Historical Fiction Writing: "Forsoothly" vs "Flat Contemporary"

Josh Getzler

 

Last night, my wife and I went to see The Heir Apparent, an adaptation by David Ives of the 18^th  Century French farce by Jean-Francois Regnard. It’s hysterically funny, consistently entertaining, and in verse. One of the more interesting aspects is that Ives sprinkled in an awful lot of contemporary references and even slang within the formal structure of the play.

 

This led to a conversation over dinner about historical fiction and the use of colloquial language. I feel like I’ve been talking about this quite a bit with clients and potential clients, since a) I have a large number of novels that take place across history; b) It’s one of the trickier aspects of historical fiction to get right; and c) there are several ways to do it.

 

When writing historical fiction, there is a tendency to use the colloquial of the time, particularly in conversation. The thought is that it adds authenticity and credibility to the story. The thing is, most of the time it creates what we call a “Forsoothly” tone. It feels forced and choppy, particularly when overdone, and often undermines the whole purpose of the device—to take the reader to a different time and place. Instead many times it actually takes the reader OUT of the story, particularly when it feels like a parody or homage rather than an authentic story of the time. (Obviously there are counterexamples, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule.)

 

When I talk to clients and other writers about this, my advice most of the time is for them to write in what I call “Flat contemporary.” That’s a style that purposely largely eschews the colloquial of BOTH the 21^st Century and the period being rendered. It gets the point across that we are in a different time through descriptions of dress and movement and plot, rather than through “fancy talk,” as one of my clients put it. It doesn’t mean that conversation needs to be vague or non-descriptive—just not flowery. And sprinkling in the language of the time, with authentic vocabulary, then enhances the story rather than detracts from it. It’s an incredibly tricky line to walk (in the same way, incidentally, that writing contemporary dialect of any kind can be), and one that requires great restraint and discipline in order to succeed. And when it does, it’s magical.

Comments

[George Dovel]

Spot-on advice and a great term for it. Took me a couple of years and a few thousand drafts to understand this.

Another point to consider is to avoid relying the same Ye Olde-ism in an attempt to signal period language, as it can become a speedbump after just a few occurrences. After repeatedly encountering "for certs" in the first few chapters of a novel recently, I did a search on my Kindle and saw it was used 72 times throughout this fairly short book. Perhaps not entirely to my credit as a reader, I stopped reading at that point.

[Lynda Gadd]

Great advice! Thank you so much for the article.

[Nikki Trionfo]

So like do you mean as a contemporary writer I can't write you know the way I talk?
Maybe less is always more?!