Panelists: Mary Robinette Kowal (moderator), Vylar Kaftan, Jo Walton, Amy Butler Greenfield, Delia Sherman
Vylar’s Recap from Last Year
Where do you go to get sources for historical fantasy?
How do you find sources?
How do you deal with problematic perspectives on race and gender?
When do you stop researching and start writing?
Amy stays with facts when she writes non-fiction.
In fiction, she researches deeply. She also looks at the literature and primary materials of the period.
Once she hears voices, she limits research.
If her manuscript stops cold, she will return to research.
She fills in small gaps as she goes.
Delia writes and researches at the same time.
She reads social history, novels, and memoirs.
Delia says there is never a point where you stop researching.
Vylar says she researches fifty percent first. Then she drafts.
When she discovers what she doesn’t know, she’ll research minimally throughout (10 percent).
Researches forty percent at the end.
Jo writes in a place she’s already familiar with, so she never leaves blanks as she goes.
She usually has already been reading general research for what she’s writing.
Mary researches ahead of time. She does broad research for what she’s writing. for about a month. She writes quickly and fills in details later. She will stop when she hits plot or character trouble.
Reference librarians as tools!
Online chat in libraries.
You can use a librarian somewhere other than where you are a patron.
Delia organizes her research.
Jo suggests using non fiction books for kids. Also asks on her live journal for information.
Mary visits museums, curators, and living history researchers. She also likes to search the library stacks.
Vylar also likes children books.
Jo says she’s never written where she hasn’t been. Mary says she herself can’t visit Brussels in 1816.
Suggestions from audience
Manuals for war games, re-enactors. Do remember to corroborate this information.
There is a special interest group for almost everything.
Things that aren’t anachronistic but sound like they are? Or commonly accepted wrong facts?
Delia says I’m going to serve the book and my story and do what’s best there.
Jo says she might exercise more caution.
You can’t revise your reader.
We are writing for people of the modern world. How do you handle discrimination?
Possibilities:
Be true and have unsympathetic characters espouse the views of the time?
Leave it alone and have a modern character in a historical setting?
Depends on how accurate you want to be or not.
Jo: You can be sympathetic in some ways, but not others.
Characters can have attitudes, but the narrator of the text can have different attitudes.
You can also have progressive characters.
Vylar: modern is okay. Attitudes from time move plot forward.
Show the consequences of progressive beliefs.
Remember, you are writing for the modern reader.
Great Question! How do you write from the view of the colonized?
Jo suggested secondary sources. Find contemporary sources you can reason from.
Mary suggested PhD theses.
Amy suggests anthropology, theses, sociology. Find out what researchers are doing.
Some research is expensive. It takes time and money.
Should you travel? Some say yes. Some say use the library and the internet.
Write what makes you excited. When you are bored, don’t do it anymore. If it’s not fun, don’t do it anymore.
Historical fantasists are a “special brand of special.” If you’re not into research, there are other things you can write.
Vylar: I have done the best with what is available to me.
Delia: We are dealing with illusion. We can’t put everything in. Use 3 telling details.
Ask an expert, or a reference librarian.
