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

[niniane]

As far as fictional goes - I'm willing to steal pretty readily from the real world from fiction (to the point where it's really obvious what reference I'm using). But I tend to avoid using real world names for anything I haven't researched pretty thoroughly.

I've seen a *huge* number of novels (mostly Mists of Avalon inspired crap) that go off in these weird, alternate histories, but never really mention that things didn't work like that. (Yeah, sorry, but the druids did sacrifice humans. In inventive and creative ways! And, no, the Celts were not these sweet, peace loving matriarchs. They were a patriarchal Indo-European group, just like the Mycenaeans and the Teutons. There were some mild differences but...they still have these big epics about raiding cattle and getting drunk.) And it bugs me to no end as people read them and are like, "oh, this is how history happened" when it really, really didn't.

I can tolerate minor inaccuracies...and I can also understand some whitewashing of events (i.e. I can see how writing a world that's been as racist, misogynist, and otherwise vile as most of history might not appeal to a modern audience and I get that as a writer you may want to say...mute some of these elements.) BUT, if the writer goes off into an alternate universe, I prefer for them to at least, you know, make it clear that it's an alternate universe. Otherwise it's just fail!historical fiction, which I hate. (And which there is a LOT of out there.)

So, tl;dr, but I have a high tolerance for fantasy that rips off history to the extent that you're like "Hey...isn't this basically a retelling of what happened during the conquest of Spain?" but a very low tolerance for fantasy that pretends it existed in the real world.

[intothewood]

I've been thinking about this myself, because I'm working on a story that I want to be accurate to historical fact, though the story I'm writing is not something that would ever, could ever have happened. It's walking a line between setting a scene for realism and inserting a fanciful storylines.

I am a stickler for research, I hate it when I come across something that just runs roughshod over fact, despite choosing to place the story in a situation that does have context. I'm a crap researcher. I'll go back and clean up, but when I'm writing I don't have the patience for it. That's why I fudge as much as I can to blur the lines and avoid precise details, but some things you just can't gloss over. My goal is to stay as accurate as I can while leaving room for the possibilities of my storyline.

[stasia]

I'm working on a story - have been working on it for ages. I'd originally set it in a slightly-different-from-ours fantasy universe, but hadn't done much background work. When I showed it to a good editing friend, she asked about the background, the setting, and made some suggestions.

So, now I'm researching WWI and how Europe ended up divided the way it was; I want to change some of the facts so that the countries end up different, but not by much.

I'm struggling with how much research I need to do into what really happened before I can change it into what I need/want to have happened. This is background, but the more I read, the more I think I could use this background, the chaos and frustrations of WWI, as part of the story. Still, that doesn't help me know how much to include and how realistic I have to make it.

*sigh*

So, basically, I'm saying I don't know how much to steal and how much to change.

Stasia

[fannyfae]

I will draw from a great number of sources, both from historical, real life and other fictional or mythological inspiration. I really like things to be rooted at least believably in history in order to make the reader ask themselves, "what if it really did happen closer to this?"

This is especially true with pieces I write set in antiquity, particularly Ancient Egypt. I have very solid background in the study because of my own independent work and the work of a family member and friends who are professional egyptologists at the university level. Take it for granted that some of us have spent decades studying the language and culture, so if you're full of it, you won't be able to fake it. Sorry.

From this, I believe, is my biggest pet peeve and that is just plain sloppy scholarship and applying certain judgements and modern day morality to a completely different culture and mindset. It's one thing to ask the reader to suspend disbelief and then tell them a good story for the favour they have granted. It's another thing entirely to insult their intelligence and assume no one is going to know the difference from when you actually did the research or just "channeled it". ;))

[holyschist]

See, for a story like yours, I think modern religious practices and beliefs are irrelevant. That said, current archaeological practice seems to have swung towards thinking most bog bodies were not human sacrifices...but there's still other evidence for human sacrifice among Celtic peoples, and your story didn't trip my ARGH NO RESEARCH meter, personally. And there IS that issue with a lot of historical settings, especially when you go back further--that you run into the wall of We Just Don't Know and have to extrapolate (this is largely true of pre-Christian Celtic religious practices, for example).

[intothewood]

I thought I had remembered that you posted a link to a story you had written, and I just finished reading it. Your Red Man is freaking me out! I'm fascinated with that whole piece of history as so many people are. That we know nearly nothing of the Druids makes it so much more intriguing and when hints of their practices are found such as this, it opens up more questions than it answers. I really love your approach, how the very scientific practicality of an archeological dig becomes subjected to myth and speculation, and freaky scary to boot! I'm highly impressionable and with your last vivid descriptions of the Red Man, well, I just hope it doesn't come to mind when I go to bed tonight. :/