http://www.thesecondmission.com/, http://www.theendofhonor.com/, http://www.thefoxshonor.com/, and http://www.aseasonofhonor.com/.

Writing Historical Fiction, part 3 Historical Information

What goes through the mind of a person who does not sit to eat or who doesn't have furniture?  Historical literature generally won't tell you because two things get left out of historical writing--especially ancient writing.  The first is the mundane.  You would be hard pressed to determine the rules of baseball from a movie or book about baseball.  The reason is that the basics of baseball are assumed to be understood within our culture.  The mundane doesn't get written down.  You could point to a book of baseball rules, and there would be your source for some of that information, but not all.  For example, you couldn't gather from a book of baseball rules, the seventh inning stretch or the playing of the national anthem or "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."  In the modern era, much of this data is available from various sources, but in the paucity and the economics of the ancient world, these details are rare.  The second part that gets left out of historical writing is what everyone knows but may be unique.  A great event like a battle or an earth quake or the movement of an army.  These are great events and unique, but they might not be written down because everyone in the time knows about them.  Those events that get written are the ones that were important to the writers and to their audience.  Those that were saved in history are the documents that were important to those who came later.  So you have to do what you can with the information you have.  The big point about writing about time of antiquity is that you have to immerse yourself in the worldview of the people and understand where they were coming from.  This is much harder than it sounds.  The first problem is cultural prejudice and the second is moral prejudice.  Both have to give way to immersion.

For example, almost every culture in the world prior to about 1830 was fully slave based.  This is not a debatable fact.  It is.  The ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Anglo-Saxons, Norman-French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, do I have to list every nation in antiquity?  I could.  They are all slavery based even up as far as 1830.  In fact, the word "slave" comes from the word for Slav, because the Greeks and Romans claimed Slavs made the best slaves.  During the time from antiquity to the 19th century, slavery had gone from the province of the middle class to solely that of the wealthy and then very wealthy.  By the 1860s, in the US, the rate of slave ownership was 8% in the south.  In ancient Greece the ownership of slaves was about 100%.  The point I'm making here is to understand a slave based culture, you have to first of all recognize that it is slave based, and second, you cannot see it through modern cultural blinders.  When you write about the culture, the existence and expectations of slavery must be part of the writing.  Because it is so nominative to the people in the culture, it must seem normative in your historical writing.  Almost no one questioned the existence and ethics of slavery in any culture until the 18th century.  Your writing must acknowledge and report on the existence of slavery just as you might write about eating or sleeping or any other subject within the culture. 

After all, that's the whole idea, to understand the culture like a person from that culture so you can bring out the nuances of the society and times.  If you don't understand, what their lives are like, you can't begin to understand their history or write about them.  Tomorrow, I'll look more deeply at this subject and give more details.