{"id":104241,"date":"2024-06-07T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-07T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/?p=104241"},"modified":"2024-06-07T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T09:00:00","slug":"tin-mugs-and-plenty-of-tea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/tin-mugs-and-plenty-of-tea\/","title":{"rendered":"Tin mugs and plenty of tea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. And yes, the military significance of those landings looms a little larger in Anglo-American eyes than it does in German \/ Slavic eyes, but still \u2013 golly. That invasion involved what was by far the largest invasion fleet in history. In one single day<\/em>, 133,000 men landed in France, under fire. By the end of June 1944, almost a million men had been put ashore, along with 150,000 vehicles and an infinitude of supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I happen to have one of those little author soft-spots for this bit of history. I wrote a historical novel once about the oil industry, and D-Day featured in the climax of the book. It was all very well to land 150,000 vehicles (in less than a month) \u2013 but how were those vehicles to be fuelled? There\u2019s no oil in Normandy and slow-moving oil tankers were desperately vulnerable to attack. So \u2026 PLUTO: The PipeLine Under The Ocean. It had never been done before, but, eighty years ago, it was done, because it had to be done. A pipeline unrolled on the ocean bed to feed petrol through to the liberating army. Wow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m always moved by those things, but also \u2013 listening to voices and memoirs on the radio \u2013 I\u2019m struck by the precision with which ordinary language captures the fleeting moods of history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you had people today talking about a similar venture, they\u2019d sound<\/em> different. They\u2019d use different language, pick out different details, have slightly different humour, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, I heard an account of the moment, written by someone then only 8 or 9. Some American soldiers were camping out in Hampshire. And they had this \u2018big bit of lamb stew\u2019 cooked up in \u2018great tin pot\u2019. The soldiers (\u2018very generous\u2019) offered the boy some of their food, and the boy, used to sparse wartime rations, clearly revered the memory of that meal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My kids are the same age now as that boy then. They might talk about a lamb stew, but they wouldn\u2019t talk about a \u2018great tin pot\u2019 and I think they\u2019d be a lot less likely to talk of a \u2018big bit\u2019 of stew. And obviously, they don\u2019t even know what ration cards are or were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I say this, with both a narrow focus and a broad one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The narrow focus is simply this: if you\u2019re writing historical fiction, you need to get as close as possible to the words and experiences of the people who were there. So yes, you need your grand history books: the military histories which tells you about what the US 1st Army achieved, how fast or slowly the British and Commonwealth 2nd Army advanced, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s background \u2013 of secondary value almost. The closer you can get to the texture of life, the better. That means letters and diaries. Scraps of newsreel. Any opportunity you get to hear or read actual dialogue of the era. What did those soldiers eat? Did they have tents? Bivouac bags? Nothing? What? Those things don\u2019t matter much to military history, but they made up the experience of life on the day. How heavy was a Bren gun? How was the ammo for it carried? Did it jam? What noise did it make? The closer you can get to accuracy there, the better. There\u2019s no substitute for as much real-life memoir as you can get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the narrow focus, but the issue is broader too \u2013 one that affects every novelist and, indeed, any memoirist too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The presence of (actual, or very well faked) authenticity matters hugely<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re writing about, let\u2019s say, ad industry execs in London, or New York, or Paris \u2013 do you have their voices right? Do you have their attitudes right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another bit of memoir I heard on the radio today came from a (then) young woman who had parachuted into France to support the Resistance. Her job was to transmit coded messages back to England. She landed in a wood, feeling understandably anxious, but her memoir commented, \u2018I thought, well, I\u2019m here now, so I might as well get on with it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can just feel the 1940s matter-of-fact spirit oozing from those words. How does a modern-day, urban-elite ad exec talk? What attitudes do they unwittingly convey in everything they say \/ do \/ feel? I\u2019m not too sure \u2013 it\u2019s not my world \u2013 but the perfect ad-land set book will nail those things. The vocab, the attitudes, the minutiae of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With historical fiction, the need for a certain kind of precision is clear: you can\u2019t get History wrong. But it\u2019s the same thing with all other story-telling too. You need to be true to your world, not just in big ways (Spitfires? Or F-22s?), but in little ones \u2013 great tin pots and the \u2018might as well get on with it\u2019 attitudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s all true, even if your world is utterly imagined. You might be writing a book about a mining colony on Mars, and it would still matter what people eat, what attitudes they evince, what they call a \u2018great tin pot\u2019, what kind of footwear they have, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother-in-law was born in Poland in 1942, to a German-speaking (and Protestant) father and a Polish-speaking (and Catholic) mother. She survived, and might not have done. Her family survived, and might not have done. They all, in time, made it to Munich and the glorious, beautiful safety of the American zone. Thank you, D-Day. Thank you, generous American soldiers and their big bits of lamb stew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feedback Friday: Catching the mood<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This month, we\u2019re going to be tackling projects attuned to specific genres \u2026 but will also make sure that the disciplines we focus on will be applicable to most writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I\u2019d love you to take a look at one of our hist fic classes \u2013 here<\/strong><\/a> – on researching your book. That has a huge relevance, of course, to historical writers, but it\u2019ll affect loads of others too. (Even, say, people writing about mining-on-Mars. I mean, what minerals does it have? What are the Mars-specific extraction challenges \u2026? Those things really matter.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I want this week:<\/p>\n\n\n\n