Plot vs History

Good Question

Brickie said:

Right, here's a stumper for all you historical-fiction types.

How do you reconcile the needs of a strong plot and character with the known march of history?

You see, most writers, when talking about how to write good plots and strong characters, will tell you that one essential, indispensible component, is the feeling that the main character is in charge of his/her own destiny - that it is their decisions which shape their fate. Characters who simply react to events happening outside their power are weak, uninteresting and it makes the plot seem lame.

Now, my character is a Polish fighter pilot who escapes from Poland into Romania in 1939, makes his way onto a ship and onwards to France. He fights in the Battle of France, then escapes again, makes his way to Britain and fights in the Battle of Britain. It's potentially a great story, but how do you fight the feeling of your character just being a cork, bobbing along on the fast-flowing river of history?

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I kind of like Alan Furst's solution: how the character deals with his changing situations is half the story. You sort of need a scary, existential style to do it, but it can be fun to read...if perhaps dreary to write.

Your main character is at least in charge of the smaller events. The choices he makes over his escape routes, for example, can generate the required tension

Welcome, Brickie. Great story idea!

To some extent, we're all just corks. But sentient corks, unable by ourselves to change the course of the river but able to choose which way to float down it.

I think the real purpose of historical fiction is not to show how the Big Events happened--there are plenty of histories to describe that--but to show what it was like to live through them. The difference is subtle, but profound. It means the story is about your character, not about the war. Ultimately, your character's actions may or may not affect the outcome of the Battle of Britain. But they will affect the rest of his life. Show that, and let the Battle and the War be the backdrop.

For what it's worth.
HN

Your character doesn't have to change the world's history. He just has to make changes that impact his own--change the trajectory of his past->present->future. There are plenty of challenges in the mundane life of everyman, particularly in centuries past, and the struggles to overcome those challenges are certainly story-worthy.

Hi Brickie - I was really amazed when I read your plot. Years ago here in the states I worked with a guy who had been in the Polish air force during World War II, was shot down over France, made his way to England, and then flew with the RAF. He used to delight us with stories of the dogfights (fully animated). He lost an eye in one of them.

I think as far as your question goes, the determination and will shown by my friend to overcome the aggression of the Nazis was a factor in the eventual success of the Allies (especially when you multiply that by the number of pilots and others who didn't quit when they could have.) So for your question, history is the backdrop, but history might have been different if people like your main character didn't fight so hard to assure the outcome. Puma

I think I agree with everyone, so far.

Another thought: personal experiences can often be juxtaposed with historical change, to show how they reflect/and or foreshadow each other, or how they are disparate.

Hi Brickie, My friend's name was Wadislaw Potocki (sp? - probably Vladislaw), nicknamed Spud. I never got the impression he felt things were slow after he got to England (may have been a bit different for pilots). I also worked with two former RAF Brits and some of the stories they told about being around the airfields when the planes would come back from runs over the channel and had been damaged were pretty gruesome. You might be able to pick some interest up in your second part of the story by bringing in some of the things like that. If you're interested in the worst story, pm me. Puma

Brickie - Thanks for looking him up (and I hope someone can translate the rest of the page.) Spud was a very dignified and distinguished individual and extremely likeable. I wish I could remember more about the stories he told - but, it's been quite a few years. Thanks again for looking him up. Puma

This may be off track, but the motivation might be a key perspective in your novel. We had a dear old family friend, a Czech soldier captured by the Germans, forced to fight in the Wehrmacht, captured by the British, fought in the British Army. I've always imagined how simplified his motivations must have become--his immediate circle of comrades and the next 24 hours. Food, dry feet. The preposterous futility of materialism in the face of all this....that sort of thing. Best of success with your intriguing novel!

Brickie - I just had a chance to look at the link you posted - no question - that's Spud (rather distinctive type of smile). I first met Spud in 1967 and by that time he had white hair and wore a black patch over one eye (left I think). I was mixed up on how he lost the eye - it wasn't as a result of flying - it was from an on-land accident. I don't read Polish, but it appears to me that he got another Polish medal twice (Waleynech (sp) cross and a British medal. Very impressive to find out this data years later. I would never have thought to look for people like Spud via Goggle. Looks like he had a very distinguished career and was quite a pilot. Thanks for the idea. Puma

Brickie said:

How do you reconcile the needs of a strong plot and character with the known march of history?

You see, most writers, when talking about how to write good plots and strong characters, will tell you that one essential, indispensible component, is the feeling that the main character is in charge of his/her own destiny - that it is their decisions which shape their fate. Characters who simply react to events happening outside their power are weak, uninteresting and it makes the plot seem lame.

Click to expand...

I wondered the same thing, Brickie, when I started my novel. Would the MC just be careening down a narrow thematic hallway only making decisions big enough to determine which wall to bounce off next, or would there be more latitude with the will? I pretty quickly discovered that the path is actually broader than I can grasp. I find myself going places with the story line I never imagined and have still remained true to the historical record. Maybe I just selected an era and place that give me more latitude (8th century BC - Palestine). I dunno...

My Auntie Jen ran a boarding house in Blackpool during the War, and for some of the time she was used as a billet for the RAF. She had six Polish pilots staying with her for a while. My mum, then aged about four, tried to help them with their English (for instance "Tea Is Ready").

Auntie noticed that they always left a slice of bread or some other small item of food on the table when they had finished eating, no matter how hungry they were (some of them had been in a Russian POW camp). When she asked about it, they said it was "for the next traveller".

That's neat, Evaine. We have a Polish friend who also always leaves something, but we've never asked why. I wonder if it's a Polish tradition. Puma

I think it's linked to an older tradition of leaving food for family members that have died.

Make your own story within the greater story, and perhaps research something minor but significant that really happened (that most people don't know) and attribute it to your hero. Bernard Cornwell does this very well. While the greater deeds are attributed to the people who really accomplished them, he finds small minor victories and sometimes gives them to his heros, weaving them into his plots. When the story is over, he gives credit to the real person, to show where he diverted history.

For example, everyone knows how General Lee's plans were found, well Bernard allowed one of his heros to be the one who found it, so in that we feel like we are making history.

Do tons of research to find all the interesting things that happened in that time period and see if you can either have it happen to your hero, (your hero the cause of it), or have it influence him.

For example, I learned in reading about Pearl Harbor, how as it got dark, Americans were so jittery, they were shooting down our own planes coming back. The air tower was telling pilots to either dump their planes or come in low, fast and with no lights. With this research, if I wrote about Pearl, I would have my hero actually experience this for himself. Any interesting tidbit you can find to put in would be fun.

Let me give you another example. P38s have two engines and for the US, the engines turn opposite each other, the propellers spinning opposite ways to make the airplane more stable, but when the US sold P38s to other countries, they made the engines turn the same way, making them not as effective. So if my story allowed P38s, I would find a way to get that info into the story, and then maybe use it to my hero's advantage. Maybe in a dogfight, he knows he can bank left faster because both props turn that way, who knows, so it gets him out of the danger, but before that, everyone complained about the US planes. Now, you've added history, taught an interesting fact to your reader, and kept your story moving...

ah, to write on such a time in history.

I'm writing something of the sort myself. It follows the events after Pearl Harbor (in the Philippines) all the way to the Bataan Death March and to the Liberation of the Philippines. It can be a bane, especially with the research and the actual events getting in the way of your plot (still suffer from that) but integrating and highlighting important events and fictionalizing minor sections work pretty well (example: I know the Kempeitai ran offices throughout Manila but I made up an office for them in one of the districts). History can get in the way, but if the event is important, you'll have to try and integrate it with your plot somehow. It's painful work but it works for me.

Having read some of Gwendy's work in share your work, I can second her statement that it works for her. She's doing a good job of combining her story with history. Puma

Intriguing thread. Like gwendy85 I'm writing on the Pacific side of the war, but rather than looking at the experience from the military POV, my MC is a civilian who ends up stuck in Singapore after the Japanese invasion. Far be it for me to assume expertise, but I prefer to think of my character as not being so much a cork floating helplessly in an overwhelming tide but rather as one of millions who tried to do the best they could within the confines of the circumstances to which they were thrown. I like to look at history as being not just a sweeping tapestry of great events and great people but also of the millions of tiny threads that make up the whole fabric, each one as important as the other.

In my case my MC is imprisoned in a camp (which I make up). Rather than framing that critical part of the novel with the feeling of helplessness implicit in the situation, I have him develop a relationship (intellectual, not sexual) with the camp's CO, which intrigues and repels them both. Now I have two characters who are otherwise just going along, trying to survive a war neither really fully understands, but who find something worth getting up for every morning.

Cheers,
MRA

Even within the frame of history, your character had choices. So he had to keep moving to escape the Germans, once he got to relative safety in Britian, he signed up to fight, even though the Brits didn't really seem to want him, even though they weren't directly fighting for his country. Why didn't he just say "Hey, I'm a refugee" and in effect, sit out the war. The slow times of waiting for something to happen, when all the desperate forward movement is over is generally when we stop and reflect. Maybe use this part of the story for your character to reflect, thus lending more impact to the final battles? After all, we know how the war ended, it's not going to be a surprise. What is your character's backstory? He would have been one of the first generation of pilots from an under-industrialized country. The Polish airforce must have known they would have no chance against the German Luftwaffe when they came, and yet they fought. Did he leave behind a family? Does he think about them when he sees the English people going about their lives? I have to disclose a personal interest here, my mother was Polish, taken for slave labour in Germany during the war. The first she heard of the Polish pilots flying in Britian was after the war. Generally the "Polish pilot" is a secondary figure in war films, used for a little local colour. Show us how he got there.

Don't...

use hindsight when you write.
We know what happened. Your Polish pilot hadn't a clue. When he arrived in Britain it was far from clear that Hitler would be defeated.

Pull your readers into your character's emotions and his life. Don't let them remember what happened, let them feel what it was like to face Hitler and the prospect of defeat.

One small quibble: There was never a "Battle for France" during the Second World War, unless you include The Resistance. Remember, France surrendered before there was ever a "battle" that engaged the entire country.

The "Battle for Britain," on the other hand, is a true testament to standing up to the enemy.