Exposition

Annamaria on Monday

I am back in NYC and on a whim decided that it's time to start working on the TBR pile of books on the window sill next to my bed.  The way it looks in the picture below, you might think it's not that out of control, but that window sill is not the only place where such volumes reside.  There is a whole bookshelf full next to the window and many unread purchases hanging out on shelves all over my apartment.

To start toward my goal, I chose a book I had bought at a conference of the Historical Novel Society in England about a decade ago.  The author, until then unknown to me, was greatly revered by the participants, who spoke of him as a great authority on writing great historical fiction.

A few evenings ago, I finally cracked his book.  To my amazement, I found I could not read it. It may be a prejudice as far as I am concerned, but the first two pages were written in what I think is a clunky style.

Here's how I think about historical fiction: it must draw the reader back into the past and make it look effortless.  The history must meld into the fiction. But in the book in questionI starts with an implausible conversation.   It set me to thinking about exactly what was wrong, and what would be a better way to do it.  (I am not going to quote from the actual story.  I do not want to vilify a fellow writer.  I just want to share a better way to set the scene a historical novel.

That writer's first scene began with a supposed conversation between a powerful nobleman and one of his minions discussing the core challenge they faced.  The problem is they are telling each each other facts that both of them undoubtedly already know.  It was exposition masquerading as historical fiction. 

To show you what I mean, here is an example of what this mistake might look like on the page.  To make this easy on myself, I need you to pretend that, in 2096 you are reading a historical novel set in Washington in 2026.  Let's say the characters the writer has chosen to introduce the reader to the history are two US Senators, both Democrats from Maryland. Here is their scene one, page one, meant to envelop a future reader into what life was like back in 2026.  

    James Morgan closed the door softly behind him and spoke in a whisper.  "Donald Trump is in the White House. He was re-elected, and he is overstepping his bounds.  He is ignoring the rule of law.  We are both senators, but our party is in the minority."

His fellow Senator from Maryland, Joanne Burns, shook her head.  "There are people on the left who are getting violent.  People on our side have been attacked and harmed.  Some have been killed."

You get it.  This style of writing does not draw the reader in. It informs him in pretty much the same way a history book would.

A good way to avoid this is to choose characters who do not agree, so they can discuss their differences.  They might argue about them.  Or the writer can have one of them enter the discussion wanting to change the other person's mind.  And fail.  Or change his own mind and come to agree with the person whose mind she came to change.  The writer then can get the facts out by weaving them into the arguments of the characters. 

Joanne Burns was afraid.  She wanted convince Jim Morgan to go easy.  As far as she could see, because he was the senior senator, he thought he could dictate how she would vote on the up coming bill.  They both knew that, with Trump in the White House and the Republicans in the majority...

You get it. 

Also with crime fiction, the writer can weave in the history by choosing the right victim, so that those who are trying to solve the mystery have to consider the facts of the history in order to solve the crime.  In my third South American story, Blood Tango for instance, the victim is a young woman who is fascinated with Evita, and makes herself up to look like her. When she is found murdered, the question is was the person who killed her, trying to kill Evita?  The policeman trying to solve the murder has to consider why someone would want to kill Juan Peron's woman.  Thinking about the politics of the time is essential to answering that question.

To my way of thinking, a historical novelist should always be first a story teller who writes in a way that the reader learns the history through the story, not next to it, but melded with it,