I was recently reading a blog discussion among several authors about challenges of writing historical Romance that will appeal to readers’ contemporary sensibilities. How many readers want to be immersed in the realities of open sewers, chamber pots, and lice, let alone the different social dynamics of times past? Oh sure, we lovers of historical Romance say we want more realism, but do we really?
I do. Because what we get in fiction is realism, not reality. Authors are creative translators, not time travelers or scribes. And history, like “now,†is not the distillation of a single voice or even a few voices. Just look at the roles women occupy here and now. A woman is currently the top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. Many women have made an informed choice not to work outside the home. And whether as politician or professional parent, all of these women are envisioning and tending to the future. That our experiences, views, and social realities are different does not mean we don’t inhabit the same world.
Isn’t it the same for those from a different time and place? We speak, for example, of the American Puritans as sexually hung up patriarchal party poopers. Yet at some points during the 17th and 18th centuries one third of women married pregnant. By the mid to late 18th century romantic love was the dominant paradigm for marriage. And some women functioned as what historian Laurel Ulrich calls “deputy husbands,†because they were empowered to act as the legal and economic agents of their husbands. Can we not assume that similar diversity existed at any given time and place? We certainly have the tools to look for that diversity through historical records, newspapers, historical chronicles, and even diaries.
As reader I love historical Romances that capture the aura of a certain time and place as more than either a costume drama or a slightly modified slice of contemporary life. Where the world of the novel feels real and multi-dimensional even if it’s not reality. Where the characters are part of their world, interacting with it in meaningful ways, even as they represent an aspect of it we may not routinely see. Where I feel like I’m standing in a doorway, watching a scene both recognizable and unfamiliar, able to relate to the humanness of the characters but challenged to understand them from a different perspective. Where I feel that the setting is as much a character in the novel as the protagonists are.
Romance is often called fantasy fiction as a way to distance it from reality. But I don’t think that means the genre must eschew realism. Fantasy and Science Fiction communities focus on world building, but isn’t that term applicable to every fictional universe? I came across one discussion of world building that included this suggestion: Make your world essential to your story. More and more I’m looking for this very thing in genre Romance, especially after reading books like Bujold’s vivid and romantic The Sharing Knife: Beguilement and feeling swept away in the world she created for Dag and Fawn.
I just finished a historical Romance in which the hero and heroine are of different nationality and speak in entirely different rhythms, even though all the dialogue is in English. Still, they sounded different from each other. What a delicious revelation it was to vicariously experience something that turns out to be so important in the relationship and the book. To discover that rather than being told about it made me experience the world of the novel rather than simply observe it from the outside. And once engaged, I noticed so many details, from the morning sounds of birds, to the swirl of coffee in a cup, to creaking leather carriage seats. Some of these details spoke to and about the characters, while others provided context and contour. I didn’t stop to wonder if something could have happened or existed because it made sense in the context of the book. And it felt authentic, whether or not it was real. I had so much fun reading that book that I hated for it to end.
When I say I want more realistic historical Romance, I am definitely hoping for more real history. But I’m also seeking more fantastic world building — that magical meeting of history and the author’s imagination — not just as background, but as actual grounding for a wonderful romance.
So what about you? Do you want more detail in setting or less? What’s your favorite setting in Romance? If you read primarily contemporary Romances does setting matter?
No related posts.
I usually read contemporary but every once in a while I get a historical. World building is very important. If you are inconsistent with your world, or if the world doesn’t seem real, then I don’t want to finish the book. I agree with you that women of history weren’t just doormats that their husband wiped their feet on. If you look beyond the history taught in most school systems you’ll find historical accounts of women who were powerful, had their own minds and made them up without on swoon or lash flutter, and women who made decisions and others followed.
My fave genre is Regency
and I love finding out a new tidbit about the time
in each read
but please, don’t beat me over the head with history.
It bothers me if the setting interferes or slows down the story.
I think Margaret Moore does this (in her Medievals)
the best of any author I know.
I believe its intentional.
Gives her faithful readers something fresh.
A very excellent post.
Hear hear! If the author knows her world inside out, then it shouldn’t be necesary to beat the reader over the head with facts – the experience should be almost subliminal – like you were reading a book written in the time, not ABOUT the time. I usually have as many research pages as I have per written novel pages, stuff the reader will never see, but I hope that it will immerse the reader in the time. There’s nothing worse than info-dumping in the way that Dan Brown does in his books.
For me as a historical reader, setting is everything. We define the subgenre by the setting. What gets to me is when all the “historical” settings are alike. If I’m reading a novel, set in Medieval England, I should not be able to pluck those characters out and drop them in Victorian England and have it not affect the story.
Yes, I want to smell the stale funk of a little natural body odor. I want to feel how deeply a whale bone corset digs into that tender flesh right below your arm. I want to know how itchy wool socks are. Call me nuts, but more importantly,
I want to know what the heroine thinks when she smells a natural man, and if that is cause to lament a little that she has to fight so hard to remain prim and clean while they have the freedom to be primal. I want that to manifest in her focus on that whale bone sticking in her sore rib, and have that become a metaphor for her need to free herself from the constraint of “her place” in the world. And then I want those itchy socks to show us how nervous she is about the thought of breaking out of her constraints, because it would leave her feeling exposed and unprotected. A little itch is better than cold feet.
That is how I want my details, not clubbed over my head in long paragraphs detailing the color of every fold of muslin on her dress, or every book on the library shelf. The details should do something to reveal the character’s thoughts, and those thoughts have to be true to the time.
I do so love it when an author gets it just right with a historical.:grin:
I came into this as a science fiction writer, and world building is my meat. I love the fully-realized exotic setting — or the telling detail that makes the not-so-exotic-setting unique.
Whether it’s a contemporary or historical or futuristic, if it just featrues talking heads in a generic cafe/street/park/bed/palace/jungle/whatever I’ll never know how it ends. Because no matter how clever the people or the plot, if it doesn’t have an authentic sense of place I’m not going to finish it.
What a freakin’ fantastic post.
I would LOVE more realisim. And, like Erastes, I have more pages of research for my historicals than I have story.
And I love that you brought up those times when morals and reality were opposite. Those are the kinds of stories I want to write-but they are also the kind that a writer would get the most mail on suggesting that women didn’t so such things back then.
What a great post! I enjoyed this a lot – and I loved Chessie’s comment as well. I agree totally. Thank you.
This is a wonderful post! And whether I’m reading historical or contemporary romance, I think that world-building is vital to creating that sense of believability that draws the reader into the story and keeps her there.
While I think it’s possible to write an interesting and engaging story without mastering the technique of world-building, I don’t think it’s possible to write an un-put-downable novel unless you follow SEP’s advice for writing a best-seller: “Keep the reader in the story.” Effective world-building is an integral part of that equation, IMO.
Great post! I’ve blogged about this a bit myself, on my own website and on Romantic Inks. I totally agree that in any era there’s a wide diversity of behavior and attitudes. I thnk you can create characters who can believably do just about anything as long as you give them logical reasons for behaving that way and then deal realistically with how the society around them would react to their behavior (which could vary quite a bit; an heiress from a powerful family with an impeccable lineage could probably get away with breaking a lot more rules than a penniless vicar’s daughter from a country gentry family with a grandfather in trade).
Cheers,
Tracy
http://www.tracygrant.org
Sara: You’re so right about going beyond schoolroom history. And these days, that research is so easy to kick off with the resources on the Internet. Library collections are sometimes accessible online, as are bibliographies and even historical records. Although I like strong world building in contemporaries, too. I’m thinking right now of Linda Howard’s Southern Gothic books, for example, or SEP’s Ain’t She Sweet, or Jennifer Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation. Those books have stuck with me a long time because I can picture specific scenes so vividly.
Kimber: I so agree with you about that balance between enough historical detail to create specificity and so much it seems encyclopedic. I imagine this is sometimes where a good editor comes in?
Bernita: Thanks!
Erastes: I like your notion of subliminal absorption of historical detail, because it really is, I think, closest to what happens when we read documents produced in our own time. I get so frustrated with background paragraphs explaining something that could have been shown to me, making it seem normal and natural, rather than artificial and intrusive.
Chessie: all I have to say is YES!!
kimber an: I have to admit my frustration with the hand-wringing over certain time periods, especially the Vikings, Medieval Europe, or Victorian England. Just look at Beowulf (written in the 14th C) for some interesting female characters, and Victorian England is full of complex men and women (how about Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his relationship with Fanny Cornforth?). And as for the time surrounding the Norman Conquest, setting will dictate important differences. IIRC, Viking women were allowed to initiate divorce on the basis of mistreatment and were seen as quite socially empowered.
I think one of the keys is looking at a world from inside its values rather than from a contemporary POV. There is all kinds of strength and exceptional behavior, but sometimes you have to see the dynamics within the terms of a culture to understand fully the nuances. When an author delivers a story that shows this level of sensitivity and understanding it’s a thing of beauty, as they say.
KeVin:: IMO it’s easy to overlook your point about making an ordinary setting unique. How many of us can note a number of different terrains, climates, and backgrounds in our own home state? You don’t have to load descriptions with the unfamiliar to make them interesting. But I agree with you that they have to be memorable to be truly engaging.
Eva: I think that if more authors try to write outside the box that readers will be shaken out of the same Romancelandia history that pervades the genre now. I have a friend who remembers fondly the days readers could actually learn about history by reading historical Romance and look forward to more of those books as historicals regain popularity.
April:: Thanks, and I totally agree with you about Chessie’s comment, too!
Kacie: I will go very far with a book if I am made to believe, and a fully realized fictional world helps that process immensely. I know that readers are often willing to forgive a lot in the genre (loyalty, IMO), but that doesn’t mean that we don’t notice when things go wrong.
Tracy: Using the society of the novel to help raders evaluate the actions and beliefs of the hero and heroine is a great way to communicate how their behavior might be exceptional, IMO. It’s also a way to instill confidence in the reader, IMO, that the author HAS done his/her research and has thought carefully about why s/he has used that particular time and place for the setting. I can even take a bunch more historicals about Regency England if they make me see it anew and afresh.
I love when an author does a lot of worldbuilding in historical romance *coughDianaGabaldoncough* It makes things more real, and it shows me that the author knows their stuff.