intuitivewritingguide

[intuitivewritingguide]

Writer PROTIP: Historical Fiction or AU?

WRITER PROTIP:

Writers, if you're going to take historical inspiration but ignore all the actual history or historical accuracy, call your book/movie/TV show what it ACTUALLY is: an AU.

Is Reign a beautiful show with hilarious (and often stupid) drama but fantastic fun to watch and GORGEOUS costumes? Yes. Is it historically accurate? Absolutely not, NO.

Is The Tudors great fun? If you like moody broody Jonathan Rhys-Meyers or girl drama or Natalie Dormer, yes. Or if you love soap opera drama dressed up in fake historical costumes, yes. Is it historically accurate? Absolutely NOT, no.

Is Netflix's Bridgerton (adaptation of Julia Quinn's book series) going to be lush and beautiful and have POC representation? Yes. Is it going to be historically accurate? /Absolutely/ not, nope. (And by inaccurate, I don't mean the POC casting.)

(The book series isn't accurate either.)

Is Enola Holmes an adorable movie with fantastic acting and a great premise? Yes. Is it historically accurate Victorian or even Edwardian historical fiction? Absolutely not, noooo.

Write/film your historically-inspired book series and shows. Do. They're great fun to watch. But for the love of accuracy and sanity, call them what they are: AUs. You might cringe at being associated with fanfic culture, but fanfiction IS what you're writing, so if the shoe FITS...wear it with style.

I don't tend to have much praise for G.R.R Martin, but this much he got right. When he wanted to write a Wars of the Roses AU, he didn't do it and call it historical fiction. He made it low fantasy and called it A Song of Ice and Fire. Or as you might know it better: Game of Thrones.

TL;DR: call an AU an AU.

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EXACTLY.

Are your people suffering under an oppressive regime that tightly controls everything and has made the world worse largely through misgovernment? Then you’re writing/reading a dystopian novel. (Hunger Games, for example.)

Are your people struggling to survive in the world following some huge disaster and the emphasis is on their ingenuity and REBUILDING? Then you’re writing/reading a post-apocalyptic story. (Ender’s Game is post-apocalyptic military sci-fi. Zombie TV shows are often post-apocalyptic.)

Like OP said, the stories that are both often tend to lean one way or the other. A LOT of YA novels that primarily claim to be PA are actually primarily dystopian (Hunger Games, Divergent, The Selection).

Revolution (TV show) comes to mind as an example of being both and doing it WELL. The first season did PA and dystopian about equally; the second season leaned more toward dystopian with a strong PA undertone. Maze Runner is, I believe, another example of a story that manages to do dystopian and PA almost equally. (Shoutout to my PA-loving best friend for talking this one through with me. I haven’t read Maze Runner myself.)

AND THEN you get straight-up apocalyptic fiction, which is what happens when the MCs get to experience the apocalypse and the immediate aftermath, which is most ‘survive and find my friends’ stories. Like Dylan O’Brien’s new movie Love and Monsters. The Fifth Wave is apocalyptic alien invasion.

Zombie shows and movies can be either apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic or both. It depends on whether you get to see the zombie invasion start or not.

TL;DR: emphasis on awful government making a bad world = dystopian, emphasis on survival/rebuilding the wasteland around them = post-apocalyptic, emphasis on the disaster itself and the immediate aftermath = apocalyptic, emphasis on the aliens = alien invasion.

Dystopian and Post Apocalytic are not synonyms send tweet

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SCI-FI FAIRY TALE RETELLINGS

There is so much potential with sci-fi seriously! And combining this genre with fairytales would be so awesome (I mean Star Wars is basically a fairytale itself).

Seeing a fairytale set in the vast reaches of space would be such a mood. Like we could have SPACE OPERA with space travel, unique planets and aliens, etc!

Or ALIEN INVASION!

Or TIME TRAVEL!

I mean what if the beast in Beauty and the Beast was an alien?

Or Sleeping Beauty was put into a cryogenic chamber because of a dying earth curse?

I WANT IT.

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I would LOVE to see Charlie N. Holmberg write some fairy tale retellings in the world of her Paper Magician books. Her world has 6 (I think?) different kinds of magic, and there are training schools and apprentices. It’s FULL of potential.

Fairy godmothers as teachers at the academy or the people who check up on students after they’re placed? ‘Princes’ and ‘princesses’ = students learning magic? Yes, PLEASE.

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Reasons the Dieselpunk Genre is a Great Setting for Fairy Tale Retellings

The @thefairytalecentral​ girls and I have been talking a lot about this. We LOVE dieselpunk as a genre (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, anyone?), but we haven’t seen it get a lot of love. And since fairy tales are a big piece of our life, naturally we got talking about how perfectly fairy tales would fit into that genre. I present Exhibit A, a list of fairy tale tropes and archetypes and their possible dieselpunk equivalents:

dancing = speakeasies

princes/princesses = military officers

evil stepmothers and villains = Nazis

diversity = lots of opportunity to not just include but FEATURE POC characters

mentors = spies

godmothers = so many helpful country women in various lands

Curses = WAR

Grimm, Lang, Perrault, and Andersen were German, British, French, and Scandinavian respectively = the first three were THE major players in BOTH world wars, and Scandinavia was also involved, especially in WWII.

Lang collected fairy tales from all over Europe (and the rest of the world), and again, Europe was a major scene for both world wars.

For example? The Wounded Lion (Andrew Lang, Pink Fairy Book) is from Spain. Do you know how often I find actually interesting WWII stories set in Spain? Even in the historical fiction genre, let alone the historical fantasy/spec fic genre? Almost never, that’s how often. Same with WWI and WWII stories from almost any country besides Germany, France, and the UK. As much as I love reading stories set there, I’d also love to see stories set all over Europe during then. Actually interesting historical fiction/spec fic with characters that feel real, not thinly disguised non-fiction where everything feels like the author read a couple history texts and decided they knew enough to write a historical fiction novel. And it being dieselpunk, a sub-genre of spec fic, means you get a whole new angle from which to explore. PLEASE, someone start writing these.

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SOMEONE PLEASE WRITE THIS. I need it on my bookshelf.

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“(…) come to the pond or the river of your imagination or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.”

— Mary Oliver, from “​Mornings at Blackwater”, Red Bird

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Some pretty fascinating story prompts here, no?

A Guide To Exploring Abandoned Churches

If you go alone, don’t bring a flashlight. You’ll see things you don’t want to.

Don’t bring groups bigger than 12.

Bring water and some snacks, but no wine.

If you have to sleep there, sleep in the sanctuary, but not on a pew.

If you try to read the hymnal, the words won’t be english anymore.

The Bibles will be blank until you confess.

Don’t go into the confession booth. The man talking to you is not the priest, and you don’t want to know what he really is.

The cross on the wall changes locations, don’t look at it for too long.

If you see someone praying at the altar, don’t approach them. If they approach you, don’t talk to them. Leave immediately.

If you hear the organ playing while you’re in the basement, know that your time is running out.

If it plays while you’re in the sanctuary, your time is up.

Take whatever you want, but if you find that one of your possesions is missing, don’t look for it. Let them have it. It’s not worth your life.

If you find a rosary, don’t put it on. It won’t help.

The water isn’t holy anymore. Throwing it on the demons in the shadows won’t work.

Drink the wine if you wish to never leave.

Don’t get seperated from your friends.

If you spend the night, leave at sunrise otherwise you’ll enter another plane of reality with no way back.

If you don’t spend the night, leave through the doors you came in.

You might look behind you after leaving and see that the church isn’t there anymore. It means that they took what they wanted.

Never enter the same abandoned church twice. Even (especially) if you forgot something inside. That’s a lure. On your second tour through, they will know enough about you to keep you there.

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“Will, we got to come back. Tonight––”

“Okay, come back alone.”

Jim stopped.

“You wouldn’t let me come alone. You’re always going to be around, aren’t you, Will? To protect me?”

“Look who needs protection.” Will laughed and then did not laugh again, for Jim was looking at him, the last wild light dying in his mouth and caught in the thin hollows of his nostrils and in his suddenly deep-set eyes.

“You’ll always be with me, huh, Will?”

Jim simply breathed warm upon him and his blood stirred with the old, the familiar answers: yes, yes, you know it, yes, yes.

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I Was Hoping You Wouldn’t Notice ~ Red Riding Hood Prompt

The monthly fairy tale prompt, in collaboration with Fairy Tale Central.

This one is all thanks to the awesome @mirriamelin. Red Riding Hood is one of her favorite fairy tales, and when I told her I needed prompt inspiration, she came through with flying colors.

If you want to re-read the Grimm version, you can find it HERE and a list of other versions can be found HERE.

Here’s what you need to know:

It DOES NOT have to be a complete short story. Just a scene is fine. The point is to have fun and give yourself permission to play with something new or (if you’ve already retold this story) revisit an old world from a different perspective.

You DON’T have to write it with an eye toward turning into something longer…but don’t hold back from it either.

Just take the prompt and write a scene that includes this dialogue. Then post it and go to THIS POST and leave your link in the comments. You can still write for it if you don’t have a blog (or tumblr or FB), you just won’t be able to post the link with everyone else.

That’s it!

Suggestions for using the prompt:

Set it in the same world as your last month’s/previous prompt scenes.

Combine it/the original story with your favorite fanfic AU prompt. Cold War era Red Riding Hood? Swiss Family Robinson style Red Riding Hood? Handcuffed together Red and the Wolf or Red and the Huntsman?

Set it in a world you can expand later with more fairy-tale prompts.

Set it in the world of one of your current WIPs.

Choose a historical era at random and set it then. (Silla Korea?)

To really mix it up, choose a genre at random, one other than fantasy. (Romanesque military fiction Red Riding Hood?)

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His library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.”

- Ray Bradbury

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“You must write every single day of your life. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. May you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

— Ray Bradbury