JudithLeave a comment

Genres and writing rules

I recently did an Instagram Live with my best feedback friend (as our writing group, Quill and Cup calls critique partners), Catie O’Neill.

Catie’s novel Love and Other Alien Concepts (out today! Order here) is both sci-fi and romance. She has taken the best bits from both, added some spice, to create a unique and fantastic story. In our Instagram Live, we talked about this genre blurring and writing rules.

Rick Moody has said, “Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem. It helps people know what section to browse.” I think this is a really helpful way to understand genre – it is a shelving and marketing problem. Of course, there are genre expectations that a writer should be familiar with. Especially, the romance genre where expectations are more clearly articulated and adhered to. I tend to think though that there are solutions to where to shelf a book: a good search engine, knowledgeable staff, displays etc. Marketing genre-blurring novels can definitely be more challenging but, again, there are solutions. Catie has excellent tips on how to use Instagram to find your readers which helps with marketing.

The Vancouver Writers Festival is currently taking place. Interestingly, it has an event for an award for blurred genres: the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award. This award “named in honour of Betsy Warland, this award celebrates work that disrupts convention about what a book should be, how it should read, what it should sound like, what subject matter is acceptable.” Past receipts of this award have come from Indigenous or ethnic minorities who found that to tell their stories, they needed to challenge Western genres, and other writing rules.

This echoes what Matthew Salesses says in his book, Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping. He notes that,

“What rules and archetypes standardize are models that are easily generalizable to accepted cultural preferences. What doesn’t fit the model is othered“ (p.18). These writing rules are “made by culture and reflect culture” (p.29).

He provides loads of examples about the way plot, plot structure, understandings of causation, and centring conflict are all cultural and “represents the dominance of a specific cultural tradition.”

Reading this thrilled my anthropologist heart. I frequently find absolute rules about story structure annoying. When someone says stories have to be a certain way because that is how they have always been, I do wonder if that is true across all cultures and all history. As Matthew Salesses demonstrates with examples from Chinese, Korean and Japanese literatures, there are differences in how stories are told.

I find this very liberating. If it serves your story, blur the genres. If it serves your story, consider an alternative structure. Be creative! Experiment! I can’t wait to read those types of stories!

JudithLeave a comment

Women Sailors in Folk Songs

In my novel, A Good Name, I included a hauling shanty called “Daar Was Eens Een Meisje Loos” or in English, “Once There Was a Crafty Girl.” This song is Dutch but very similar to English sea shanties of the time. In this version, the chorus is even in English. Here you can hear a recording in Dutch from 1953. 

Once there was a crafty girl
Ch: Hurrah, my boy! Hurrah, my boy!
Who wanted to go sailing as ordinary seamen,
Ch: Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, my boy!

She took service for seven years,
Because she didn't fear any danger.

She brought her chest and gear aboard,
Like a young sailor should.

While researching sea shanties, I found Dianne Dugaw’s book, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850. She found 113 folk songs that feature what she called ‘warrior women.’ One of the features of the ballads is that the heroine’s plan to disguise herself as a man is never seen as ridiculous.

“The Female Warrior ballads not only accept but depend upon the belief that a woman would want to and indeed could masquerade as a soldier – and quite well enough to get away with it… Eighteenth-century women had good reason to engage in activities similar to those described in the ballads: leaving home and family, travelling alone, bearing arms, engaging in trickery, and surviving by their own hook or by crook. Indeed, the ballad women survive by their wits…. This period was a turbulent and disruptive age, particularly for the common people. Violence, crime, and warfare were incessant, and survival at the middle and lower rungs of society demanded as much ingenuity, assertiveness, and physical stamina from women as from men. … Lower class women in the eighteenth century were quite as vigorous and uninhibited physically and emotionally as the ballad heroine.” (124)

My main character, Leemka, fights for her survival at a time when the scale is rigged against lower class women and does so with sass and resilience.

If you are interested in hearing more of these ballads, the Warrior Women Project at Wayne University has lyrics, images, and analysis. Academic research centres, like this one, were invaluable while researching this book and I cannot recommend them highly enough to other writers.

JudithLeave a comment

How much tolerance for fiction in historical fiction?

I recently did a presentation for my writing group, Quill and Cup, on how much fiction there is in historical fiction. Many writers feel daunted by the amount of research required to write historical fiction. It can be a lot! I say that as someone who loves research!

History is a story. Full stop.

The telling of history is the telling of a story. It emphasizes some parts, ignores others. It’s revisited. It’s revised. It has limits. What we think we know about history is based on the stories that we were told by our own families and the place(s) and times in which we live. Margaret Atwood writes that “Individual memory, history, and the novel, are all selective: no one remembers everything, each historian picks out the facts he or she chooses to find significant, and every novel, whether historical or not, must limit its own scope. No one can tell all the stories there are.” Be reassured that no one can know everything about every time period or place.

Historical Fiction Definition

Historical Fiction takes readers to a time and place in the past. How far back in time does an author have to go for their work to be considered Historical Fiction? A good rule of thumb is a minimum of 50 years.

Historical fiction novels include details about social norms, cultural practices, political events, key figures, and technological advancements. The main characters may be biographical, inspired by real people, or entirely fictional. Likewise, the plot may follow precisely actual historical events or timelines or be entirely fictional or usually a combination of the two.

There is a whole set of subgenres within historical fiction – which is for the most part simply taking other fiction genres and putting the word ‘historical’ in front of it. For example,

  • Historical Romance
  •  Historical Mystery
  • Historical fantasy
  • Historical thriller
  • Historical adventure
  • Alternate History
  • Biographical history

And in these sub-genres there is variation in how much fiction is tolerated. Or what I call the ‘fudge-o-meter’.

As you can see, Biographical History has less tolerance, especially if based on a famous person. The factual details of the person’s life are not ‘fudged’ but their inner life and emotions may be.

In Historical Mystery, one of my favourite genres to read, the historical details are largely accurate and detailed and work with the mystery. I love the Brother Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters. Set in the early 12th century in England, Cadfael has been a soldier and has late in life become a monk. Best of all, he is a herbalist and has a walled herb garden. I have a weakness for walled vegetable and herb gardens. Also, the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear is set in one of my favourite time periods, the 1920s. I’ve recently enjoyed the Malabar House series by Vaseem Khan set in 1950s India after Independence and Partition whose main character is India’s first woman police detective. It’s a time of optimism, excitement and change. I love time periods like that.

As we move towards Historical Romance, there is more tolerance for ‘fudging’ as the focus for these novels is the romance.

Alternative History, as you might suspect, is one of the most tolerant as these novels are premised on asking what if events as we know had unfolded differently.

Finally, Historical Fantasy with their dragons, wizards, and magic are the most tolerant.

I like that historical fiction as a genre is wide enough that all sorts of writers and their preference for research can find a place to tell their stories. Personally, I like the research involved and find that the details uncovered help me develop my settings, plot and characters. I confess I also sometimes use it to avoid writing. I am getting better at not interrupting my writing flow by making lists of details to check at a later date.

Although my novel is based a true person, she left only faint traces in the historical record. So, I’ve maintained accuracy about all known facts about her life but have imagined her personality, her struggles, her motivations, and what her life might have been like.

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References:

Atwood, Margaret. 1997. In search of Alias Grace : on writing Canadian historical fiction. University of Ottawa Press.