today's list and an uncharacteristic writerly post

[ewein2412]

almost equally ridiculous, but a little less difficult:

+ Fish
+ Skis
+ Check train light

Why do I write these things down at half past midnight?

Incidentally, thank you, o my flist, for your stellar responses of support to that interesting review I linked to yesterday. I was rather more shaken by the politics of that review than anything else--way down at the bottom of his rant the guy did say "she writes well" or something like that. Interesting issues got raised in comments to my post, on the subject "Historical Fiction or Fantasy or What?" with estara weighing in on my books as alternative history rather than historical fiction. Which raises the question--when you head that far back in time, and the knowns are very vague, what exactly is the difference?

When I was in Aksum in 2004 I had a guide who took us to see some 2nd-4th century CE ruins which he told us were the remains of the Queen of Sheba's palace and were 3000-4000 years old. I did not contradict him (what authority do I have?), but I remember thinking at the time: It is more likely that Telemakos lived here than that the Queen of Sheba lived here. Which doesn't actually make either theory true.

In the book I'm working on now, the WWII flying-and-spying travesty (which I now think of as Code Name Plausible), I have made up all the names of the British airfields. Almost all of them, anyway. Then I started making up names of British towns. Then I started making up names of French towns (harder to do). AT WHAT POINT does this become an "alternate" Europe--and therefore a fantasy novel--rather than a historical one?

Comments

[deliasherman.livejournal.com]

Look at it this way (nomenclature, I'm talking about, not Ethiopia). Thomas Hardy and Anthony Trollope wrote whole series about English counties and towns that did not exist. And does anyone call the Barchester or Wessex novels fantasy or alternate history? Of course not.

Names are fungible. As long as you don't make up "alternate" names for London or Paris, it seems to me you're free to invent airfields and hamlets as you please. I am of the opposite school--I just pretend stuff happened in real places it might have happened if my characters had existed, on the theory that real place names lend verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative (I draw my analogy from Mikado). Both schools have long literary roots.

[ewein2412]

I have previously been an advocate of the second school for exactly that reason, and it took me a while to realize that it was ok to do it differently this time. The British/Ethiopian settings are all put in real places with real names (or a cognate of a real name), something that to my mind gives the stories not only verisimilitude but also a kind of misty plausibility.

What I'm discovering in writing a story set more recently is that it's impossible to make all the threads match up exactly the way I want them to--there was no RAF squadron stationed at Manchester Airport at the time I want them there, for example--and I suddenly thought, CHANGE THE NAME OF THE AIRPORT, for goodness sake, and then you can do anything you want to with it. After the first one it became easier.

However (this is so e wein), I am having a little trouble deciding whether it's me making up names to aid my narrative flow, or this utterly and completely unreliable narrator making up names to confuse everybody. I honestly don't know which it is.

[deliasherman.livejournal.com]

At this point, does it really matter? You might have to decide eventually (in aid of figuring out just how unreliable the narrator is, for instance, and why). But not in what I'm assuming is a first draft, surely.

Besides, making up names is FUN. I've just made up a Welsh town and manor and baronetcy out of stray consonants, and am in the process of planting a completely bogus plantation in the middle of Lafayette Parish, LA.

[ewein2412]

no, it doesn't matter at ALL, maybe even in the long run, who's making up the names. And YES, it IS fun! At first I only did the one and then I sort of got into the swing of it.

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

I actually really like the idea of your World War II Scheherazade making up the names to confuse everybody. It seems to fit in so perfectly.

[ewein2412]

I know. it is very In Character.

[ewein2412]

oh, haha, I used my "once I was a scholar" icon thinking it said "Harriet Vane" at the bottom. I forgot that it actually says "Shrewsbury College." I am going to use it all the time.

[estara.livejournal.com]

"I've just made up a Welsh town and manor and baronetcy out of stray consonants,"

*grin*