Of course, while it is immensely important
to get the place right that you are writing about
it is possibly even more important
to make sure that you're not making any mistakes
regarding the period.
This will entail a little
in fact, quite a lot
of what we were talking about earlier, which is research.
You can, to a certain degree, if you can remember a period
yes, you can use that
to greatly enhance your depiction of it.
I can remember the 1970s, I can remember the 1960s
I can remember a bit of the 1950s.
So I would probably use that to colour any impressions
but I don't really know much about those areas
so I would have to research them
even eras that I lived through
because the eras that we live through
we actually miss quite a lot of what's going on.
We don't necessarily understand the times that we're living in.
So, in fact, it can be a lot more revealing
to look back with hindsight from a later date
when we've got all of the information in.
Perhaps the best example of how to treat period
would, coming from my own work, be the job
that I recently did
upon the writings of H. P. Lovecraft
in my book, Providence
where I decided that I was going to go for
a pretty exhaustive and encyclopaedic approach
to the world of H. P. Lovecraft
where I would be trying to map Lovecraft's imaginary stories
onto a real American map
that his imaginary towns, like Arkham
I would be situating them at real locations.
Like, say, Manchester in New Hampshire
or for his imaginary Dunwich
I would be situating that in Athol in Massachusetts.
So I was trying to map the Lovecraft universe
and I wanted it at a specific time.
I thought that the best year would probably be
just before Lovecraft had commenced his stories
which would be around about 1919.
So I thought, OK, my central character
I thought would perhaps be best to be a journalist
because that would give him plenty of motive
for travelling around the country
trying to find things out
which was what I needed him to do to tell my story.
I decided he'd be in New York.
I decided that he would probably be both Jewish and gay
because this struck me
that it might spark interestingly
off H. P. Lovecraft's regrettable antisemitism
and homophobia.
So, looking at New York
in 1919
I thought, so which paper does he work for?
The one that I thought looked most interesting
was the Daily Herald.
The New York Herald
because that had got its offices on Herald Square.
Its offices had got a statue of the goddess Athena
surrounded by stone owls
or brass owls, along the roof
that all had electronic flashing eyes.
This is in 1919. Nice detail.
That the offices had both telephones
and also one of those pneumatic
document delivery tube systems
which are a bugger to find out what they looked like.
The ones that you've seen in films
they look nothing like that.
We eventually managed to find a picture of one.
They look like a kind of glass stirrup pump.
Anyway, this is by the by
but it's the sorts of details that are going to be invaluable
if you're trying to create a real time.
I was looking at what was happening
in New York in 1919.
Our story starts in July.
The papers then were full of the Versailles Treaty
after the closure of the First World War
when everybody was imposing
these new conditions upon Germany.
And even then, people were saying
"Aren't these conditions going to inevitably lead
to a second world war?"
But of course, this was ignored.
And people, very importantly
were absolutely terrified
by what had just happened in Russia.
This was something
that I would not have put together for myself
without looking back at those times and realising
that 1919 in America
was the date of the Red Scare.
Those of you who might be thinking
that the Red Scare happened in the 1950s
with McCarthyism, no.
That was the second Red Scare.
The first Red Scare happened in 1919
after the Russian revolution in 1917.
All of a sudden, governments around the world were terrified
that that might happen in their own countries.
So in America, they started to crack down
upon all union activities.
There was an awful lot of unrest
there were an awful lot of strikes.
One of the things that I found out about
and this was perfect
because I knew that I had to have
my central journalist character visiting Boston
because that was the site of
a couple of Lovecraft's most important stories.
I found out about the Boston police strike of 1919
which was a horrific event that had been allowed to happen
by the governor, Calvin Coolidge.
The police were striking for a few pennies more
so that they were at least paid more than streetcar conductors.
The reason they wanted this
was because they were being fatally overworked.
They had just dealt with, apparently
the explosion of the molasses plant in Boston.
Apparently, they had something like
a million gallons of molasses that they were treating
to make industrial alcohol.
It blew up.
Apparently, the rivets were shooting out of the tank
like bullets.
Apparently, there was a wave of molasses
about three foot deep
rushing down the streets.
Children, horses, men and women
were getting trapped in it
like flies on sticky paper.
Unbelievable stuff
which I could completely work in to my story.
With providence, I became perhaps a bit obsessive.
I researched the historical detail in that
more than in any of my other works.
At some point, I even heard that H. P. Lovecraft
who was a bit of a stickler for historical detail himself
he had apparently researched phases of the moon
and weather
for some of his stories.
And that really stung my vanity.
I thought, "I can't have this long-dead, racist author
actually getting some sort of benefit over me.
I will have to research phases of the moon
for these dates in 1919.
I will have to research weather."
And actually, it worked out really well.
I was able to use the difference between a full moon
and a crescent moon, which was about a week in 1919
to give one of my characters
a unique sort of...
time-slip experience.
Two inexplicable weeks that he'd completely missed.
And I was able to suggest that
by having two different phases of the moon
on what he thought was the same night.
I was able to find out that in January
in New York
in 1920
they had had a massive snowfall
which made my final scenes in this park
particularly picturesque and lovable.
If there's any way that you can find out detail, do it.
I was tracking down old 1919 street plans
for places like Athol, for places like Manchester
so that you know exactly what streets
your characters would have to walk down
to get from this place to that place.
It gives incredible confidence to your writing
incredible authenticity.
And that will convey itself to the reader.
The reader will think, "This person sounds like
she knows what she's talking about."
They will trust you
because there is something about the authentic detail
that really can't be imitated.
You know it when you hear it.
When it comes to creating period
one thing that you should watch out for
is anachronism.
This perhaps is just me
bit I know that if there is an anachronism of speech
or of something else
it will pull me out of that period forcefully.
I remember when I was watching the otherwise interesting
American television series, Boardwalk Empire
where they had a very good performance
from Steve Buscemi
and they had an excellent performance
from Stephen Graham, who was playing Al Capone.
I remember, in one of the episodes
the mighty Stephen Graham, as Al Capone
was talking about another character
who had half of a tin mask on his face
because of a First World War wound.
And the Al Capone character says
"Ha, it's like Frankenstein here."
Now... yes, alright
Mary Shelley had written the novel Frankenstein in 1815.
And Thomas Edison had produced a brief little-seen silent film
called Frankenstein in 1910.
But a semi-literate Chicago gangster
is not going to be quoting a Mary Shelley novel in 1920.
The Steve Buscemi character
when greeting his step-children one morning
referred to them as "Good morning, munchkins!"
For which, see above.
L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz would have been written by then
but nobody would have been referencing its characters
until the MGM film in the '30s.
So that is the sort of thing
that can completely destroy a sense of period.
Something that is just out of place, that is wrong.
Alright, most of the audience won't notice it, probably.
But there'll always be people like me who will
and who will probably bear a grudge against you
for the rest of your life. You don't want that.
Now, a lot of what creates a period
will be the dialogue
the idiom, the way that characters speak.
That will do more than anything
to actually create a realistic time period.
And for this reason, it would be probably good
to invest in a dictionary of historical slang.
It's a bit of a bother
but if you're working on something, say, set in America
in the 18th century
go through one of the dictionaries of historical slang
from A to Z
and pick out all of the English 18th-century slang expressions
and write them down, even ones that you'll never use
because that's the only way to do it
to acquire a glossary of 18th-century slang.
In the book that I did that for
alert readers will probably notice
that there are a lot of slang expressions
from the first three letters of the alphabet
because that is, frankly, as far as I got.
But, yes, voice and speech and idiom
they are massive
when it comes to establishing period.
And they can even be useful in establishing period
when we don't have any idea
how the people in that period talked.
In my novel Voice of the Fire
I had a number of first-person narrators
who were in Northampton
from its Neolithic origins
right through to the present day.
So, up until we have Romans arriving
I think, some time in the fourth chapter
we have no idea how people spoke before then.
So when I was introducing a Neolithic boy
an outcast, in the first chapter
I thought, "How am I going to have him speak?
How am I going to have him think?
So I had a look at Aboriginal languages
and I found out that a lot of Aboriginal languages
they only have one tense.
They just have a present tense
so the past tense and the future tense
are somehow subsumed within the present tense.
They also have very, very limited vocabularies.
So I thought this is a key to coming up with my...
fake Neolithic English.
I'm going to have a vocabulary of...
around less than 500 words.
Now, that is astonishingly small.
Apparently, even to understand the sun
you need a vocabulary of 10,000 words
which is still a very, very small vocabulary.
But with 500 words
and only one tense...
it's a very long chapter
because if you're using less language
it will take you longer to say things.
It's a very long chapter.
It's apparently quite impenetrable
to many of the readers
because it is written in this invented Neolithic dialect.
But it certainly conjures the time.
It certainly conjures the psychology of the individual
who's talking, his way of seeing things.
And subsequent chapters, yes, I was doing the same thing.
I was thinking, OK, so what do people know now?
What does the average person know?
How much information has been added to the world
since the previous chapter 1,000 years before
or something like that?
This is the way that you can get an authentic voice
for the character.
And that will do more than anything
to persuade the reader that they are actually in
the time that you are writing about.
So, while place is of tremendous importance
we can never forget the importance of the moment
the particular era, the particular age.
The time.