Author's note

angeliz2k

never mind the shorty
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The longer and more detailed, the better. :)

I like to know what characters and/or plots were made up from whole cloth, if any, and why. I like to get a sense of the author's approach to the actual history in question. I also like the author to point out if any particularly unbelievable events were, in fact, true ("don't at me--I know it sounds crazy, but it totally happened").

In I Was Anastasi, the author discussed what liberties she had taken with history, but she also talked a lot about what made her write this story. That's less common, but it was appreciated.

Of course, a lot of stories don't need them. For instance, I didn't write author's notes for my mss set in the Antebellum South and during the Civil War, because all the characters, places, and events are fictional. They have some basis in fact, of course--there were kernels of fact that started those stories, and I suppose I could write about that, but it's a lot less necessary to do so than for me to write the--er, let me go check; multiply by 2, carry the 1, find the square root..... It's a lot less necessary than the four-page, 2500-word author's note I wrote for my most recent WIP, which is about real people who lived relatively recently.
 

benbenberi

practical experience, FTW
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I don't expect an author's note at all. The author is is under no requirement to communicate with me, the reader, except within the story.

If the author chooses to communicate, I would hope for some indication of where the line may be between fact & fiction. My all time favorite historical novelist, Dorothy Dunnett, does this by indicating in the list of characters at the beginning which ones are real people vs fictional. That's sufficient. If the author chooses to identify whether specific known facts have been altered for the story, it's nice but not at all necessary (unless the change is made to something very well known where people are likely to call you out for sloppy research if you don't flag it, or as angeliz2k says, if you've included something that sounds like it must be fictional but really happened).

Speaking of research, it's also nice to see a bit of bibliography -- not necessarily the sources you depended on the most in writing your story, but works you recommend readers can look at if they want to learn more about the historical setting, or about particularly interesting or noteworthy aspects of it that are relevant to the story. I remember a very informative author's note of this kind that Kate Elliott wrote some years back for a fantasy series whose setting was based very closely on the Holy Roman Empire of the 10th century -- a fascinating period that's not well known to most of us.

Beyond that... well, it's your note, so whatever you want to say to the readers is what goes in. (Though if it gets too chatty and personal-bloggish I, as a reader who doesn't know you personally and doesn't actually have a burning interest in the writer-as-a-person outside of their writing, may sit here rolling my eyes and thinking, okay, get to the point...? Other people like that kind of thing more than I do.)
 

Taylor Harbin

Power to the pen!
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I agree with what's been said: I like it, but it's not strictly necessary. However, if a book is tackling something complicated, like military organization for two armies in The Killer Angels, reference is nice.