Is there a responsibility when portraying historical setting sin fantasy to be accurate?
Depends on whether the setting is explicitly historical or quasi-historical, seems to me. If you're writing historical fantasy, i.e. a story set in a real historical period with added fantasy elements, then you have the same responsibility that any writer of historical fiction does. On the other hand, if you're doing the more common fantasy world that kind of looks like something historical, the the main obligation is to be self-consistent: does the world make sense in its own terms? It doesn't have to be exactly like the real historical period on which it's based (in fact, it probably shouldn't be; if it is, why bother writing in a created world at all?) but it should have its own history, society, economy, etc. in a way that feels like it could have existed at some point even if it never actually did.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-09-08 10:36 pm (UTC)Depends on whether the setting is explicitly historical or quasi-historical, seems to me. If you're writing historical fantasy, i.e. a story set in a real historical period with added fantasy elements, then you have the same responsibility that any writer of historical fiction does. On the other hand, if you're doing the more common fantasy world that kind of looks like something historical, the the main obligation is to be self-consistent: does the world make sense in its own terms? It doesn't have to be exactly like the real historical period on which it's based (in fact, it probably shouldn't be; if it is, why bother writing in a created world at all?) but it should have its own history, society, economy, etc. in a way that feels like it could have existed at some point even if it never actually did.