cornerofmadness

I had a million ideas for my writerly ways as I drove into town but now I’m tired and can barely think of any. Let’s go with the one I have the strongest remembrance of at the moment. Historicals and getting the details right. Sometimes, it’s not the big things that matter but the subtle differences.

We don’t even have to be talking ancient history here. Oh, sure there is this appeal to the Victorian era that mystery and romance authors have been milking for ages and now the fantasy crew with steampunk (where at least you can play with the details). In something like that you really DO have to do your research and do it well because your audience usually knows the time period inside and out.

I was thinking, though, how about more modern history. Viet Nam is always a popular choice but hey, as much as it pains me to say it, the 1980’s are now upwards of 30 years ago (OMG NO!). I’ve been watching Murder, She Wrote in the mornings as I get ready and it’s bringing back bits of that time I’ve forgotten. As much as I loved (and still do) the show, it is, of course, even more unrealistic than Castle which is no bastion of reality. However, there are the subtle things captured in this. The old computer with their horrible screen colors and fonts, the dot matrix printers and ginormous monitors. There was the fear that everything would be lost by this chunk of new technology and a lot of people still preferred their electric typewriters.

Heck for that matter, do we remember having to change out daisy wheels just to move from normal text to italics (which is why they were underlined in fiction, you didn’t have to do that). Most people remember the big hair and Madonna jewelry of the 80’s and the wild make up but do we remember the glass ceiling that was MUCH lower for women than it is today. I do. I hit that at full speed going into medical school. Less than 25% of my med school class was female. One of the Murder, She Wrote episodes had people losing their minds over the idea of a lady boss in business. That’s not all that long ago but if you were writing a business woman, she would no doubt experience this. And for those who didn’t live it, more than 80% of the resistance I ran into being a lady doctor wasn’t from men; it was from older women who thought I should know my place.

If nothing else the 1950’s-1990’s as a time period can be relatively easily studied. We can find the movies and TV shows without trouble and some of the music still pops up as retro nights (at least for the 80s). It would be relative simple to craft your YA college vampire piece and include what she might be watching on TV (Beauty & the Beast), who her favorite musician was (Wham! Boy George, Madonna etc) and add in the color of being there.

There is nothing worse, to me, than picking up a novel with a historical setting that totally misses the flavor of the day. Of course the farther back you go, the harder it will be to include things without feeling like you have to over describe the object since no one would have a clue or over use the dialect of the day but a couple ‘groddy to the maxes’ might help your 80’s girl (and let’s see who knows what the big ass floppy discs even are or how a needle picks up dust and makes your records skip) Beta max, anyone?


Yearly count -

11972 / 75000 words. 16% done!

Geeklove-

3581 / 9000 words. 40% done!

Scarred Soldier -

4161 / 9000 words. 46% done!

true to form I've edited NOTHING of my old stuff. I suck