Welcome to the Historical Fiction Online forums: a friendly place to discuss, review and discover historical fiction.
If this is your first visit, please be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above.
You will have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed.
To start viewing posts, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
If this is your first visit, please be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above.
You will have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed.
To start viewing posts, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Do you prefer real or imagined characters?
As a reader it doesn't matter to me one bit. It's the journey that counts. As a writer, then these days it's real people although it didn't used to be. If it's real people (back in reader mode now), then they need to be believable and as close to the real person as possible. I realise that perhaps we'll never know the absolute truth about the real person, but I like the author to try and to have integrity.
Les proz e les vassals
Souvent entre piez de chevals
Kar ja li coard nI chasront
'The Brave and the valiant
Are always to be found between the hooves of horses
For never will cowards fall down there.'
Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal
www.elizabethchadwick.com
Souvent entre piez de chevals
Kar ja li coard nI chasront
'The Brave and the valiant
Are always to be found between the hooves of horses
For never will cowards fall down there.'
Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal
www.elizabethchadwick.com
- JaneConsumer
- Reader
- Posts: 125
- Joined: August 2008
- Location: U.S.
- Contact:
- Barbara Passaris
- Scribbler
- Posts: 32
- Joined: August 2008
- Location: I live in Richmond, Virginia, USA
- Contact:
REal or Imagined
For me, it's a toss. But I honestly think that in historical fiction you can't have one without the other. The trick when having fictitional characters is to make them so real that your readers actually believe in them so much that they become real.
But I have to say that it depends on my mood whether or not I want to have a historical fiction (which can often be historical biography) book with a true person from history or a made up person/group. Either way, the author had better make it worth my time by being accurate about the life and times, to the best of his/her ability. Let's face it, as authors we often make up a little snitch here and there to make the story fit right. But I wouldn't put any credence to the work of someone who made up a lot about, say, Queen Elizabeth I and put the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1592 in order to make their own story jibe....that is very UNcool, IMO...
~Barb
But I have to say that it depends on my mood whether or not I want to have a historical fiction (which can often be historical biography) book with a true person from history or a made up person/group. Either way, the author had better make it worth my time by being accurate about the life and times, to the best of his/her ability. Let's face it, as authors we often make up a little snitch here and there to make the story fit right. But I wouldn't put any credence to the work of someone who made up a lot about, say, Queen Elizabeth I and put the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1592 in order to make their own story jibe....that is very UNcool, IMO...
~Barb
I actually prefer to read about real historical people. But the writer has to really make the person real to me, otherwise it just doesn't cut it. On the other hand a really good writer can make a fictional character come to life, for example Gabbaldon's "Jaimy and Claire" then I am OK with that too.
Only the pure of heart can make good soup. - Beethoven
Real but not very well documented like our typical Tudors and such. That allows much leeway in telling the story without changing history (too much).
Bodo the Apostate, a novel set during the reign of Louis the Pious and end of the Carolingian Empire.
http://www.donaldmichaelplatt.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXZthhY6 ... annel_page
- LoveHistory
- Bibliomaniac
- Posts: 3751
- Joined: September 2008
- Location: Wisconsin, USA
- Contact: