change the way you read forever

[marycatelli]

I was once at a panel at an SF convention where the panelists were talking about how to self-edit your work.  Looking for bad phrasings, etc., etc.

At the very end, I put up my hand and made the last comment, namely, that they really ought to warn the audience that if they took this advice, it would change the way you read for pleasure, forever.  Two panelists nodded.  The third laughed and said it would destroy it -- which is a bit strong.  Still, once you keep an eye out for passive voice in your own work, you will be in the middle of the fight scene and thinking, "Unnecessary use of the passive voice."  It does distract.

I recently read a Celtic fantasy, sort of set in the Dark Ages, and am meditating on the corollary.  Namely, if you read (wallow in) enough history to be good at world-building, it will also change the way you read.  Forever.  Because I remembered enjoying this book more than I do now.  And part of that is reading about a Dark Ages masquerade ball.

You can get away with that if you go for conscious anachronism, but that has to be a continuous theme, not a one-shot.  And you can get away with merging lots of elements from many cultures, provided you heat them hot enough in your imagination so they melt and fuse together into a new alloy.  But you had best not do it with 99% from one culture and bits from far-distant lands or eras.

Like a Dark Ages setting except for a masquerade.

And the religion no longer convinced me.  People following the Old Religion, Christians -- and you get no pious people thinking that the other side are dangerous maniacs who put the entire kingdom in peril.  On both sides.  The pagans should be thinking that the maniac Christians are out to offend the gods, and the Christians should be thinking that the pagans are out to offend God by worshiping a demon or a nothing.  And both sides think that the divine, if offended, is capable of coming down like a ton of bricks.  You find this in both the prophets (where women of Israel tell a prophet that they actually had a better life when they baked cakes to the queen of heaven) and Saint Augustine's City of God, which is to refute the notion that the Christians had offended the gods and brought about the sack of Rome.

And, besides the pious, you would have the pragmatic who wish to worship to make things safe, trying to honor both like the cautious Viking who put the Hammer of Thor on one side of a stone and the Cross of Christ on the other.  (Hard-headed souls may think it beneath their dignity to cater too much to the gods -- but they know who they aren't catering to.)

And -- nothing or demons -- the Christians would have to hold demons, since the Old Religion has functional magic.  Christianity is still taking over, without it.  Which raises the little question of why?  Writers whose sympathies are with the pagans seldom manage to take into account the most obvious thing about the two religions:  that Christianity came second, and was adopted by the pagans. 

Never mind your writing.  Reading history will affect your reading.

Comments

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

This sort of thing is one of the things that makes me nervous about writing anything with a historical setting, and one reason I appreciate the work of people who have clearly studied the historical attitudes of the period in which they're writing.

[marycatelli]

Most readers won't pick it up, but some will.

And -- just to make you more nervous :D -- there is the reader who thinks he knows about the era.

Like the time I got a story critted. The story revolved about a woman repudiated by her husband on charges of adultery. The crit told me that women in the European Middle Ages were always executed for adultery. Unfortunately, I had gotten the idea from a real historical story from the European Middle Ages.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

The European Middle Ages covers a lot of territory. *g*

Her comment reminds me of the way that many people will insist that brides were always young in historical times. Yet, several years ago, while researching a paper for a Shakespeare class, I came across the information that most women during that era married in their twenties (maybe even in their late twenties? it's been too long and my memory is fuzzy), so that Juliet's youth was problematic for Shakespeare's audience, rather than the norm. I remember mentioning this to someone and having them insist that this information was completely wrong.

[marycatelli]

A lot of territory and a couple of years, too.

As for the marriage -- depends on how rich you were. And where you were. Lower-class Englishwoman certainly married in their twenties. They married younger in, say, Italy. And nobles had to make their political matches, too.

And brides were not always young because they were often widows. Among my French-Canadian ancestors is a woman who married twice, twenty years apart. (And I'm descended from both unions.)

[norilana.livejournal.com]

Good post!!

[marycatelli]

Glad you like it!

[crinklequirk.livejournal.com]

I've had that affecting me ever since I was around all the theater folk in college, and all along with the computer hackers and designers and such - and since I became a garb-snob.

I grew up with my folks doing anthropology and archaeology for college - and my mom's a history buff, too - so the appreciation for the way people really did things was always there.

Now, though, I'm so hyper-aware that I bug my hubby and friends if I don't keep my mouth shut in a movie where they slaughter the Latin (Indie Jones w/Sean Connery as his father, for one), or mess with the dinosaurs (Jurassic Park) or simply mess with clothes and culture and history and interactions (Mel Gibson's "period" piece, came out same time as the wonderful Liam Neeson in "Rob Roy"), while films like "Rob Roy" win my love and admiration, as did "The Madness of King George," because they got all the parts _right_. The clothes (who had what, and whose were clean, and whose were dirty and mended and who had one outfit for all the day and night, and who didn't), how the lawn was actually a green grass lawn, which no one else had except for other royalty, and there was a guy in livery using a gigantic scissors to clip it to length, how the classes reacted to each other. . . these earn my respect and admiration. Effects, whether or not they're computer effects or animation effects or scenery effects, etc., they earn my respect and admiration if they're done well.

On the other hand, I not only find my sense of the movie or book or whatever lost if all those things are slapped together, I can even end up disliking or perhaps hating the thing if it's really bad.

Awareness can, indeed, forever change things, and sometimes, even ruin them.

I'm guessing the prevalence of _not_ being aware of such things is why so many things are so popular nowadays. Overall, I find that disturbing - there ought to be more awareness than that, you know?

[marycatelli]

It's kinda interesting watching movies with my sister who does costuming and my sister who has fenced.

But some of the knowledge is specialty. We can't all know everything, after all, so we have to pick and chose.