Slipstream sounds more like a term one might read in aeronautics, but it’s actually one in contradistinction to mainstream literary fiction.

Originally, slipstream was a contemporary writing whose very heart is anchored against reality; i.e., fantastic, surreal, illogical and with a “postmodern sensibility.” There is no sense of wonder that is found in classic science fiction. It is very strange and often “sarcastically tears at the structure of everyday life.” Slipstream, like postmodernism, questions identity, meaning, and representation.² Sterling compares M. C. Escher to be the graphic equivalent of slipstream. Nine Below identifies three key observations to Sterling’s definition: science fiction written by non-genre writers, fiction that straddles work with one foot in science fiction and the other in mainstream, and fiction that has a strong post-modern sensibility.³ It is interesting to note that the latter point might have been softened. For example, Wikipedia simply puts slipstream as a “kind of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries between science fiction/fantasy and mainstream literary fiction.” My operating definition is a slightly expanded version of this—cross-genre writing where the genres are speculative fiction and literary fiction, which is consistent with Mary Anne Mohanraj’s interpretation at Strange Horizons.⁴ Sterling’s column¹ contains a list of 114 authors and their works considered to be slipstream.

(Some folks don’t even consider slipstream a true genre, but a style. James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, editors of Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology,⁵ argue that “cognitive dissonance is at the heart of slipstream, and that it is not so much a genre as a literary effect, like horror or comedy.”⁶ Kelly argues in Asimov Science, “I know what it feels like when I’m writing science fiction and fantasy; I understand what it takes to build the worlds and complicate the plots. But when I write slipstream, I find myself adopting different strategies, shifting my expectations. I don’t understand everything; the writing feels different. Strange. I suppose that’s not a very useful description, but there it is. So on a personal level, I can say that my slipstream has its own techniques, its own possibilities, and its own rewards.”⁷)

Maybe the cross-genre or interstitial fiction is a safer association because it doesn’t carry the perceived negative baggage of speculative fiction does to some in the literary arena. Slipstream stories have a feel of magical realism, which makes the familiar strange by taking a familiar context and disturbing it with science fiction and fantasy elements, but it’s far more jarring in slipstream.⁸ In the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, John Clute refers to slipstream as fabulation, which is magical realism written by non Latino writers (who established that genre firmly in literary circles).⁷

I bring this up because the newer interpretations of slipstream arguably parallel what has happened with magical realism identified as fabulation. That is, slipstream written by the literary folks is appearing as new wave fabulation,⁹ a term coined by Conjunctions.^10,11

Clearly, slipstream prose may be graceful and eloquent, as noted in a blog¹² referring to Reader’s Digest comments. And who can argue with that when prestigious literary publications are recently nominating this type of writing, albeit under the cloak of cross-genre writing, for awards such as 2010 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature by Salt.¹³

Postscript

In the original context of slipstream, the references in citation 1 have many examples, but I prefer the broader context of what might be considered slipstream today—cross-genre speculative fiction with a literary flair. And yes, my work does have underlying meaning and doesn’t cater to postmodernism views. Below are some examples:

Before the Dawn, the Stars Would Sing. The magic of fairy tales is blended in this fantasy/romance flash fiction rich with poetic swaths (Enchanted Conversation, 2010).

Fervent Heat. This impressionism poetry was stimulated by abstract digital art in a collaborative work with Lisa Marie Peaslee (Silver Blade 2010).

Drenching Rains. This contest-winning surreal fantasy poem features trolls (Liquid Imagination 2009).

Coyote. This poem blends bizarro and fantasy with elements of humor (Silver Blade 2009).

Painting Myself into a Corner. This is a poem of surreal expressionism (Silver Blade 2009).

The Magical Realism of Astrology. This prose poem is bizarre as well as fantastic (Liquid Imagination 2009).

 Raven-Black Dreams, http://www.liquid-imagination.com/JohnCMannoneRaven.html. This is heavily literary. It is a contest winning horror poem with echoes of Poe (Liquid Imagination 2008).

Footnotes
1. http://w2.eff.org/Misc/Publications/Bruce_Sterling/Catscan_columns/catscan.05 (July 1989)

 2. Ashen Wings, http://www.ashenwings.com/virtues/slipstream.html (2004)

 3. Nine Below live journal, http://ninebelow.livejournal.com/169856.html (May 2010)

4. Strange Horizons, “Avoiding the Potholes: Adventures in Genre-Crossing,” http://www. strangehorizons.com/2001/20010702/editorial.shtml (July 2001)

5. Reviews of Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology by James Patrick Kelly, http://www.librarything.com/work/930149

6. Slipstream Quarterly: http://slipstreamquarterly.com/?p=3 (February 2010)

 7. Asimov Science Fiction, http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0312/onthenet.shtml (December 2003)

 8. Ask Metafilter, http://ask.metafilter.com/143822/What-is-Slipstream (January 2010)

 9. The Future of the Fantastic: New Wave Slipstream Fabulism by Eric Rosenfield, http://www.wetasphalt.com/?q=node/134 (March 2007)

 10. The Writer’s Chronicle, http://thewriterschronicle.blogspot.com/2009/06/recently-ive-been-thinking-alot-about.html (June 2009)

 11. Conjunctions http://www.conjunctions.com/archives/c39-ps.htm

 12. Reader’s Digest, http://www.everything.com/WD-Youre-Now-Entering-the-Twilight-Zone/#axzz0rzNuYlf0)

 13. Warwick blog, http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/ttooulig/entry/a_prize_for (February 2010)

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John C. Mannone is a widely published award-winning poet nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize and for the 2010 Rhysling Poetry Award. His poetry and short fiction appear in numerous literary and speculative fiction journals such as Pirene’s Fountain, Aethlon, Skive Magazine, The Linnet’s Wings, Eclectic Flash, Silver Blade, Liquid Imagination, Enchanted Conversation, and Astropoetica. Professor Mannone is a nuclear consultant and teaches college physics in east Tennessee.

The following paragraphs are an essay I have read out for a few years at open mikes.

 It will happen. A bad poem will be read at a poetry open mike. It will happen. It has happened. It’s probably happening right now. Bad poetry happens. It lies in wait and when you go up to read, do it with the full honest belief that this will be the great transcendent poem for our generation, and you are all humble supplicanty to lay it on us cats, as you should for every poem you croak out.

 Adjust the mike, look steely and serious, because you are a poet. And say, this one is brand new, because these things tend to be new, rushed out and infant pink. And then start with the knowledge that the wowing will commence. As you read, pay attention to the audience. Are they laughing at the right spots. Are they laughing at the wrong spots. Are they laughing at the gravy spots on your pink bowling shirt. Now listen to your own voice as you read the first stanza. Pause long enough to say to yourself, “What the hell was I thinking?” Convince yourself that you hit your stride in the second stanza. Read the second stanza. Now think to yourself. “Oh. This is only getting worse, and there five more stanzas to go.”

 They are laughing, but not the good laughing. Realize that as a writer we all shoot for greatness. We try to fashion our poem to live, to give birth to itself. To burst from its eggshell of verbs and grammar as a gorgeous bird. What kind of bird is up to you: a dove, a heron, a phoenix.

 But what you are reading is not a bird. It’s a frog. An abnormal frog. A frog with five legs. 3 eyes, a split tongue and a surly disposition. An ugly mutant frog with a teeny weenie saddle on its back. And it is here by the side of the poem’s third stanza.

 You must decide what to do next. You can do:

A. Say this sucks and walk off the stage.

B. Sigh audibly and mumble through the rest with shame

Or C. Climb on that teeny weenie saddle on the back of the mutant frog poem and ride that sucker for all its worth like a prize bronco buster.

Think carefully before you decide. The future of poetry as we know it might rest on your choice. If you chose A or B, it is self explanatory. If you chose C, then do the following. 

Pause. Smile to the audience as if to say, “Yes. I know its awful, and its not going to get any better, but now we are in this mess together.” Get on that wee saddle and ride as if its a prize bull. Sing out bad lines with gusto. Let your hand out like a seasoned rodeo star, but put a little Fosse into it. Ride that poem down. Come to the realization that poetry is nothing but poise and bullshit. 

That poem will push you around the stage with poor metaphors, cramped meter and god-awful ideas, but they are yours baby, so smile and grip tight and never look down.

 When you are finished, go back to your table and look at the poem you just performed. You may think, “That was horrendous” or, “What a splendid bus wreck that was,” but never say ,“I wish I never wrote that. I wish I never read it out loud.” Do not speak heresy.

 Because don’t you know, the Gods love bad poems? They love them those 5 legged little mutant froggies. They build complex terrariums for them to cavort about and be proudly and defiantly awful. For the Gods know without the bastards of process, the good birds of art will never fly. And if you kiss one of those frog poems, it will not turn into a prince. It will just be a happier frog.

 Remember this as you put do not enter signs and quarantine symbols all around the poem in your notebook as you quickly turn to the next blank page.

 And begin.

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Dave Macpherson is a writer of short things. He has been a nationally recognized slam poet. He has also performed at a few storytelling festivals. He has been published in Every Day Fiction, Haggard and Halloo, Mudluscious, November 3rd Club, as well as other on line and print publications. He was a columnist for GotPoetry.Com and is soon to start a new column there. He lives in Central Massachusetts with his wonderful wife Heather and their son George.

For those short story writers who insist they could never write a novel, I say balderdash!

Open your favorite novel and all you’ll find is short stories!  Each chapter has a beginning, middle and end, and most could probably stand on their own. Each subplot is its own story, and since it’s a SUBplot, it’s short!

Take a look at the short stories you’ve written.  Do some of them share a common theme? How many could take place in the life of a single character? Rearrange the order of the stories until you have a cohesive plot:

Everybody Loves a Parade – about patriotism in America

Time with My Father – about reaching out to an immigrant parent

You Can Never Go Home – about losing one’s identity in middle age

These could become a novel about a man who has left behind his past and become someone he doesn’t like, who goes home to reconnect with his father and figure out who he really is, and who winds up recognizing the influence that both his father’s native country and America has had on the man he became. Or something like that.

 Is there a story that matches the theme but screams to be told by someone other than the main character? Don’t panic. Make it a subplot involving a secondary character.

Let’s say you have several short and flash fiction pieces that focus on romantic relationships. The first is about awkward meetings. The second covers the emotional impact of a messy breakup. You have the first and last chapters for your book!  The remaining flash fiction pieces that tie into this theme could build the core of you novel. Just make sure you have plenty of conflict.

I won’t tell you to place them in chronological order. Imagine how differently “The Hours” would have read had the author told the story in a linear fashion!

Are you worried that your chapters will wind up too short? Have you read a Robert B. Parker novel lately? Or Parnell Hall? Short chapters increase the pace of the story, which is perfect if you’re writing a thriller or action novel. If you need to slow down the pacing, take your already written pieces and flesh them out with appropriate action or information. 

What if you still don’t have enough to fill a novel? Don’t despair! Consider a novella. That’s what I did. “The Groom’s Cake” is just under 10,000 words. Any more and I would have been blathering.

If you do decide to try your hand at blending your short fiction into a longer piece, here are a few novella markets to get you started. Good luck!

MuseItUp Publishing at http://museituppublishing.com/musepub

Keith Publications at www.keithpublications.com

Echelon Press Shorts at www.echelonpressshorts.wordpress.com

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Jacqueline Vick (www.jacquelinevick.com) has authored short stories for publications such as Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine, Orchard Press Mysteries, Cantaraville II, and the Best of Everyday Fiction Two Anthology. Her mystery “Family Matters” was a semifinalist in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition. She’s a regular judge in the El Paso Writers League Competition, blogs at A Writer’s Jumble, and is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America and Public Safety Writers Association.  

I do feel that the majority of Southern writing is dark. Southerners celebrate the angst and adversity they have to deal with on a daily basis. An unfortunate offshoot to that, while realistic, is that Southern writing has jumped into child abuse.  Many of the newer stories out there involve abused, poor Southern children who’s every day deals with simply surviving.  It seems to be a new modern theme.  Romance has vampires, Southern books have child abuse. 

Of course, race relations will always have its place in Southern literature, as will eccentricity.  We love our Southern eccentrics. 

What I do enjoy these days is the flash fiction and longer stories the Dew receives.  Many of these are lighter in nature than the books on the market – heartwarming memories of “better, younger days”, darkly amusing tales of getting one over on someone else, tales of ancestors.  These stories hold more humor than the books.  There are certainly the dark tales also, murder, death by natural incidents, failing health, but many short story writers seem to have wonderful condensed tales that leaving you with a warm feeling. 

I feel the Dew is very lucky in that it draws from all of these different types of writers and gives us a nice wide range of emotions to experience. 

We’re pretty loose about what our requirements are. But basically, if the story is Southern in nature or written by a Southerner, we consider it.  I have a great story going up in July written by someone in Northern England, but it’s most definitely a Southern story.  I have found there are quite a few sites out there that consider themselves Southern only publications so I think we might count as a genre. 

The Dew is Southern to the core.We don’t publish editorials or anything heavy on vulgarity, violence, religion or politics. We try to maintain a happy, thoughtful place in the webosphere.

The Dew has been up and running since 2005 and I am so pleased with the amount of support it has received from the community, writers, publishers, and visitors.

The Dew publishes stories, poems, flash fiction, memories and even the occasional photograph. If it’s flowing from your mind to your pen, we would like to see it. Anything from 50 words to 4,000 – anything over 1,500 usually has to be broken up into serial stories though.

Take a few minutes and browse through our pages. I think you’ll like what you find.

http://dewonthekudzu.net or http://dewonthekudzu.com

If you would like to submit an article, story, or book review, please contact me at dewonthekudzu @ gmail.com. We don’t pay, but we will certainly make sure all of your information and accomplishments are shared! We also never “own” your submission – you may share it with as many others as you wish.

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“Idgie” is a somewhat sloppy editor and proud parent of Dew on the Kudzu, an Ezine that celebrates the Southern Written Word. Book reviewer, occasional author on her own site, Southern humorist at heart.

Sometimes, it seems like a good idea to write what you know.

What happens when you’re too familiar with your subject, though?  There are a lot of memoirs on the market right now, and many of the industry blogs that you’ll read these days complain about the piles upon piles of memoirs that are being submitted.  It makes some sense – can there really be that many people who have such interesting lives?  Possibly.  Are you someone whose life is interesting enough that thousands of other people will enjoy reading about it?  Possibly.  Unfortunately, you may not be the best judge of that answer.

Perhaps you’ve decided that your life, as a whole, is not interesting enough to warrant a memoir.  Instead, you get a flash of inspiration – you’ll write a fictional story based on your life!  Not your whole life, of course, because you’ve already decided that it’s not interesting enough.  But there was that one time, wasn’t there, when something story-worthy happened?

Great!  Next thing you know, you’re flying through the draft, laughing to yourself as you recall the clever things that you said and did.  The editing process seems to be a breeze – after all, this is based on events and people you know!

You send out your queries and find an agent – bliss!  And then…

The agent suggests some changes.  The main character doesn’t ring true to life.  ‘But wait!’ you think to yourself.  ‘That main character is based on me!  How can I not be true to life?’  Your awesome agent also thinks that the character of Uncle Irvine is too one-dimensional and serves no real purpose.  ‘But he’s based on my Uncle Harry,’ you think. ‘How can you even imagine life without Uncle Harry?’

Alas, your awesome agent is probably right.  While you know and love the people that your story is based on, your agent doesn’t.  He is looking at your story from a distance, and doesn’t have the history that you do.  While you and your Uncle Harry would probably love your story in its current format, your agent can see that not everyone else will.

So what is the answer then?  Don’t write what you know?  Don’t use real people or events for inspiration?  No, not at all.  The answer is to remember what you’re doing – writing a story.  Just because you’ve known Uncle Harry for your whole life and totally understand what makes him tick, it doesn’t mean that you’ve conveyed that well in your story.  It’s fine to use people you know as inspiration, but make sure that the character that is inspired is a well-written, fully-fleshed-out character.  Each and every word on the page, and each and every character in the story, must have a purpose.  If they don’t, you may have to axe good ol’ Uncle Harry (or is it Uncle Irvine?) from your story.

I will admit, my first novel (which now sits in my bookshelf, but will never see an agent or publisher’s desk) was entirely about my life.  The self-insertion was painful.  Every single character in the book was based on a person I knew.  Dialogue came from actual conversations that I had!  It was, in a word, horrible.  But the friends and family who recognized themselves enjoyed it!  I learned my lesson after that attempt, and I promise you, my writing has improved greatly once I took myself out of it.

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Danielle Thuen is an ophthalmic assistant by day, and everything else by night! A creator at heart, she can be found writing, knitting, crocheting, beading, scrapbooking, or cardmaking in her spare time.  She’s also an avid reader and movie buff.  You can read about all of her creative endeavors at http://daniellelanois.blogspot.com

Now, I’ve always been a big science fiction fan, but it wasn’t until I started writing, eighteen months ago, that I became interested in definitions. Before that, I was just interested in a good story. Definitions are important to writers because we think a lot about the mechanics of a story. 

Mundane-SF is set in the near future (let’s say the next fifty years), and uses believable technology based on current science. It’s a sub-genre, significant enough to have its own manifesto, and in 2007 Interzone dedicated an issue to mundane stories.  

The Mundane SF manifesto was inspired by the ideas of Julian Todd and Trent Walters and founded by Geoff Ryman and others, during Clarion 2002 (Clarion is a prestigious American residential workshop programme for speculative fiction writers). 

Considering the current knowledge that we have, there are a number of science fiction theme that cannot be used in mundane science fiction. Wikipedia has a useful list of excluded tropes:

• Interstellar travel and any concept that manages to get around faster than light travel like warp drive and worm holes. So we’re stuck in this solar system.
• Aliens. Even if they did exist, they probably wouldn’t have interstellar travel, so stories about colonization, and galactic wars and empires are out. If they do exist we wouldn’t be able to communicate with alien because it’s likely that the differences between us would be insurmountable.  
• Quantum uncertainty certainly exists, but there is no evidence that it affects the macro world, and so it can’t be used as a basis for alternative universe stories.
• No telepathy stories, either.

To sum it up with a rather nice mundane phrase: “the most likely future is one in which we only have ourselves and this planet.”

 Geoff Ryan explains the reasons that some science fiction writers were attracted to the constraints of mundane science fiction: 

“Mundanity partly came out of impatience with bad science, or with tropes that gave us the SF dream for free.  Also it was impatience with the moral role SF was starting to play… as an irrelevant dream of a future that was unlikely to happen.  The worry is that SF now sometimes actively prevents us imagining the future.”

You can find mundane science fiction everywhere, particularly in science journals like Nature and Cosmos, which publish a limited amount of fiction. Futurismic (http://futurismic.com/category/fiction/) is a good place to find online mundane science fiction. And Ryman has recently edited an anthology: When It Changed: Science Into Fiction, 2009, which is a collection of mundane science fiction stories written with advice from a scientists, with endnotes discussing the plausibility of the stories.  

Personally I write both mundane-science fiction and non-mundane science fiction. I enjoy them both, although my tastes do tend to lean toward the non-mundane stuff. I must admit I like a little razzle-dazzle in my future.  

________________________________

Deborah Walker lives in London, with her partner Chris and her two lovely, yet distracting young children.

“An imagined image or series of images that serves to express unconscious conflicts, to gratify unconscious wishes, or to prepare for anticipated future events.” (McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.)

Of the seven basic conflicts – Man vs. Self, Man vs. Man, Man vs. Society, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Supernatural, Man vs. Machine/Technology, and Man vs. Destiny – at least one is present in all works of fiction, regardless of genre. In the role of “express[ing] unconscious conflicts,” fantasy is not that different from other genres, save that it often provides a greater distance between the reader and the conflict. Imagining the issues in question occurring to someone (or something) separate from ourselves allows us to observe, process, and speculate on our own reactions more easily.

As an example, I offer J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. The concepts of war, racism, injustice, loyalty, and even environmentalism are familiar to all of us, and yet when the turmoil is centered around elves and orcs and wizards and hobbits, it is somehow easier to process than when we read it in the daily newspaper.

Fantasy also serves to “gratify unconscious wishes.” There is enormous benefit to exploring the “what-if” factor. What if one person could make a difference, what if dragons were real, what if a wizard did have an office in downtown Chicago or lusty Fae private investigators were prowling amongst us, what if history had happened differently? Being able to think beyond the actual is what allows us to solve problems in new ways. Necessity is the mother of invention, but imagination is the father – and fantasy in all of its forms is the foundation of it all.

The imagination nurtured by fantasy is also what allows us to “prepare for anticipated future events.” We can study history and hopefully learn how not to repeat the ineffective parts, but such pursuits are often dry and uninspiring. In fantasy, writers can speculatively explore the causes and effects of infinite actions or inactions, comfortably hidden in make-believe worlds, and the reader can follow along at a safe distance. It is this speculation, I believe, that leads to the frequent “lumping together” of science fiction and fantasy.

I, like all fantasy readers, have my favorite worlds – and very strong opinions on the stories that I don’t like. As a younger reader, I was enchanted by David Eddings’ Belgariad series, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, and Terry Brooks’ Shannarra series. While I never found a comfortable home in Xanth, Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series are still a permanent fixture in my bookshelf, along with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. I was obviously affected by Tolkien … my youngest daughter’s name is Galadriel. Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, Yasmine Galenorn … I am more selective now than I was, but just as loyal to my favorites.

I also know that my list of favorites will differ from yours – the wonder of fantasy is that the scope is so broad, the possibilities so limitless. There is something for everyone, and room for everyone. If you aren’t already a fantasy reader, consider giving the genre a chance – I’ve got a recommendation for just about every taste.

In terms of writing fantasy, I think it is the most open of the genres – unbound by strict constraints and compatible with just about every other genre. Fantasy is the universal donor, the literary type “O.” You can write a fantasy romance, a fantasy adventure, a fantasy mystery … and there is nothing stopping you from making the story be all three of those things. The only consistent element is difference – that which is not real must logically be un-real, and therefore, fantasy.

For further reading:
Fantasy: Wikipedia article about the fantasy genre, including sub-genres
The Fantastic Appeal of Fantasy: 2008 article by Mark Chadbourn, from the Telegraph.co.uk

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TL.Schofield lives in central GA with a white dog and a black cat – one of which she is allergic to. She is the Assistant Editor at Flash Fiction Chronicles, is currently trying to wrestle an epic fantasy manuscript into publishable condition, and blogs regularly about her writing process at Blogging in the Dark.

There’s a lot of bad historical fiction out there, and I don’t mean good stories badly written.

Good historical fiction may read like a wild ride over rough territory, but it’s written in a safely fenced playground. The facts – large and small – are the fence. When you erect that fence carefully and well, your readers can trust you and relax into the story.

Who’s going to know if you fudge it? Believe me, there are those of us out there who read historical fiction and who know things about medicine, textile production, how people died in battle, available foods, the three-field system and when forks were invented. We know the difference between an abbot and a bishop, a rood and a rod, a furlong and a fortnight. We know when to use “thee” and “dost”. If you don’t, we don’t care – unless it comes up in your story.
Then we’ll get you.
Here’s some tips on how to prevent that.

Find the gaps

Historical fiction is a matter of fitting your characters into the spaces in history. There are always gaps.
We don’t really know what happened to young Prince Arthur, the nephew of King John, who disappeared mysteriously. Nefertiti’s death is also a mystery. These are just two of the large historical gaps in two widely separated places and times. Wherever historians start saying “no evidence exists” or “we don’t know what happened”, there’s space to insert fiction.

Write what you know

Historical fiction is one genre where the advice “write what you know” absolutely applies. If there’s a period that you love anyway, and are interested in, then it’s likely that you already have a wealth of knowledge of small things that make or break a historical-fiction story.

Research, research, research!

If you don’t know your period, then get to know it, and that doesn’t mean googling it. You’ll have to read about it, and you’ll have to read a lot. Terry Pratchett, before writing “Pyramids”, read half a shelf of books on Egypt. “Pyramids” takes place in Djelibeybi, which is not Egypt, but which is recognizably Egyptian, and deeply, hilariously so. Research paid off.
If you’re going to set something in our history, you’d better be even better-read in your period. Who’s the king? Does a duke rank higher or lower than an earl? Does Paris exist, and is it called Paris in that time? Do you know the difference between a church and a cathedral? What’s the religion in your time and place? What activities did the guilds control? What’s the local currency? You need to know.

Stick to the facts

Margaret Atwood’s novel “Alias Grace” takes place around a historical murder. In an interview, Atwood said that where there was a fact, she stuck to the fact. Where no facts were recorded, she was free to invent. Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter), author of the Brother Cadfael novels, admitted to playing fast and loose with historical fact in the first one, “A Morbid Taste for Bones”. She deeply regretted it, and never did it again.
I haven’t spotted the error in that novel, but apart from that one, her honesty, and Atwood’s, make me trusting of the information in their books.
If you are writing alternative historical fiction, of course, feel free to change the world.

Details, details

If you put in a detail to bring your setting alive, you’d better have it right. I read one book, set in early thirteenth-century France, where the heroine got information from a spinner in the marketplace. The spinner was sitting at a treadle wheel to spin. Her husband was carding, and, later in the same scene, combing wool into skeins for people to buy.
There were no treadle wheels in France at that time. Sitting to spin at a wheel only became possible after the invention of the flyer in the fifteenth century. Carding and combing are two radically different methods of preparing wool for spinning. You can’t card or comb wool into skeins – a skein is a specific length of spun yarn.
I didn’t throw the book at the wall only because it was borrowed. I was disgusted that the author took so little pride in her work, and cared so little for her readers, that she casually put in scene-setting details that she hadn’t bothered to check.

Don’t read (or write on) parchment by electric light

In other words, don’t impose twenty-first century values and mores on earlier times.
Slavery was common not so long ago, and considered perfectly acceptable. While there have always been people who treated slaves well, there were also those who did not. Corporal punishment, the inferior status of women and of other races than one’s own (whatever that might have been), different attitudes to the practice of hygiene, medicine, sanitation and so forth might all offend our current beliefs, but they are of the time.
Your protagonist might be enlightened, or meet people who are enlightened, but they need to be set against a historical background of behaviour and moral code that is of its time, as far as you can make it.

And finally….

Research, research, research

Did I mention how important research is? I’m sure I said something about it. If you are unsure of a fact, check it. Please be careful of your sources. Check official sites when you can, read books written by acknowledged experts. If you use Wikipedia, look for articles that cite references. Check the references, if you can, and particularly if the fact or detail is something on which the story turns.

Whether you’re writing a romance, a mystery, a thriller, I hope these rules stand you in good stead. When you’ve built that fence, your imagination can safely run wild and play make-believe in a way that will entertain and delight your readers, and keep your book from being thrown at the wall.

_________________________

Elizabeth Creith ’s historical fiction favorites include Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Sword at Sunset, Mary Stewart’s series about Merlin (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment) and her book about Mordred, The Wicked Day.

Elizabeth studied the history of the Middle Ages, Old and Middle English and fine art at the University of Toronto. She is fascinated by social history, particularly as it relates to textiles, printmaking, poetry, wordplay, herbology, medicine, women’s status, animal husbandry and other agricultural and household matters.

In spite of her fascination with history, Elizabeth writes fantasy, horror, humour and science fiction. She blogs at Elizabeth Creith’s Scriptorium.  To read some of Elizabeth’s work, try Spanish Gold and Pearls, Water Witch, and Going West.

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July is a special month at my Six Questions For. . . blog

There were a number of expected responses to the first question, like an interesting plot and characters worth caring about. A few responders mentioned wanting to see a willingness on the author’s part to assist with promotion. My sense is others would have mentioned this if I’d asked a direct question about how they promote their books. All of these companies have small staffs who need assistance when it comes to getting the word out about their new books. The most common response (15 out of 20) was, as one person listed for his three look fors, “good writing,” “good writing,” and “good writing.” This includes originality of language, a consistent voice, and, as was true with magazine editors, the use of proper grammar.

As for the mistakes made, the top three were: 1) not reading the guidelines–submitting manuscripts in other than the requested manner, using unconventional formatting, and pitching genres not published by the company; 2) overselling the book; and 3) writing a poor synopsis/pitch letter.

The job of the synopsis is to tell the editor what the story is about. It shouldn’t be long and should avoid explanatory prose about how wonderful the writing is. Similarly, the pitch letter should provide some background about the author and explain how the book fits into the publisher’s current catalog. Editors don’t care what the author’s mother, father, Aunt Tilly, or high school English teacher thinks of the book. They’re looking for stories that will sell, and the only way to know this is to read the manuscript for themselves. As a number of publishers put it, if the writing is good, the book will get published. A final note on the importance of writing a professional quality cover letter and synopsis is summarized by David Rozansky, publisher of Flying Pen Press. “If I figure you can’t write a good sales letter, you probably can’t write a good book.”

Competition for the few publishing slots available (in magazines or at publishing houses) is fierce. Editors and publishers must limit the number of manuscripts they accept. In the case of publishers, this is often due to monetary constraints. Authors who don’t take the time to prepare their manuscripts properly, who ignore author guidelines, who rush through their synopses and cover letters, and who don’t research the genres represented by a publisher, stand little chance of seeing their work published by a reputable company.

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Jim discovered flash fiction in 2007, and he’s read, written, studied, and agonized over the form since. His Six Questions For blog provides editors and publishers a place to “tell it like it is.” In his spare time, he serves as the flash fiction editor for Apollo’s Lyre.

I enjoyed reading Bosley Gravel’s essay last week about techniques to proof ones work.

You see, I actually don’t include most of those elements in my work. Looking at the 10 stories I have been lucky enough to place at Every Day Fiction, and the eleventh one coming out this month, only one of those pieces has all of those elements. And what a fluke that was.  

My story “Wing Mending” was honored to be nominated for the Pushcart Prize (thanks once more Jordan and Camille) and on looking at it again I noticed it has a set up and then a denouement, and that’s it. This is not surprising when you realize that when I did a rewrite of the first draft all I left was the last paragraph. It was the only part that worked. It was the only part that excited me as the first reader. So I said, dammit all, that’s the story.  

Let me put it another way. Several of the comments  for my piece Angels of Merciless mentioned that it wasn’t really a story, it was more of a vignette or a scene, not a story. To that I ask, but did you like it? Did it entertain you? Putting aside the labels of story, sketch, vignette, character study, useless rambling (my stock in trade), one is left with that ultimate and only question, “Was it good?”  

What we write can be character studies, examinations of place, thoughts of politics, naughty jokes or whatever tickles a fancy. The only caveat is engage your audience. If you can do that without plot or story progression, you have done your job. You wrote something worthy of being read.  

For my last example I will bring up of the two best pieces of short prose I have ever read. I discovered both of them in my freshmen year of college, and if anything made me a writer of short things, it probably was these two works. They are Borges and I by Jorge Luis Borges and The Colonel by Carolyn Forche. You can find both of them through web searches. Read them, and come on back.  

They do not fit any of the descriptions of story, but does that negate their power? The Colonel has the unfortunate label of prose poem. Prose poem is the ugly step child of literature. Call it good writing and be done. Must we worry that this is a poem and this is a story and this is a recipe for baba ganoush? Did it effect you? Did the meaning of the author come across? There is no conclusion to The Colonel, and if there was one, I think it would lessen the piece.  

Then we have Borges and I. Wow. It changed the way I think. It moved me. It still does. Yes, it is not a story, but if I could write like that every time out of the chute, I would happily give up my fiction writer’s license. It is possible that it and The Colonel would be rejected by Flash Fiction sites, but how crazy would the editor be for doing that? For denying their audience such powerful art. Must we burden good writing with the shackles of labels and conventions?  

Some writers need to work in parameters, it keeps them moving in the right direction. I also think that for some new writers, using these elements of story will help them shape their piece. But remember that that is not the only way to create something good. If you created a kick ass character, sometimes the best thing to do is put them front and center, right there in the middle of the page. Let them shine without the hindrance of plot, let them do their own thing, your audience will thank you for it.  

Engage. That’s it. Don’t worry that someone will say, “That’s not a story.” Just say, “I know, but did you like it?”

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Dave Macpherson is a writer of short things. He has been a nationally recognized slam poet. He has also performed at a few storytelling festivals. He has been published in Every Day Fiction, Haggard and Halloo, Mudluscious, November 3rd Club, as well as other on line and print publications. He was a columnist for GotPoetry.Com and is soon to start a new column there. He lives in Central Massachusetts with his wonderful wife Heather and their son George.