Robin Isard

One of the assigned textbooks during my history degree was David Lowenthal’s The Past is a Foreign Country. The title references a quote:

The past is a foriegn country: they do things differently there.— The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley:

And that’s the approach I’ve taken to my historical fiction. It’s like travelling to a foreign country, which demands taking the locals seriously, whether you agree with them or not. It’s their country, after all. No one says you have to agree, but as a guest...

If you agree, stop reading and go do something else. If you don’t and want to argue about someone’s opinion on the internet (and be honest we all do) read on.

My interests lie mainly in fantasy and horror…so I’m going to use a seminal author from each genre for my examples: H. P. Lovecraft and J. R. R. Tolkien. In recent years Lovecraft has exploded from a “cult” figure to a household name. ‘Lovecraftian’ has entered the vocabulary of nearly every geek as...

Exposition. It’s a pain.

I write historical fiction and I try to weave information in via dialogue. However, sometimes passing necessary information via dialogue is either tedious or ridiculous or both. For example, two people born and raised in the 12th century wouldn't have a conversation about what a tally stick is, they'd just know. That’s like two adults in the 21st century having a discussion about what a credit card is.

“So what’s that bit of...

A friend’s comment on an early draft of Guild of Salt read:

“I think ‘picnic’ is an anachronism. They didn’t use that word in the 12th century, I’m pretty sure.”

My response:

“Well, if I was trying to be that accurate with my language, shouldn’t I have written the whole book in 12th century Anglo-Norman French?”

I don’t like anachronisms any more than the next guy: they throw you out of the story, turning the author’s world-building to ash, yet, to make the...