Artistic license: thoughts?

[analect]

All righty... in the interests of leaving some discussion open for those who want it, I have a question. How far do you take artistic license when dealing with something in a fictional context, and how much knowledge - either of the thing itself, or in terms of acknowledgement of the license you're taking - do you expect your audience to have?

I'm sure we all have different approaches here, so I'm curious.

As a kick-off point, I recently posted a story of mine that's been kicking around for a while to my journal. The Red Man is a horror short that involves references to Celtic druidism [click to read]. Though I researched a bit for the story, I don't know a lot about either historical or modern practice - however, I do have a few druid friends.

Their religious/philosophical slant is very different to the angle the story explores (notions of Awen and bardic tradition, while awesome, are not terribly horrific). So I guess you could say, here, I've taken the same kind of artistic license that The Wicker Man (the proper film; let's pretend the 2006 remake never happened) took with ideas of preserved pagan practice; i.e., it could have happened that way.

Is this something you do with different ideas? Or are you a stickler for realism and research? Does artistic license always (or ever) mean pandering to stereotypes, or is it a useful tool for playing 'what-if' with?

Comments

[analect]

Mwahwahaaaa....! Thank you ;)
Hope he didn't hobble out of the shadows at you. Same thing happened to the guy who was editing the OMSCWP anthology, actually. What can I say? I like my creepies. *grin*

Agreed, though, I just think there's such room to play with concepts like this. From an archaeological point of view, it's very rare to encounter anything that can be proven as murder, ritual or otherwise, yet - human nature being what it is - one assumes it *did* happen. My feeling is it's one of those things that has enough of a 'maybe' to work.

[intothewood]

Nope, I'm safe! Whew.

Human nature, yes - evil brutes that we are! It's amazing, some of the stuff that went down. It definitely worked, not hard at all to imagine.

I lightly touch on Druidic history (or lack thereof) in Becoming, mostly as a visual remembrance, some toppled stones provide a little hangout for my main character where he experiences some interesting things. My accuracy is pretty slapdash though, I have to admit research isn't a strong point.

[analect]

Ooh, sounds interesting. I did something with bluestones and implied local sentience in a short story - dunno if it's just the perception of everything that is invested in circles, but they really do feel as if they have their own presence.

I suppose the thing with accuracy there, though, is that so much falls under 'it *could* have happened'. Sneaky get-out clause. ;D