Style, voice, etc.

Hi Diviner - I'm shooting from the hip here to respond to your questions.

You know what you like to read - other people like to read the same things and for the same reasons. These things may not be the hot items on the best seller list, but there is a market for them - the trick is in finding a publisher or agent who shares your opinion. In my opinion, Shakespeare said it best - "This above all, to thine ownself be true ..." But, you also have to figure out/factor in how much you want your work to be published, and how much you're willing to sacrifice (if necessary) to make it marketable.

In historical writing (as we all know) accuracy is crucial - but there is a limit at which point striving for accuracy goes beyond the bounds of reason and becomes an obsession. Somewhere below that point the author has to develop acceptable (to her/himself and the market) ways of skirting the issue - making it believable (i.e. using something like - the tapesty was tightly woven rather than specifying exactly X number of threads per inch.)

Summaries - by those are you asking about what is so often flagged as backstory - summarizing events that have led up to the point in the story? If you are talking about that, if the backstory is essential to understanding what is happening in the story it needs to be there - but worked in in small doses rather than an entire paragraph devoted only to the backstory. Sometimes the best way to work in this backstory information is through conversation.

Overall - I think the author has to 1) be true to her or himself, 2) make the story and the characters believable, 3) keep the story moving forward, 4) keep the story interesting with enough historical tidbits that someone who has never read about the period or event before might have an inclination to want to learn more, 5) not get hung up on what specific markets are looking for or what specific readers want - it's the author's story - for better or worse, and 6) feel a sense of accomplishment at having told/created a story that has never been told in that particular way before.

Hope that helps a little bit. Puma

I hope I haven’t missed the point by posting this, but what I find interesting is if you are to look at the Harlequin website and read the excerpts from their Historical or HQN historical books, the majority contain backstory, some of the first paragraphs are entirely backstory, many show instead of tell, and yet the market for these books is enormous. Some are written brilliantly, some not too good. One of HQN’s new releases is written by a NY listed best seller writer. The entire excerpt (well I didn’t actually have any desire to finish reading it) has backstory all the way through. I’m not sure if this was the reason I did not continued to read the book. The writing was true to the time period.

According to their website Regency tales sell best, and although I am not a lover of Harlequin books, and think writers should stay true to themselves and the story they want to tell, the sales of these are impossible to ignore.

Another point of interest is that readers demand that the heroin and hero end up together. In some of the greatest love stories I have read, this was not the case.

I recall handing in a story to my English teacher many years ago, and she said to me, “why does it have to end in a predictable way?” Apparently this is what readers want, yet they desire being kept away from it, and being tricked into believing this is not going to happen, until they can take no more.

This brings me to what Puma said about staying true to what you want to write, and I believe the characters in the book. My teachers comments sent me on a Australian historical writing project over many years. In this story the woman falls in love at the beginning of the story with one man, only to fall deeply in love with another man half way through the book, and the book ends with her leaving with the second man. I always thought it to be the story about the end of a first love, and in rewriting it, thought that to make it commercial it really should end with her leaving with that first man who she bickers with all the way through the book, but to do so, would not be being true to the story or the characters. For her to stay with that first man would mean that she did not grow, the story in affect would be pointless. My solution was keep possibly an unpublishable story the way it is, and start from where that one left off, so that her first love, could have a happy ending.

Personally I love stories, regardless of time period, that have managed to use a different formula and created brilliant writing. Some have back story, some haven’t, and they have all been from different point of views.

http://www.eharlequin.com

As long as it is presented well, I have no problem whatsoever with backstory/summaries showing up in the text.

Nor do I necessarily have a problem with telling. The play between show and tell brings the vital elements of the story to the foreground, while still providing context and environment.

My personal pet peeve is overdescription. I'm reading a book right now - the fifth in a series by sci-fi author S.M. Stirling - and absolutely enthralled with the story and the direction he's taking his characters, but I still find myself skimming his highly detailed descriptions of trees and plants. In my opinion, it's more information than the reader needs to set the scene.

It all boils...

down to the reader being hooked by your characters and the story.
Less the art of writing and more the heart of the story is what they want.

Style of writing doesn't matter a hoot, the most brilliantly written prose can still be as dull as ditch water if it hasn't the heart and soul of interesting characters and their engaging story.

And you have to want to write that story. It's something you have to say through words on paper. If you don't care about the characters and their story then the reader won't either.

And your voice is the MC's voice so it changes with each story. It just has to be right for the character.

Oh boy...

pdr said:

...And you have to want to write that story. It's something you have to say through words on paper. If you don't care about the characters and their story then the reader won't either.

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and how! I have reached the last chapter of my novel. It has a sad but uplifting ending. I'm sitting here with tears running down my face, not just because of the story's ending, but more so for the terrible sacrifice made by Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf and Professor Kurt Huber, members of The White Rose resistance movement, who were executed by guillotine by the Nazis in 1943. It was such an uneven contest. How could the Nazis win when faced by such wonderful, single-minded, selfless, bravery?

Bernard Cornwell says: "...Story, story, story. You are not an historian, your job is to be a storyteller. If you set out to educate folk then you will probably bore them. Your job is to entertain them, and the way to do that is by telling a story." (from Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2009)

Story telling

Diviner said:

I have been pondering appropriate style for HF, thinking about what I like, what is popular, what people here seem to think is important. I have been reading a fair number of more or less recent books to get an idea of what publishers are putting out there but am ending up confusing myself.

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I haven't done research as to what is popular

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My approach is to find a story that I really, really want to write, and then write it. If I had several stories in my head clamouring to be written, then maybe I might choose the most marketable one to write first, I suppose.