tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2321044171686350248.post281296203468457480..comments2023-05-25T01:01:25.141-07:00Comments on Bibliographic Searcher: more links, more Lincoln (Ha. Ha.)batgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15143310557906978680noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2321044171686350248.post-40325830706476707652009-01-29T07:51:00.000-08:002009-01-29T07:51:00.000-08:00Yes, that's the puzzle. How do you honestly repres...Yes, that's the puzzle. How do you honestly represent a society's beliefs and attitudes when there's a strong chance your reader may find them bizarre or repugnant or just wrong? <BR/>The cheat is to make the bad guys be the upholders of the bad status quo, and your hero(ine) for some reason having modern attitudes, so your main character keeps audience sympathy. But it's more complicated than that. Societies aren't the same all the way through, and there's always dissent. It just isn't usually dissent that matches modern attitudes. The Spanish priests who argued against the enslavement and murder of South American Indians, and the whites who assisted the Underground Railway didn't necessarily believe in the same kind of equality that a 21st c. liberal might believe in. <BR/>And the easy answer is to say that if it's well written it will work, but that doesn't cover what 'well written' means in this case (which is why it's such an easy answer). <BR/>Yeah. How to be true to the time without losing reader sympathy. It's not easy. One trick is to show the characters doing things that are sympathetic or virtuous by modern standards, along with the things that make modern people twitch. <BR/>Or if you have a valid reason why the character might have _some_ modern attitudes, show her conflicted about them, not self-righteous. Look at what Mark Twain did with Huck Finn. He fights and fights against seeing Jim as a human being and not property, sees himself as a thief, not a rescuer. <BR/><BR/>Agh. Didn't mean to lecture. (Did my father teach English? Why, yes he did.)batgirlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15143310557906978680noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2321044171686350248.post-43595480106858254372009-01-27T05:44:00.000-08:002009-01-27T05:44:00.000-08:00"It's difficult to write characters who don't shar..."<I>It's difficult to write characters who don't share our belief system and assumptions.</I><BR/><BR/>It is. On one of my blogs I'm entering portions of backstory from an important background character. I keep worrying how it will be received because the culture in the book is so foreign to our own.<BR/><BR/>Do you ever struggle with that?Beviehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04285435228657659873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2321044171686350248.post-61997515294313304592009-01-26T09:21:00.000-08:002009-01-26T09:21:00.000-08:00Hi Bevie, and welcome, fellow minion! (I'm not sur...Hi Bevie, and welcome, fellow minion! (I'm not sure I fully qualify as a minion).<BR/>Yeah, it's surprising what's new and what's not. All sorts of slang terms turn out to be quite old, too. <BR/>The attitudes, as you say, are the hardest and most important to get right. It's difficult to write characters who don't share our belief system and assumptions. But one of the reasons for reading historical or other-world fiction is to experience those other ways of belief and thought. <BR/>The past is not the present in funny clothes. If it were, I might as well read histories of costume as of people.batgirlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15143310557906978680noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2321044171686350248.post-42406327541917897892009-01-26T05:21:00.000-08:002009-01-26T05:21:00.000-08:00Hi. I found you through Evil Editor.Getting techno...Hi. I found you through <I>Evil Editor</I>.<BR/><BR/>Getting technology right in historic fantasy means a lot of work. I did some web-searching and was surprised to find that some products I assumed to be recent discoveries have actually been around for some time: rubber, steel, cotton clothing.<BR/><BR/>While it bothers me when things are historically wrong, what <I>really</I> bothers me is when 20th, and 21st, century conerns are imposed on cultures nothing like our own. It put characters out of character, in my mind.Beviehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04285435228657659873noreply@blogger.com