not such a great idea

[erastes]

Decided to try a “time sensitive trick with the laptop/writing today – I haven’t brought the mains lead with me, which means I have to get busy and write my words in two hours. The only snag I’ve found is that without the mains lead—I’d forgotten that the screen isn’t as bright as it is with it, and in the conservatory the screen is quite difficult to see. I’ve blown the manuscript up to 150 percent, that helps. and the sun’s gone in, that’s better – but when the 2 hours is up – it’s up! so I’d better get on with it. eta: words done!

Although I’ve lost about six weeks of writing I know I can still get this novel done by the end of the year if I stick at it – if I do 4k a week, I can still get it done, if it turns out at about 80,000. If I DON’T manage it, I’ll feel a sodding failure, and I can’t really blame six weeks or so (ongoing) of eye problems – I’ve just used the eye problems as an excuse to take a break because if I can chat and blog, I can write.

I have a couple of questions I’d be interested in knowing your opinion on – there’s no right or wrong answers, so as long as no-one’s flaming anyone else, you know you can say what you like on here.

1. Do you think that writers should stay out of the reviewing side of things?

2. If you like historicals, how pure do you like them? If someone has invented a king of a country and that king didn’t actually exist, is it still a historical? 

Sparrows are the cutest, and I wish someone would do a documentary on them, instead of all these panthers and gorillas and things. I think they are a lot more interesting than people give them credit for.

Kindle (for PC) SUCKS big donkey balls as a medium for doing reviews. I can’t copy even a portion of the text to include within the review so I have to copy it word for word. I do not like thee Dr Kindle, I do not like thee at all well.

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Comments

[karfraegh.livejournal.com]

*RJ Scott really, just signed in as Fanficcer!*

I hate reviewing... i really do...I am crap at it... I read some of the reviews I have got for Oracle and I am like *they are cleverer than me*. So from my point of view I stay away... rofl...

Re your made up King question - yes it is still historical in my opinion. Some people have no idea who our current queen is, let alone something that happened in past centuries, and that counts for all countries with any kind of detailed history...

Nods...

Does that help? ROFL Rj x

[jl_merrow]

Mmm, tough questions. I think writers are possibly best advised to avoid reviewing, from a self-interest point of view, but that from a practical point of view, they are often well-qualified to deliver a thoughtful review. I would, for instance, probably give more credence to a review by a writer I admire than to one by an unknown.

Re historicals: my gut reaction is no, if the king's made up, it's not a historical - but then again, what about artistic licence? Like many authors, I suspect, I've no qualms about altering the geography of a place and giving it a new name to suit the demands of my story - so why should history be any different? For that matter, is it really important if I pretend The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published a few months earlier than it really was so one of my characters can have it for Christmas 1920? ;)

Nope, haven't convinced myself - unfortunately!

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

1. I like writers reviewing books, in the same way that I like to hear what chefs think of food. I think (don't know, just think) published authors are more likely to be able to differentiate between niggles that are down to the writing and those which are down to the editing (or lack thereof, in some cases). That's not to say I don't value reviews by people who are not published authors, but in a way it's harder to establish how much my views and tastes coincide with theirs, whereas with a published author (e.g. you) I can find out what you've said about your own work, and extrapolate from that...

2. Made up king? No, I wouldn't like that. Sounds stupid, but one of the reasons I read historical fiction is to get the feel of what a particular period of history might have been like. If I like a story enough, I'll go off and find some non-fictional books about the era. Finding out that a particular king (or similar) would make me go "huh? Why'd they do that?" and I likely would avoid anything by that author in the future. I guess it might matter less if the king didn't really play much of a role in the story, but then I would wonder why the author had bothered making someone up when he/she could have just used the historically correct name...

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Do you think that writers should stay out of the reviewing side of things?

They never have. Authors have been reviewing books and criticizing literature for thousands of years, from Plato to James Wood and John Updike.

2. If you like historicals, how pure do you like them? If someone has invented a king of a country and that king didn’t actually exist, is it still a historical?

I'm torn. On the one hand, I'd say that if you're mixing something that didn't happen with things that did, you're not writing a historical, you're writing an AU or alternate history or steampunk or some other genre altogether. I love all of those genres, by the way. But I wouldn't look to them for accuracy.

But then I think of all the imaginary earls and dukes and marquises that populate historical romance. And the "Christmas court" depicted in one of my favorite historical plays, The Lion in Winter, never happened. So...I don't know.

I think that I'd have to weigh how important the altered detail was. If King Richard IV (the trueborn heir of Richard III, obviously) is just mentioned in passing, then I won't care too much. If the imaginary earl is possesses an earldom that doesn't exist but in all ways acts like an earl of his time and place, then I'd give the author a pass.

But...let's say King Richard IV starts a war with Portugal that never happened, and the war has a hefty impact on the court and the commoners alike, to say nothing of the kingdom. That's not a historical. It's fascinating, and I'd read it. I'd even write it. But it's not a historical. It's alternate history.

And history can be changed by omission as well. Let's say you've got a book set in the post-WWI American South. The publisher is selling this as a historical. The hero is a black man. He has a white boyfriend that he squires around the town where they both live.

If the author doesn't acknowledge that segregation, discriminatory laws keeping the races apart, prejudice that was codified into police and judicial practice, and the modern version of the Ku Klux Klan existed--if the author is pretending that a mixed-race gay couple could be publicly out in Mississippi of 1921--the author's not operating in the real world.

It's possible to get details wrong, though, and not change the entire story. A story could be incredibly accurate except for one detail. Let's say that the author wants an unequivocally happy ending for his two gay soldiers from the the time of wars with Bonaparte. So he spins a tale of a gay wedding...one that all of society will attend, and one approved of by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The rest of the book could be brilliant as far as historical accuracy goes. The author just went off the rails at the end, taking a sharp detour to the land of OK-Homo.

I think I'm going to have to fall back on a quote from Star Trek here; "A difference that makes no difference IS no difference." If, on the other hand, the historical difference changes the plot, the characters or the world in a major way, then I think that both reviewer and review site have to take this into account, and should mention what was changed and how. If you don't mention what's wrong, people will just placidly think that the book was completely correct.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

1. I like reading reviews by writers: quite a lot of my To Read pile and To Buy list came from author recs.

2. It depends on the reason for the change, and how historically likely the substitution is (also whether the consequential changes have been thought through). So my judgment would vary from story to story.

[markprobst.livejournal.com]

1. Of course every author has to make his own call on that question, but personally I will endorse books and the endorsement may be in the form of a review. However I won't pan books, UNLESS the author is dead and the book is out of print. But I also don't set myself up in the role of a serious "reviewer"

2. I don't see why a fictional kingdom can't be historical. After all we invent characters, homesteads, addresses and sometimes even fictional towns. Why is extending that to fictional countries and kingdoms all of a sudden taboo?

Here's another question there are so many stories about fictional politicians, such as Mayors, Governors, Senators, and even fictional Presidents - obviously there are public records for every one of these offices so is making up characters to fill real-life offices considered Alternate Universe?

[beckyblack]

I've decided to at least take a hiatus from reviewing for a while - within the m/m genre anyway. I'll still review other stuff I read on Goodreads at least. I know that writers should never take a well considered and thoughtful but negative review personally, but we're only human and can't help what we feel, or holding a grudge. Should is an ideal none of us can reach.

And I've been involved in one or two fandom kerfuffles that came down to differences of opinion about stories and though one would hope pro writers would be more, well, pro about it, is it worth the risk of making enemies?

Right, the historicals question. I wouldn't be too much of a purist. If it's a long ago enough time period that who the heck even knows what was going on then, then as long as the general setting seems right for that period I don't mind. Same if someone wants to invent a whole country and its politics to set the story. As long as they don't shove it into a prominant role in important historical events, I don't mind, again if the details of the time period work. So I don't care if Character A from the Kingdom of Madeupia somehow finds himself participating in the battle of Waterloo, but I wouldn't accept the country's whole army being there! Then it starts to move into the realms of alternate history (though that's cool too as long as that's what it's written and marketed as.)

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Question thingy...

Writers staying out of reviewing: Instinctive response, no, they need not. But then I'm coming from a fanfic context, and I don't know whether this still holds when sales and money and professional rivalries enter the picture... Then again, I don't think a published writer's review is anything else but a subjective voice among a thousands of others, so... overall, still no.

I sort of like historicals, and I like them pure. Invented countries, etc., annoy me beyond all reason. There's nothing wrong with historical fantasy, but slipping fantasy into historical writing strikes me as shoddy because, well, there's enough history to work with, so why invent? I might hate it so hard because I'm a historian, and it knocks me out of the illusion and makes me rant (I had fits of rage trying to read Conn Iggulden...).

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

gehayi has said absolutely everything that I was going to say, so I will just second her post.

I do love alternate history stories, but what I love about them is how much tweaking one event can change everything that comes after, and it seems pointless to diverge from historical record if you aren't actually going to do anything with the divergence.

[aishabintjamil.livejournal.com]

I enjoy both historicals and historical fantasy/alternate history. I think when you start creating major features that aren't known to have existed, you've left historical and entered fantasy/alternate history.

Depending on the period, you may find yourself inventing a lot of detail because we simply don't have documentation for a lot of things as you get further back in history. I think the standard I'd look for is sort of a negative one - I don't want to see anything that can be reasonably easily proved to have happened differently.

Don't put an important political figure in London on a date when he's well documented as having been giving a major speech in Dublin. As soon as you start changing/inventing things that change the political/historical flow of events, you've crossed over into fantasy/alternate history.

[dumbledore11214.livejournal.com]

My first time commenting on your lj.

1. No, I do not think writers should stay out of the reviewing side of things BUT I would certainly hope that they would stay away from reviewing genre or subgenre that they do not like or do not understand and have no desire to like or understand it before they start a book.

2. I love historicals a lot. I love them pure and I do not care if authors write AU history as long as it is mentioned that it is AU history. I have to say that what I most certainly ignore and do not care for the review that notices if that author got the big picture of the historical period correct, but OMG used some anachronisms. I read a lot of reviews on your site and use them as book recommendations to buy for myself, but if I see the use of the few anachronisms as the only reason to grade the book low, I shake my head and think oh who the heck cares. I want the good characters, I want interesting plot and I want to know what time and place I am in when I am reading historicals, I do not need for the characters or narrator to pronounce every single word true to the era. That is only my opinion of course.

[dumbledore11214.livejournal.com]

Ooops. Just realized that your second question did not ask about reviews. Oh well, so I would rephrase that I am perfectly fine with author using few anachronism and I would not consider the historical to be less pure if the big picture is correct.