The Adventures of Captain Peroxide and Deadboy
The Angel/Spike Zone of the BtVS Writer's Guild
A Few Thoughts on Historical Fan-Fiction
By Peasant
(Originally posted at The Last Time I Saw You)
The basics of writing good stories are the same whichever genre you are in, but there are a few special difficulties associated with writing any piece of fan-fiction set in a period outside the experience of your own lifetime. For what it is worth, this is my advice:
Write the story first. This may sound daft, but if you have a good story that you want to tell then it can cover for numerous historical mistakes, if you decide to give everyone a history lesson and tack a few vampires on the end then you will probably bore your readers silly. So yes, do your research, but never let the research overshadow the story itself. Fiction is about people (or vampires) not costumes and dates.
Try to catch the flavor of the period rather than worrying about the minutiae. It can help to read a few novels written at the time in question, or even to watch a TV costume drama (many modern costume dramas are very well researched.) Another excellent idea, if you can get hold of them, is to read actual newspapers, periodicals and other written ephemera of the period. Anyone in Britain or Ireland has a huge advantage here because such things are cheap and easy to find in second-hand bookshops. (I have some old bound copies of Punch from the 1880s that only cost a few pounds and are an excellent source of inspiration.) Regrettably it has to be said that whatever else you do - don't rely on the show, nine times out of ten they will have got it wrong.
When researching, pay attention to speech patterns, the way people behave towards each other, the ways they passed their time. It can all help get you in the mood. Then try to convey to your readers a general feel that they are in that period. A carriage going past, having to tend the fire, pausing to put on hat and gloves, having to lift long skirts out of the mud - all small details that can convey an impression of a time and place different to our own
What you must not do is hammer home the point at every turn with lengthy descriptions of costumes, furnishings or the like. That is very tedious to read. If there is any small detail of technology, dress or so forth that is vital to the story, then be accurate, and you should always check the date of introduction, but as a general rule you should mention these things only lightly and in passing, as part of the natural flow of your story. Ask yourself if you would describe something if the piece were modern and only give a detailed description if the answer is yes. This is especially true of clothes: too many stories start to read like a costume reference book.
That said, don't talk down to your readers and assume they are ignorant of everything prior to the invention of the Gameboy. Keep the obscurer references in if they delight you, but do so with a light touch, and don't hang the whole plot on a required understanding of eighteenth century flower arranging techniques or your readership will be limited.
Speech patterns are important because they can be more indicative of the feel of a period than almost anything else. (Somebody really should point this simple fact out to Mutant Enemy.) So, somehow, you need to find a compromise between the recognizable speech patterns of the characters and turns of phrase that can set the mood of the period. The biggest problem for a modern writer is that insidious word 'OK'. We are so used to littering our speech with it that it can be a real stretch of the imagination to manage without it. But OK did not become common in England until the late twentieth century, so manage you must. As a first step try using 'very well' or 'all right' instead (although even 'all right' was rather slangy until the late nineteenth century) but for best practice reword your sentences to avoid the inflection entirely. So instead of 'OK, let's go now' you could say 'Very well, let's leave now' but you could just as easily have 'let's leave now' on its own without any change of meaning.
Other common pitfalls are finishing a sentence with 'already' to mean 'get a move along' and using 'whatever' as an exclamation. If you are having trouble with slipping into modern slang terms all the time then try only writing fully grammatical sentences for a while, you may be amazed at the difference. But be careful not to go too far and make your characters stilted: numerous elisions and contractions have a very long history. If in doubt then look the word up in a dictionary that gives dates of introduction.
The other most important aspect to a period is social relations. How someone addressed a servant, how they greeted each other in the street, what sort of things might a family discuss and what would be taboo. All these are far more important to a historical story than dressing your characters up in pretty frocks. Unfortunately there is no simple route to getting these things right. There is no substitute here for doing some research into the period. But again, it can be pleasant research - reading a novel will tell you far more about how people behaved towards each other than any history book can. Otherwise, be aware that things were different 'back then' and bear it in mind while writing.
Avoid clichés like the plague, they always annoy. The standard historical BTVS clichés are: four-poster beds, making characters lords or ladies, dressing men in 'breeches' long after trousers became the norm, and using the word 'tavern' instead of pub, hotel or inn. You also need to be wary of the more universal historical clichés not confined to BTVS: a coach and four sweeping up a carriage drive, too many balls and chandeliers, over-perky cockney parlour maids (these should be killed on sight - if you must have one then be sure to give Angelus free reign), and last, but sadly not least, London fog. All of these should be used with care or not at all.
Above all, be interesting. There are dozens of stories out there with scenes set in 'taverns' and large country houses - put your vampires in a music hall, a brothel or a railway station instead. Have them hunt a composer, a circus freak, a meeting-room full of suffragettes not 'the beautiful daughter of Lord Blackstock.' And they may have been vampires who regularly tortured each other and indulged in wild sexual orgies, but there must also have been nights when they sat in and played penny-nap or read the newspaper, even if they did do it while sipping the blood of the latest victim from a crystal champagne glass.
If you want to point out the flaws in how I write historical fan-fiction then do read my own stories, at http://ficbitch.com/peasants_plot , I always welcome critical feedback.
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