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| The phrase “those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it” is bandied about a little too often. History is not cyclical. If history is the pond and historical events droplets of water or stones dropping into it then the ripples are what we see as we stare into history’s surface. There are lessons from the past that if not understood in proper context can be warped and misconstrued to justify the actions of the present. In other words, without a firm grounding on where we’ve been the view of the present can take on new dimensions that may or may not be accurate. |
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Sources
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
Myth busting
Keep it real
Draw your own conclusions
Last time we looked at myth busting and previously at source materials for building a pyramid of well rounded research. And Finally, I’ll look at the last two parts to this series.
Non-fiction historical works need not be lost in the boorish recounting of actions, dates, and personalities. Though these are important in retelling the past they need not be without relevance or life. Fictional history, though not held in the same esteem as the historical monograph, has begun to come into its own as a valid method of communicating our past in a free form story. Though the range of freedom is greater with fictional history the dedication to research and holding within that time frame for both action and event is just as strong as if one is writing a treatise on the Carthaginians and the rise of Hannibal. As with all things grounded upon our present/past reality, the clarion call to remain real is heard from the dusty library stacks to the computer terminals of anyone creating within the confines of history.
What is keeping it real? It is the dive into a personage’s character to bring to light his or her inner most struggles and turmoil’s as they either acted upon events or withstood events acting upon them. It is bringing the characters alive in any form. Those of us who write predominantly historical fiction do not have as great a struggle in this regard. Yet, to keep it real for our historical characters may mean reigning in the desire to flourish too poetic with them. Should our Victorian debutant, real or imagined, be coerced into the bushes in the outer courtyards by her amorous gentleman caller? Should Abraham Lincoln openly insult General George B. McClellan on the Antietam battlefield for his failure to pursue Robert E. Lee’s Confederate forces back across the Potomac? Should your WWII GI character wax militant about the destructiveness of war and decide that it would be better to desert than to partake any longer of it?
For the Non-fiction historian or the serious academic these questions are irrelevant. Yet, to bridge the gap between dry and relevant history appealing to the casual reader the prose must strive for some common ground in the story tellers’ art. History is a story and should be couched within the confines of telling a good yarn while keeping to the time honored structures. Keeping it real for these forms is the merging of a somewhat fanciful imagination and daring to take a few historical liberties.
Whatever you find yourself dabbling in for history’s sake remember that reality is a grounding that either reigns in the horses or hitches the buggy to an unbroken steed; it ensures that life as it was lived is touched upon for the modern reader.
Finally I must look at drawing your own conclusions. This is the crux of serious academic research in a nutshell. The conclusions an historian draws will make or break him upon the stage of his peers and mean the difference between someone who makes a splash in the academic world and one whose conclusions are broken upon the shoals of serious criticism. History cannot be fully known; for whose mind can remember everything that happened in detail yesterday? Not every moment is documented, not every document is truth, and not all truth is true. For most, your touch with history was a text book that hurtled you through the decades in as many pages like a comet speeding through space. You learned that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and made cotton production more economical and in turn made slavery more necessity in the south. Then you learned that Abraham Lincoln was elected and South Carolina seceded from the Union, and so forth. These are just facts and dates compiled by a non-historian and meant to comply with someone’s idea of standardized school history lessons. Did you draw conclusions from the lessons? Did you have all of the aspects of historical research before you? Or was the conclusion drawn for you and supported by what the text book laid out.
Drawing your own conclusions based upon your research is the bread and butter of both the academic historian and the hobbyist writer delving into historical fiction. Your conclusions are the building blocks for how you craft your story or your research paper. Research is more than jotting down the dates or making a timeline. It is gathering an understanding of social, economic, political, and religious currents of the time. It is forming a more perfect and possibly somewhat fantastical picture out of the two dimensional research to bring life to the time or person upon the page. It is not accepting the conclusions of others who have gone before; for what serious historian would not take a critical eye to even Eugene Genovese, James McPherson, or Bruce Catton?
Now, a critical eye does not mean discounting their work; it is using the wary eye of an investigator testing their conclusions against your own research to see if it stands. It is standing firmly upon the bedrock of research and forming hypotheses of our own before deciding does the work of those who’ve gone before us agree or disagree. Much of the historians’ art is not done in the stacks of the library collections but in the works of those I’ve mentioned and a host of others. For why invent the wheel when one can ride in the carriage? Look in any history book and you will find references to the works of those who’ve researched the subject before. Those are the works that need to be read and understood for the conclusions drawn. Then it is for you to stand upon your own conclusions with confidence.
This may play more for the non-fiction world, but it should not be ignored for those who write our fictional history. Until the last several decades, fictional history has been seen as a sub-culture practiced by non-historians and practiced poorly at that. It has taken the works of several authors like Micheal Shaara (The Killer Angels) and his son Jeff (of God’s and Generals, and Last Full Measure) as well as that by Shelby Foote (Shiloh) to bring historical fiction to a sense of respectability to tie the academic history into the fictional realm. These men draw conclusions in their stories to not just tell a good yarn but to build a serious understanding of the American civil war. Your historical fiction should attain to nothing less in any genre. Historical fiction is the vehicle by which the general populace may come to understand something of our past as told by a story teller’s art form. In that, you not only need to weave a good story, but to weave it with an eye to accuracy and building solid conclusions.
By what do you write of a historical frame? Why?
If you do not write anything of a historical product, have you found you’ve needed to do any historical research? How did you conduct it?
phil1861
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For this last installment, I have chosen a few American Civil War and WW II titles I found on site.
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Questions from the 7/7/05 NL on Myth Busting
What myths have you encountered that you previously understood to be facts?
Have you been guilty of unknowingly promulgating myth?
doglady  
Submitted Comment:
Thanks for all the info on research. I mostly write comedy and the more you know the funnier life gets.
Inky
Submitted Comment:
I must say that my teacher of AP US History ruined all like of history for me...However, I do love Historical Fiction
 then you must love something of history to enjoy the fiction.
demor
Submitted Comment:
When reading historical accounts, one must always keep in mind that most history is written by the winners. I enjoy those accounts which describe the losers perspectives.
Zeke
This is possibly why I’ve studied Germany indepth as the history most know is the history of a tyrant in the guise of Hitler, but the vast majority of life cannot be encompassed in a single volume and much of WWII Germany is unknown to all but the focused academics. From our movies to our PC history one would believe WWII was won in a vacuum where those on the opposing ideological side where flesh and blood humans as well with motivations and patriotism and dedication to one another as all soldiers are. It is also telling to read the words of former enemies to see how they describe themselves and their enemies.
nexuscommand
Submitted Comment:
I subscribe to a variety of newsletters here on Writing.com. I find that many of them are really little more than a bit of fluff with a few recommended stories and/or links.
This newsletter is not only well-written, but consistently thought-provoking. I look forward to seeing this in my inbox each week.
I applaud a wonderful job! Keep up the awesome work!
Thank you for the compliment! I’m sure the other three editors of this NL appreciate your words.
mithrandir 
Submitted Comment:
Hi, very interesting subject matter. I recently saw thsi documentary about Hitler's Secretary, named "Blind Spot," it was rather fascinating.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0311320/
Dr Taher writes again!
Submitted Comment:
Dear Pookie,
That was a marvellous newletter. I have tried to write one or two pieces of historical fiction, but as you rightly say, my research has not been up to scratch. I will keep this newsletter (and the ones that follow) in my mail folder for future reference. It would help if you were to collect all these facts as static items in your Port.
-drtaher
I’ve attempted to do that somewhat with a journal on writing Civil War topics but hadn’t thought of putting this series as a static. Good idea.
billwilcox
Submitted Comment:
Pookster,
You, sir, are a wealth of information! Myth or Fact? {w:laugh},
W.D.
Hmmm, mythed fact?
bobneH .. aka.. just bob
Submitted Comment:
Regarding the Waffen SS grenade myth. Had a grenade been detonated on his helmit, the shattered remains of that helmit would between his empty boots. The rest of him would be wallpaper. Conclusion...untrue.
Funny that anyone would even consider it.
DuraH (an old soldier)
It goes to show the lengths we are willing to go to believe a politically or ideological motivated idea to prop up a misconception. It is easier to believe the Waffen SS was so fanatical to explain both their performance in battle and their documented atrocities. If an enemy’s behavior is sub-normal it is easier to hate them. One of the few Knights Cross to the Iron Cross awarded for service was given to a member of the 12th SS Hitler Jugend in Caen, Normandy. Blind and lone survivor of a massive bombardment of Caen prior to Operation GoodWood, brain child of General Bernard Montgomery, this soldier held off a battalion of Canadians from advancing by suppressing fire from his MG 37 while other units of his battalion pulled back. If one believes that he possibly attempted to set off a grenade on his helmet, one can easily believe he was a fanatical freak bent on death. Enough writers have believed this enough to continue propagating the myth in their works.
Victoria Earle
Submitted Comment:
What myths have you encountered that you previously understood to be facts? I write Christian historical novels and am always on the lookout for interesting anecdotes. I fell prey to the myth about Abner Doubleday dreaming up baseball while a prisoner on the prison in Fort Sumter. A friend and history expert explained why this was not true and gave me a more interesting tidbit about "Sherman's bow ties."
Have you been guilty of unknowingly promulgating myth? I hope not! We have a great reviewer on writing.com who used to go by the nickname of "Phil the babyhead" who is a real stickler for unhistorical facts. I can't find him any more.
Anyway, these are great points... thank you for writing this newsletter! Research is a critical piece of writing historical fiction and is almost as much part of the reading experience as the story line.
I hadn’t heard the Doubleday one before! Yes, baseball was a sport prior to the Civil War. Oh, and Phil the Babyhead be me! Oh those random handle changes. Now you can say you found him!
PastVoices
Submitted Comment:
Living in a midwestern town that is swiftly approaching its 200th Birthday, many myths abound. I live a block away from a house, where it is said that Lincoln spent the night and hit his head on the door jam in the front hall.
We had a section in history in grade school about the town. There is a house that is said to be the oldest and to bear thick log walls on the front part of the house covered by siding on the outside and drywall on the inside.
Obviously, I remember them so they made an impression on my 9-year-old mind. Are they true? Today I'm not so sure.
What myths have you encountered that you previously understood to be facts?
The ones stated above.
Have you been guilty of unknowingly promulgating myth?
I frequently receive requests to blast companies for one urban legend or another in my column. I am very careful even going so far as to contact the company in question to get to the truth.
Great Newsletter!!
Thank you. Myths can make for good stories but when they begin to mold our conclusions or thesis then they become truly troublesome especially if exposed as such. Much of the Underground Rail Road has been discovered to be myth in as much as such and such a place or basement is said to have been a way point for escaping slaves. That some clandestine process did exist for ferrying escapees northward is clear or the myth would hold no water in truth. But, since it was run by individuals who acted in a loose conglomeration of like mindedness and who left behind no clear organization it is probable that its existence played a minor part in history but it has been blown into larger proportions by political and social issues rising out of the Civil Rights movment. This is neither good or bad, but an interesting fact of how even something true can be grown into mythos.
gryphondear
Submitted Comment:
I applaud the statement, "To be sure, the research needed to write historical fiction is no less than that of the non-fiction monograph." This is true whether one writes a short-story set in demise of Hitler's Germany, a full-length novel set in Revolutionary America or a Regency Romance (set in England ca. 1796-1820). Indeed, Georgette Heyer researched her Regency Romance, *An Infamous Army,* so well that Sandhurst (the British Service Academy) has used her book to teach the Battle of Waterloo.
As an extension, one should research carefully for contemporary novels, as well. You should know the cross street nearest your character's dwelling in an existing town, even if you don't think you'll use the information. Realise that lightning comes before thunder, and that no one wakes up in the wood with the sun in their face, because critters would have been making a great deal of noise for about 2-3 hours before sunrise.
robmartin
Submitted Comment:
Hi Mel,
An interesting article, to say the least. I wondered though if allowing emotive opinion to slide in--the characterization of one form of suicide as cowardly, and another as manly--is really a product, or goal of research?
It is when dealing with questions of mystery, propaganda, and if a personage is really still alive or spirited out of the country and faked ones own death. Sightings of Adolf Hitler continued into the 1970’s and the book I cited in particular dealt with the questions of proof and motivation for declaring Hitler dead by the Soviets. Conflicting witness testimony, some derived under duress in Soviet interrogations, others derived from Allied interrogators, lack of remains to study (Hitler, Eva, the Goebbles family, and General Krebs remains were buried beneath the asphalt in the East German SMERSH HQ as it was loathe to admit to its original conclusions of Hitler’s mode of death and indeed finally exhumed in 1975, incinerated, and scattered per documents uncovered in the late Soviet archives) and the physical evidence made Soviet claims of “cowardly demise” questionable. It also matters in as much as Hitler himself had always claimed a warrior’s demise for himself at the head of his forces and indeed the news from Berlin the day after Hitler’s suicide proclaimed, “der Fuehrer gefallen!” (Hitler killed) as in combat. He further proclaimed he would not be taken alive and would end his own life as a soldier would and as many did as the Russians advanced.
DB Cooper
Submitted Comment:
This newsletter is absolutly OUTSTANDING!!!!!
Thanks!
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For Authors: August 24, 2005 Issue [#571]
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