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In Defense of Making it Up

I loved Ken Follett's "Pillars of the Earth" series. It was a journey I undertook for days at a time, living other people's lives in a time and place that was never been mentioned in any of the history books in my school.

But Follett's series is not the only reason I started writing historical novels. I'd long found medieval art entrancing -- engagingly weird. That interest led to book buying, and book buying to reading the fine print about the times. Before I knew it I was caught - absorbing info about medieval educational systems, the economics of the time and the power grabs of the early church. That last interested me most since religious belief has long been the root of so many wars, so much hate among us.

Eventually I started my own story and right away I hit a glitch. What did peasant children call their parents? Ordinary speech was not recorded. But my kids had to call their father something and "father" didn't seem right. So I wrote to Ken (Follett!) asking him what to do. He wrote back, admitting that while research truly mattered - and was fascinating - there were some things writers could never find out. At that point the thing to do was to "make it up." What a freeing thought. I made the "Da" and "Mam" bits in my book up.

But even when records are sparse there's much that can lead us to "make it up" in the right way. For instance, when the wills of townspeople specify that a blanket and a worn dress go to a daughter we can guess that those items were important - valuable. That tells us that the lifestyle was not lush - probably not even comfortable. When we read tax rolls that itemize crops and animals that were lost to storm or famine we know something else. When we see an archeologist's finds we often see that there was something in common between us and these distant people. A woman craved ear bobs, a man wore a ring with jewels to advertise and perhaps protect the family fortune.

Likewise we can see critical and often extreme differences. It's hard to convey in a book the extant to which medieval people, rich and poor, were absorbed with religious issues. The belief that ordinary life was some kind of prelude to eternal life was not controversial in the 13th century. Fear of eternal damnation was palpable and the writings of the time reflect this (although the actions of the wealthy have caused me to wonder how universal this was.)

No one can do a perfect job of "making it up." It's so tempting to impose our way of thinking on "humans" in general - but like Follett I am giving it a try in "The Aldinoch Chronicles." You can see how I do by checking out Book Two, "The Hounds of God" -- available at Amazon
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