it is very easy to avoid getting dragged over and over again by history bloggers for the quality of your fantasy novels: don’t repeatedly emphasize how ~aCcuRaTe~ they are! Accuracy means nothing in fantasy, it’s a totally useless term, and people will forgive almost any believability-stretching worldbreaking sin if you write well and tell an engaging story–unless you try to stake your reputation as a fantasy writer on gritty realism and being a more historically attentive worldbuilder than that Tolkien guy, who only *checks notes* had a PhD in medieval literature and spent his entire life thinking, writing, and teaching about medieval language and culture.

I really don’t understand all the GRMM hate. I mean, ASOIAF wears its inspirations on its sleeve, and you can clearly see where Henry VIII, the Norman conquest, Vikings, Spain, Celts, the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy, the Roman-Catholic church, the fall of Rome, Venice, Genoa, the hundred years war, the tower of London, channel Isles, or the English Civil War were inspirations for events and people. The mapping is not one-to-one. Sometimes a kingdom is inspired by a certain real place during a certain real war, but in peacetime before and after the place is more like another real place. It’s not meant to be an allegory for Britain during any particular time period.

So I don’t get how people can be all that upset about the historical accuracy or lack thereof. There is a depiction of feudal armies, and of an aristocracy that intermarries and is really not all that connected to the land, and some far-off fraternal societies, and you can sort of see where GRRM got his historical inspirations, but calling it historically accurate, or more historically accurate? It’s just fantasy that explores things Tolkien didn’t.

Well, some years ago GRRM said the following in an interview:

(Emphasis mine)

And this kind of posturing invites greater scrutiny.

Specifically, this post was originally a follow-on to Brett Devereaux’s series on the depiction of the Dothraki in Martin’s work, based on a claim he specifically made about the historical basis of their depiction: that they were explicitly based on the Shoshone and Mongols, and whether that claim held up at all w/r/t how those cultures historically operated in their respective environments; as Devereaux showed pretty exhaustively, the depiction of the Dothraki has basically nothing to do with the reality; that in fact it is perilously close to (if not outright) a racist stereotype; and that Martin, whatever his other talents, actually evinces a very poor understanding of history, something that Tolkien–for all that he shows less interest in matters like tax policy–does not, especially when you look at Tolkien’s excellent grasp of details that in the grand scheme of things might prove incidental to the themes he’s writing on, but which are important to the depiction of, e.g., the war between Saruman and Rohan in the Two Towers.

Martin only gets dragged for ahistoricity (at least, in my book) when he claims a degree of authority about history, or that certain aspects of history inform his work. The Dothraki would be unremarkable as a fantasy culture within the broader context of fantasy except that Martin claims they’re based on named real-world examples–and the different approach he and Tolkien take to their sources of inspiration would be irrelevant if he didn’t seem to feel the need to drag Tolkien (or ignore the fact that Tolkien actually does address all of the things alluded to in that quote).

I had many thoughts about that series of articles. The main thought was “IT WAS ABOUT TIME”, since I’ve always considered the portrayal of the Dothraki the biggest flaw in the books. But if everyone agrees now (everyone agrees, right?), I think it’s time to put on my contrarian hat and say, wait a minute.

Devereaux says that it took only minimal research on his part to reach his conclusions, so Martin could and should have done that. He also says that

So I extracted a bibliography from his articles:

…and as it happens, very few of these sources were actually available in the 1990s, only 3 out of 15. One is a biography of Genghis Khan, and two are military history of the Northern Plains. Oh, and the person suggesting all these books and papers is a military historian by trade, with access to the internet, search engines, digitised archives, and JSTOR. And even he had to ask “to be pointed in the direction of information”.

I don’t know what kind of research Martin had access to back then. There must have been other books, which Devereaux doesn’t suggest, possibly because they aren’t considered good enough today. I don’t even know if he DID any research, or if he just proceeded with what he had already absorbed from other readings and media (which would sure explain all the distortions). So I’m not at all interested in justifying his choices in any way. But I do object to the availability argument.

What Devereaux presents as a widely available array of sources was not, in fact, available at the time. And it’s not available NOW, not unless you have the knowhow to look up this specific kind of information (it’s a skill, you actually have to learn it), AND the time to do it, AND a lot of money to spend OR the knowhow (and complete lack of qualms) to pirate it. Devereaux makes it all look like a piece of cake, but it’s really not.

If authors of (fantasy!) literature have a responsibility to not bungle the portrayal of real life cultures in their work, even when used as partial inspiration and not direct counterparts, don’t historians have a MUCH LARGER responsibility to make their work available and accessible to the public?

So hey, here’s some practical suggestions on how to avoid the next bungling:

[since it’s been a while, this was about a series of articles where Bret Devereaux roasts GRRM for claiming the Dothraki are “an amalgam of a number of [real life] steppe and plains cultures”, which they’re not]

No but seriously. Let’s say you intend to write a fantasy novel set in an expansive world containing a bunch of cultures, and you want one of these (not your main focus!) to be inspired by Eurasian Steppe and American Great Plains cultures. BE HONEST. Would you read that entire bibliography before starting writing? It’s 15 books. Would you read a fraction of it? Would you even know how to compile it, and how to stick to reliable sources that aren’t disputed in the field or obsolete?

And perhaps more to the point, should you HAVE to?

No! That’s an insane thing to ask from fantasy authors! [I think I expressed myself very poorly before, and accidentally implied it’s obligatory. It’s really not.] Going full circle back to the OP, there’s only one thing you have to do.

Do not, under any circumstances, claim “historical accuracy”.

There, problem solved.

Academic history books in particular tend to be very expensive (like upwards of $80) because their publishers can really only count on selling a handful of copies, mainly to university libraries.

They can sometimes be tracked down for free through Inter-Library Loan, but even that depends on how big a city you live in and whether or not there’s a university nearby.

The internet has made historical research much easier than it used to be (WorldCat, in particular, is a wonderful resource), but open access to research materials is still not as accessible as it could or should be.

I’m gonna say very gently that WordCat is the LEAST impactful way in which the internet made scientific research (historical and otherwise) easier than it used to be.

But yes, of course it should be accessible! It’s a scandal that it isn’t.

One of my all time biggest pet peeves with historical(ish) fantasy is when the writer constructs a religion with a clear bias that it's stupid and false and therefore only the Stupid People and/or commoners believe in it and all the smart/elite main characters are like, quasi-atheists or otherwise just routinely flout established religious conventions of orthodoxy and/or orthopraxy because they're Too Smart for it or etc.

It's usually an extension of assumptions that people in the past were just less intelligent than in the contemporary, just being like "I know that the sun is a star millions of miles away that the earth orbits, but this ancient religion describes it as a chariot flying through the sky" and not really bothering to learn the context and just (consciously or subconsciously) settling on 'that's a crazy thing to think and was probably believed in because they were Stupid'.

And that whole attitude pisses me off so much. People were as 'smart' 10,000 years ago as they are today. These beliefs aren't just desperate, random flailing to explain phenomena that could not directly be accounted for either, it's not like people just looked at the sun and went "Uhhh I don't know what the fuck that thing is, actually. I guess it might be a chariot or a boat or something?? Yeah let's go with that." and based entire religious practices on this. Every well-established belief system exists within broader contexts of cultural values/subjective perceptions of reality/knowledge systems/etc, and exist as part of a historical continuum of religious practices that came before. Even when not Materially Correct, they have context and internal logic, they're not always dead literal with zero levels of allegory, and they're never a result of stupidity.

I remember laughing out loud when I read in one of those awful Eragon books that people believed spirits put mice in the cupboards instead of understanding mice would be drawn to the food in them. And Eragon realizing this is wrong makes him instantly atheist.

It was impossible to take anything in the story seriously after that. I was 13, so I could take a lot of things at face value and overlook a lot of logical errors and problems I would not have as an adult. My suspension of disbelief was sky-high. But the idea people would think the gods/spirits put mice in the cupboards, mistaking the food in the bowls for offerings, instead of mice being hungry? I couldn't. I couldn't give a damn about anything in the story. It was so childish that it rendered the character less intelligent than me, a literal child, and the world he was in full of fools so ridiculous they couldn't see what was right in front of them.

The attempt by the author to make religion look like the result of stupidity just made him look like what he was: a homeschooled teenage son of two people who worked at a publishing agency, who was only published due to that fact, who didn't know how the world worked at all.

"People believe things because they're stupid" is how you get worldbuilding so bad that even children laugh at your writing. This is how you get a 13 year old to go, "I want to read something else, this is silly."

I know putting thought in is harder but ask yourself, do you want middle schoolers to view your fantasy novel as juvenile?

Or do you want to be a good writer, instead?

One of my coworkers loves Eragon and keeps telling me how good a book it is but everything I hear about it sounds just hilariously bad.

I am the greatest author of all time.

So, fun (read: pointless) fact about this bit:

Since Arenaria's people, the Isani, live in a very hot and humid environment, they generally don't wear much in the way of undergarments to avoid any unpleasant chafing. Also, Arenaria is kind of a pervert. So her habitually going commando could very well be canon.

I get mail

I, a total stranger, was thinking of befriending your kid, but before I did, I thought I'd ask you, are they a boring, selfish jerk?

It's fine if they are, I'm just really trying to find quality people to be friends with, so I thought I'd ask you, is your kid a dick?

Wait, don't get offended! How are people supposed to know whether to hang out with your kid if you can't answer a simple question?!

I, a total stranger, was thinking of inviting myself over to your house for dinner.

But before I do, I wanted to ask, is your cooking insipid, greasy and terrible?

Honestly, it's not problem if it is, I'm just trying to focus on eating food that isn't shit.

Oh, come on, don't be so touchy! How is anyone supposed to know whether to eat the food you cook if you won't tell them whether it sucks?

Never bring a knife to a gun fight.

I don't think TVTropes makes people stupider. I DO think it puts easy-to-use descriptions in front of fools who then just warily search for such tropes as they go and decry any media in which they find them as unoriginal - after all, they've already seen these five tropes have been done before!

Novelty is something humans like, but A) the more and more volume of media humanity generates, the harder it is to find even increasingly specific sub-components of a narrative that haven't been written before at least once and everyone needs to accept that, and B) treating novelty as being a mark of quality rather than just that a sign that you've not personally encountered something before is foolish.

Beware - future media you enjoy will have aspects and takes and twists, tropes, that you've enjoyed before.

Rejoice - future media you enjoy will have aspects and takes and twists, tropes, that you've enjoyed before.

Ironically, there is a TV Tropes page specifically about this. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TropesAreTools

tvtropes: "here's some interesting story elements and ways to find others that share them!"

people who read tvtropes without understanding it: "ew, this story has elements in it!"

TV Tropes can be a fascinating tool, because it discusses tropes bottom-up: here's a trope, here's stories that do that. You can see examples of that trope done well and done badly. Here's a brief history/context of that trope. It's something completely different from how I was taught to examine tropes at school or even during uni years, when you usually do it top-down: here's a story, what kind of tropes does it use?

Except that now, between this and Cinema Sins, people are starting to complain that stories have tropes in them, which is exactly like complaining that your paper is made of plant matter, or your coffee was made using coffee beans.

They also complain -- and I can say this as an Old Person -- about you as a writer using tropes on stories you wrote decades ago where you were the first person to tell that story and the first person to use that trope. If Tolkien was still alive they'd be writing to him huffily about every element of Lord of the Rings and explaining why it was No Longer Original.

this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about

I have a friend who is an editor, and gets submissions of mostly poetry and short stories.

I have had a glimpse into her slush pile, and let me tell you, the contents were unbelievable and immediately disabused me of the notion that reading through submissions is in any way glamorous. People have the nerve to submit unhinged paranoid ramblings, fetish porn, and a seemingly endless supply of poems about masturbation.

I no longer feel like my fiction is somehow an imposition on the people who read it. It may be forgettable, but at least it isn't typeset to look like sperm.

Do not be afraid to submit your work. Your competition is not only worse than you think, it's worse than you ever imagined.

Do these three things to get to the top of the slush pile:

That's basically what every single editors' panel at every con I've ever been to has boiled down to. And invariably, someone tries to get up and argue with them, not realizing it's not a discussion.

Bonus tip: Don't be in any way cute in your cover letter. Just the facts/Luke Skywalker's message to Jabba the Hut in ROTJ.

If submitting a novella length piece or greater, a brief and complete summary is appropriate.

Never under any circumstance put a cliffhanger into a query letter summary. There is no faster way to get the entire MS binned than doing that.

Happy writing.

PS "Top of the slush pile" means into the top 25% of manuscripts received. Three quarters of the submissions don't take the trouble to do even those three basic steps.

Now, that still means 25/100 submissions or 250/1000 submissions, but it still improves your odds and forms the basis for starting a relationship with the publisher for the next piece you send them.

PPS This is obviously about prose. Poetry certainly has its own submission rules, and I know none of them. If you're writing poetry, find out what they are.

@silverhand's reply is right on.

please please please please reblog if you’re a writer and have at some point felt like your writing is getting worse. I need to know if I’m the only one who’s struggling with these thoughts