Foreworld discussion

Here's a post from M. Harold Page, author of the Foreworld Sidequest Marshall Versus the Assassins, that may be of interest:

https://www.blackgate.com/2016/12/08/...

Lots of food for thought, and an interesting array of examples.

Thanks Mike, that's interesting. I like the way he allows for different emphases on the historical, from very exacting to, well, less exacting.

By the way, I hadn't heard of the title Marshall Versus The Assassins and read through some of the reviews. Each reader of course is different as to the amount of detail he or she prefers but the most common comment I've seen is that there is too much detail about the actual sword fighting. That's funny because I liked all the detail--and could have done with more (this is for the first book The Mongoliad). The detail about sword fighting, weapons, etc., is good. So while the writers satisfy their own measure of detail, the readers of course vary.

M.L. Roberts wrote: "By the way, I hadn't heard of the title Marshall Versus The Assassins and read through some of the reviews. Each reader of course is different as to the amount of detail he or she prefers but the m..."

Just as much variation among readers as writers, yes!

Count me as one who got hooked on the swordplay early in the saga (which is a testament to the reasons it got started in the first place!) I only hope I can learn to do it half as well. I see a lot of historical fiction in my writing future (as well as sf, which as of now I have maybe a couple thousand draft words of experience under my belt, but at least 3 novels worth to eventually write) and I want to get the details right, Foreworld or not.

Yet I have always enjoyed hf that is not so welded to either the settings or the details of those settings. Depends what the author is aiming for. As a whole, the Foreworld franchise got started as a way to employ the experience of writers who know those details to tell both a compelling and a realistic story. Which I think they did exceedingly well. Then they threw in a bunch of mystical stuff that not only failed to undermine the realism for me, but took the stories in even more exciting directions. It became precisely the kind of world I wished to write about, and I ain't looking back!

Mike, excellent post by M. Harold, and thanks for bringing it up. He's of course a purist on the topic, and his kind of expertise shows in the original FW canon. I think the intent of FW was to deliver stories that appeal to the HEMA junkies and various other sword swingers.

As M.L. rightly points out, this is a virtue for some readers, but can be seen as a vice by others. The truth is, writing a compelling and interesting battle scenario is damnably hard. Granted, film is different; film can "big picture" the scene and take it all in. Narrative fiction requires a one-thing-at-a-time approach that can drag if it gets too detailed; a difficult balancing act for the writer.

So yeah, details, historical accuracy, language usage; they all can be very interesting. However, the writer must put story and reader first. History, I mean accepted collage textbook history, was all written after the fact, by fallible (and highly opinionated) humans. There's no reason we can't subtl'y re-write some of it... if the tweaks result in a better story.

JM(not so)HO