The Other 30-Second Rule

Blue has been doing a long discussion on historical accuracy in the Assassins' Creed games (over on Overly Sarcastic Productions.) According to him, during the first game they came up with a "30 seconds on Google" rule; don't put anything in the game that could be found wrong with that little effort on the part of the player.

Not a rule that attracts me.

My generic rule for historical fiction is "Change it reluctantly and only when it makes a better story." But that needs unpacking. It requires, primarily, doing the research properly (or at least more deeply than 30 seconds on Google.)

"A better story" is a siren song right there. Say we've decided to do a pirate adventure. Pirates are cool, right? Wouldn't it be even more cool if they had, say, jet packs and machine guns? Thing is, you don't go far down this path before the things that make it a pirate adventure aren't there any more. It is just an "adventure." Those very "restrictions" on what you might think might make a more fun story are part of that world you are inviting the audience to inhabit.

This is, mind you, before we've even touched the idea of historical accuracy for its own sake. Or, rather, for the sake of the audience who slept through class, who are only getting their history through fiction, and who let that history shape, among other things, their real-world politics. 

So the first thing the writer needs to do is study the real history. Some, I feel, hate to do this because they have this idea in their heads and they are afraid that real history doesn't permit it. This may or may not be so. What I am sure of, is that real history has surprises. If you do the research as early as possible in the process, you will discover things you would never have dreamt up on your own.

So the first test of "Change it reluctantly and only when it makes a better story" is to see if you have to change it at all. Maybe history permits the thing with some slight modification. Maybe history offers an alternative that has even more story potential than what you had originally been thinking.

I am also tempted to think of this as a young writer problem. Inexperienced writers agonize over ideas. They are always asking where they come from, and they are loathe to let go of them. One of the tells here is that inexperienced writers are often worrying that other people are going to steal their ideas.

With experience comes the impression (it may not be entirely true!) that ideas are floating everywhere. The skill comes in figuring out how to make a story out of them. Well, more than that; the skill comes in seeing an idea in the rough, and then, knowing if an idea is story-worthy or if it just won't work. And then the skill in constructing story around it.

In any case, the last part of this little "Change it reluctantly and only when it makes a better story" is that if you do end up making a change, you can do so in a way that is justifiable, and that fits the larger truths. You've moved your understanding up to the next rank of history; not the dates and numbers, but the motions and currents.

And you surround your change with enough truth that the reader who spent that 30 seconds with Google will nod and accept that you, also, know the real version.