Historical fiction pet peeves

Some Lonely Scorpio

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Am I the only one who gets annoyed/distracted when they see a character name that's completely inappropriate for the setting? They take me right out of the story. Ie, a viking named Billy Bob or a regency lady named Madisyn. You see this a lot in online stories posted by very young, amateur writers. And again, everyone has to start somewhere. But it's hard for me not to feel mildly annoyed because there are so many great resources (Behind the Name, etc.) one can use to find more suitable character names for your setting/time period. Of course, bad names are just an example. What are other things that bother you or distract you from a book, historical fiction in particular?
 

konstantineblacke

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Am I the only one who gets annoyed/distracted when they see a character name that's completely inappropriate for the setting? They take me right out of the story. Ie, a viking named Billy Bob or a regency lady named Madisyn. You see this a lot in online stories posted by very young, amateur writers. And again, everyone has to start somewhere. But it's hard for me not to feel mildly annoyed because there are so many great resources (Behind the Name, etc.) one can use to find more suitable character names for your setting/time period. Of course, bad names are just an example. What are other things that bother you or distract you from a book, historical fiction in particular?

Agreed. And it's not like there aren't any resources on-line to find the most popular baby names for a given year for a given country, or even names of old for a certain group of people (say Vikings).

My pet peeve is being too historically accurate for the sake of the story. A good example of this is Tim Severin's 'Hector Lynch' stories. The prose is very dry by being in the 'moment' of the time period to the sacrifice of what could have been a very exciting series (pirates on the high seas).
 

Some Lonely Scorpio

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being too historically accurate for the sake of the story.

This is a huge problem too! Today I read a free preview of this book on Amazon just out of curiosity. Dear God, it was bad. It was very dry and read like nonfiction. Extremely boring nonfiction. There was also an excessive amount of technical terms and minutiae that would probably be of no interest to the general reader, myself included. As for my own writing...I strive to be as historically accurate as I can, but there are some times where I make (slight) deviations from history. But these are minor creative licenses for the story's sake.
 

konstantineblacke

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This is a huge problem too! Today I read a free preview of this book on Amazon just out of curiosity. Dear God, it was bad. It was very dry and read like nonfiction. Extremely boring nonfiction. There was also an excessive amount of technical terms and minutiae that would probably be of no interest to the general reader, myself included. As for my own writing...I strive to be as historically accurate as I can, but there are some times where I make (slight) deviations from history. But these are minor creative licenses for the story's sake.

I did watch a drama set in Victorian times, and the power outlets were taped over :roll:

I think an author of historical fiction (myself included as I write pre-WW2 Action/Adventure YA) some liberties are allowed, within reason. The biggest thing I struggle with is getting the feel of the dialogue right. Obviously young people of the pre-WW2 period didn't say 'cool' and 'geez' but had their own colloquialisms.
 

Some Lonely Scorpio

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Right :p A lot of people fall into the trap of making their historical characters sound overly-formal- this is something I used to do. But just so long as you avoid explicitly anachronistic language (sucks, jeez, cool, etc.) you should be fine.
 

Tocotin

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I generally dislike it when the writer gets the everyday details all wrong. If you don't know the setting well enough to accurately visualize your characters getting dressed, eating etc., don't write about it without having done some basic research. I routinely see historical books about Japan where characters "run their fingers through" their loved one's hair. Sorry, not possible with traditional hairstyles at all.

That being said, my particular pet peeve connected to the above is this: countries to the east of the Oder-Neisse line have no cultural history. Religion, philosophy, fashion, visual arts, customs, attitudes etc. are always taken from the same bag of stereotypes, be it 12th or 17th or 19th century.
 

konstantineblacke

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That being said, my particular pet peeve connected to the above is this: countries to the east of the Oder-Neisse line have no cultural history. Religion, philosophy, fashion, visual arts, customs, attitudes etc. are always taken from the same bag of stereotypes, be it 12th or 17th or 19th century.

Is there a good example of a book which does give them cultural history? I'm intrigued
 
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Tocotin

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Right off the top of my head, I thought The Storyteller and His Three Daughters by Lian Hearn (Meiji-era Japan) was very good at this. Memoirs of a Geisha weren't bad. The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak (about the early years of Catherine the Great) was good.
 

konstantineblacke

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Right off the top of my head, I thought The Storyteller and His Three Daughters by Lian Hearn (Meiji-era Japan) was very good at this. Memoirs of a Geisha weren't bad. The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak (about the early years of Catherine the Great) was good.

Thank you.
 

Taylor Harbin

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I hate it when a character professes attitudes and ideas that took decades to gain momentum, i.e. peasant girl being a suffragette. As George Martin is fond of saying, "If a snarky teenager mouthed off to the crowned prince, she'd have her snarky tongue pulled out with hot snarky tongues."

For this reason, James Michener is still my all-time favorite historical fiction writer.
 

Some Lonely Scorpio

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I hate it when a character professes attitudes and ideas that took decades to gain momentum

This happens so much in those cheesy romance novels; where the ridiculously-named heroine is portrayed as some sort of centuries-ahead-of-her-time feminist icon. These characters aren't historical people, they're 21st century girls inserted into a vaguely historical setting. And I get it. Most 21st century readers (me included) don't want to see female characters portrayed as helpless, passive, damsels in distress. But giving a character such wildly anachronistic worldviews is simply absurd.

In general, it seems like a lot of people are afraid to give their historical characters views that would be considered offensive today. This is unfortunate, but these antiquated beliefs shouldn't be avoided or sanitized, IMO.
 

CWatts

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I hate it when a character professes attitudes and ideas that took decades to gain momentum, i.e. peasant girl being a suffragette. As George Martin is fond of saying, "If a snarky teenager mouthed off to the crowned prince, she'd have her snarky tongue pulled out with hot snarky tongues."

Frock Flicks' takedown of cheesy 80s miniseries North & South is a thing of beauty, but they really bring it home with Kirstie Alley's Virgilia as a bonkers straw abolitionist. Because of course a wealthy Northern industrialist's sister would jump in bed with an enslaved man she just met... :rolleyes:
http://www.frockflicks.com/snark-week-recap-north-south-1985-episode-4/
 

Siri Kirpal

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Most 21st century readers (me included) don't want to see female characters portrayed as helpless, passive, damsels in distress. But giving a character such wildly anachronistic worldviews is simply absurd.

.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

The thing is: if you gave them historically accurate worldviews and lives, they wouldn't be passive or helpless. It was Goethe's mistress who defended the family, not him. Women in the High Middle Ages could be and were guild members. You have women of nearly every era defending family, doing hard physical work, etc. Women were stronger then than most of us are now. IIRC, the idea that women should be passive was a Victorian innovation for the upper middle classes.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

Tocotin

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As George Martin is fond of saying, "If a snarky teenager mouthed off to the crowned prince, she'd have her snarky tongue pulled out with hot snarky tongues."

That's a quite simplistic view. She wouldn't mouth off to the crowned prince not for fear of some fantastic punishment, but because it would mean disgrace and danger to her whole family.

Can't think of any particular case right now, but publicly chastising a prince by his subjects, particularly those considered especially weak, like children or mentally challenged, wasn't unheard of in history.
 

angeliz2k

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People very well might have had what we consider "21st century" ideas in the past, and sometimes they came from unexpected people at unexpected times. The issue seems to be 1) that there are no consequences, or there are inappropriate consequences, for the character who has beliefs that would've been extra-ordinary for their time; and 2) that these ideas aren't framed within the context of the time period. Just because a person had ideas that we in the 21st century might approve of doesn't mean they would've expressed them the same way we do. The snarky teenager might believe that peasants should have more rights, but she might express it in terms of the prince's duty to be benevolent and whatnot. Also, that fact is she may have had her tongue cut out; it depended a lot on the prince in question!

And yes, the annoyingly "plucky" and "modern" girl is aggravating. They almost always end up being bratty, which I hate. Women could have a very complex relationships to their society. They could live within it and yet want to change things about it, all at the same time. It doesn't have to be a whiny I don't like this, and I don't care about the consequence. It can be, I see this is wrong but I'm going to find my own way within this system and not cause other people problems because of it . . .

My pet peeve is clunky dialogue/exposition. It's easy to tell when a person really isn't comfortable with the language of the time period. It doesn't flow and it comes across as stilted. It's almost as if they're trying to speak a foreign language and are fluent but not quite at "native speaker" level.
 

Some Lonely Scorpio

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:p and then there's the opposite problem; where writers make their 'historical' characters speak in modern slang, which is absolutely cringeworthy to read. Granted, you're more likely to encounter this in an online story written by some middle schooler than an actual published work.
 

Siri Kirpal

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Obviously young people of the pre-WW2 period didn't say 'cool' and 'geez' but had their own colloquialisms.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Geez may have been current by WWI. After I read this, I went and looked at the WWI diary of Mr. Siri's grandfather. "Gee" popped up on the first page I tried.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

Lil

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This happens so much in those cheesy romance novels; where the ridiculously-named heroine is portrayed as some sort of centuries-ahead-of-her-time feminist icon. These characters aren't historical people, they're 21st century girls inserted into a vaguely historical setting. And I get it. Most 21st century readers (me included) don't want to see female characters portrayed as helpless, passive, damsels in distress. But giving a character such wildly anachronistic worldviews is simply absurd.

In general, it seems like a lot of people are afraid to give their historical characters views that would be considered offensive today. This is unfortunate, but these antiquated beliefs shouldn't be avoided or sanitized, IMO.
Er, as one who writes "cheesy romance novels", I would like to insert that some of us put a great deal of effort into getting the history right, and not just the clothes. I do, however, concede that there are a number of historical romances that are just contemporaries in long dresses. We call them wallpaper historicals.
 

The Black Prince

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:p and then there's the opposite problem; where writers make their 'historical' characters speak in modern slang, which is absolutely cringeworthy to read. Granted, you're more likely to encounter this in an online story written by some middle schooler than an actual published work.
Clearly you haven't seen Britannia where even the Romans have cockney accents.

I recently had my first historical nov published, set in Western Europe in the C11, and even in the last edit there were anachronisms I was pulling out. I had a reference to a pumpkin, FFS, which no-one had picked up until my final read. I also agonised over a chess metaphor and decided that as chess had made it to Spain in the C10 a reference to it in England in 1060 was OK. There was also the changing attitudes to married clergy around that time that caused me some headaches until I convinced myself I was close enough to correct.
 

DeleyanLee

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My biggest pet peeve is when the author doesn't bother to research past the Victorian era's idea of what the culture was. (Glaring at you, Wilbur Smith.) Seriously, if the facts have been on the History Channel and it conflicts with what you want to do with your story, change your location/era to fit your story. Don't change the known facts so you can be exotic.

And, yes, modern slang is highly bothersome in historical settings. Especially with a word that has changed meanings over the years. Though I admit that, having researched a few words I thought were wrong, discovering they are actually that old. That was cool, but it still threw me out of the story in the moment.
 

angeliz2k

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My biggest pet peeve is when the author doesn't bother to research past the Victorian era's idea of what the culture was. (Glaring at you, Wilbur Smith.) Seriously, if the facts have been on the History Channel and it conflicts with what you want to do with your story, change your location/era to fit your story. Don't change the known facts so you can be exotic.

And, yes, modern slang is highly bothersome in historical settings. Especially with a word that has changed meanings over the years. Though I admit that, having researched a few words I thought were wrong, discovering they are actually that old. That was cool, but it still threw me out of the story in the moment.

Actually, the Victorian thing is a major problem, which I think has been mentioned around here before. The Victorians had a very, well, Victorian view of the world and looked at history through that lens, and since they were the first to really start studying history int he way we know it, we tend to see most of history through the lens of their view of it. So history ends up looking much more restrained and prudish than it really was.
 

DeleyanLee

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Actually, the Victorian thing is a major problem, which I think has been mentioned around here before. The Victorians had a very, well, Victorian view of the world and looked at history through that lens, and since they were the first to really start studying history int he way we know it, we tend to see most of history through the lens of their view of it. So history ends up looking much more restrained and prudish than it really was.

And what's hilarious is that the Victorian era is as raucous and naughty as any other era. But they had really good PR.
 

CWatts

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Actually, the Victorian thing is a major problem, which I think has been mentioned around here before. The Victorians had a very, well, Victorian view of the world and looked at history through that lens, and since they were the first to really start studying history int he way we know it, we tend to see most of history through the lens of their view of it. So history ends up looking much more restrained and prudish than it really was.

Victorians: "We must cover the suggestive table legs!"

Ancient Romans: "Penises! Penises EVERYWHERE!"
 

Zvibenmor

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What are other things that bother you or distract you from a book, historical fiction in particular?

Shoddy research, i.e. "Braveheart" in book form.

Like John Goodman says in "Argo": If you're gonna do it, you gotta do it.

I am trying to tell a story but I know that if I want it to be historically credible it has to be...wait for it...historically credible. I wanted to have one of my characters be a closet Cathar (they fascinate me) but for the mid-9th century Carolingian state that just won't work however much I would like it to.

zbm
 
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