What Won't You Write?

[Rath Darkblade]

Please note the word "gratuitously". I doubt anyone would care if I got the clothes or rivers slightly wrong. But if I wrote an Iceland with coconut trees and all-year sunny weather, where people roam free in the altogether, live in harmony with nature, and join hands and sing the Kumbayah ... then, I think, questions might be raised.

 

[deweyfisher]

Romance as a genre/driving plot point. As a side plot or the setup to some reveal, maybe, but most of the time I don't feel like it's necessary to enhance anything.

 

[Naomasa298]

Please note the word "gratuitously". I doubt anyone would care if I got the clothes or rivers slightly wrong. But if I wrote an Iceland with coconut trees and all-year sunny weather, where people roam free in the altogether, live in harmony with nature, and join hands and sing the Kumbayah ... then, I think, questions might be raised.

The question remains the same with or without the word.

Would they care?

If you wrote Iceland with coconut trees, that's not getting it gratuitously wrong. That's deliberately getting it wrong, or writing satire.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Hmm. What would you call "gratuitously wrong", then? I'm curious.

Maybe, while the other 11th-century Vikings were wearing fur and leather etc., one of them - a rough, tough Viking warrior called Sven - could wear a leisure suit. And dance like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. (I mean, where would anyone find polyester back then?)

If I wanted it to be satire, I could have a lawyer in a pinstripe suit would pop out of nowhere and serve him a writ for performing moves that are copyright to Travolta. Meanwhile, the other Vikings would shrug, go off to a nearby cafe, and eat spam.

But since I'm trying to write historical fiction ... let's just amicably agree to disagree.

(Yes, "Viking" is a job description. I used it as a short-cut for "Norse-era Icelandic people").

 

[DLC]

'Viking' was a job description.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

'Viking' was a job description.

Yes, it was. Post cheerfully edited!

 

[Qvortable]

Characters who're inspired by some sort of ideal, high fallutin up in gaseous waste beyond the visible horizon. Or just plain idealistic (in its original meaning). Perhaps I would pick them as antagonist some day, but now I'm still enjoying on giving a sense of materiality in this abstracted make-believe I called my story.

 

[Pik]

There was one strict mentor that I had when I first started writing more often. And there was only one story I submitted that they really disliked (most of the submitted texts were one to two pages). It was written from the perspective of a person frustrated with words, a rant against the written word that this person believed was the cause of everything bad happening in the world. Though I tried to find funny or bizarre examples for such claims, and thought the story was amusing and like many other satyrical stories I read. This mentor's reaction was the first time I realized that (according to some people) not everything is allowed in writing. Even though it still sometimes confuses me why that particular topic, approach etc was problematic and not many other texts I wrote.

 

[Naomasa298]

(Yes, "Viking" is a job description. I used it as a short-cut for "Norse-era Icelandic people").

I know.

 

[Naomasa298]

Hmm. What would you call "gratuitously wrong", then? I'm curious.

"Gratuitously wrong" was your phrase, not mine. 99% of readers, unless they're historians with a specific knowledge of that culture and time period, won't notice and won't care. HBO's Rome was entertainment, not a documentary, so most people don't care that Roman soldiers didn't actually wear webbing. So if you want to give your Vikings winged or horned helmets, be my guest. Unless you're writing all the dialogue in Old Norse, you're already making a compromise in the first place.

My point is, by all means do all the research to get every detail as right as possible. Nothing wrong with that. But it's not nearly as important as you may think it is, not for most readers. Very few readers are going to care that your 1980s character living in London buys a Snickers instead of a Marathon.