Welcome back, writers! To both of us!
Now, I apologize in advance if those post was a little late. I’m still easing my way back into my workload, and let the writing of this post slide a little as a result. But with that easing, I do have good news: I am feeling better. Each day that goes by I’ve felt a bit more like myself, and while I’m not back at a hundred-percent yet, I’m certainly feeling better than I was even a week ago.
Good. Especially as I have Life, The Universe, and Everything this week. Which, unlike normal, will likely not be receiving a daily write-up this year. It’s just going to be a casualty, I feel, of my recovery process. Getting those nightly writeups done each year is possible, certainly, but it is a little taxing, and I think this year I’m going to just take it easy.
Though if you’re curious about what’s going on and where I’m at, I’ll be live-posting in the Makalay Camp Discord channel during the event, so you can always follow the raw, live thoughts there.
With that said and the news taken care of, let’s get down to this week’s writing topic, shall we? Acceptable Anachronisms might seem like an odd topic, but it’s come up enough in the course of writing discussions that I ended up putting it on Topic List #23.
“But why?” some of you may already be asking. “Why talk about it at all? Isn’t any anachronism unacceptable?”
And well … yes … but also no. Which is why I wanted to talk about this today. Turns out that it’s just a little more complicated than that. And the why has to do with audience.
So hit that jump, and let’s talk about anachronisms.
So, as usual with BaBW, we’re going to define “anachronism” first for those of you that might be wondering what this unfamiliar word means. Can’t discuss whether or not one is acceptable if you don’t know what it means, after all.
It’s pretty straightforward: An anchronism is something that does not belong in the period or setting in which it exists. In other words, something that’s out-of-place with what should be in that location.
Usually, this is something chronologically out of place, such as a cell phone in the Roman Empire, or a car in the middle ages. But it can be ideological too, such as someone campaigning for women’s suffrage or civil rights in 12th-century Mongolia. Or even harder to catch, something such as a mislaid advancement of society, like someone washing their hands to get rid of disease in a novel set during the 1700s.
As many of you might be guessing, this plays directly into “Always do the research.” Anachronisms can be very obvious, like a cell phone or modern slang in a historical piece (“Yeet him,” said the legionnaire) or they can be very subtle, like a book accidentally having a washerwoman use soap that wasn’t invented until 35 years after the novel takes place. And while someone who doesn’t know that little fact about soap might not notice, someone who does almost certainly will.
So yes, always do the research. Except …
Well, if you’ve seen the title of this post, you’ve noted that we’re not just talking about anachronisms, but acceptable anachronisms. Which on first glance, now that we’ve defined what an anachronism is, might have a few scratching their heads. After all, wouldn’t any anachronism pull people out of a work? Well … yes and no.
See, here’s the thing: By and large, an anachronism in our work is bad. Yes, even if we’re writing something like Fantasy. If we’ve setup our fantasy setting as analogous to, say, 11th-century China, and then we throw in something that would be anachronistic to the setting without good cause (not the italics), such as a motorcycle, that’s going to jar people pretty hard.
But then there are those italics: Without good cause. There can be a totally acceptable reason our 11th-century Fantasy China has a motorcycle of sorts. The story could be about someone jump-starting the industrial revolution using the setting’s magic, for instance. Or involve time-travel.
Suddenly, with explanations for it built into the story, such an anachronism becomes acceptable. It might even be the whole crux of the story.
But that’s fantasy. What about … non-Fantasy? Certainly when we’re building a world of our own, we can come up with all sorts of reasons why something that shouldn’t fit does. But what about if we’re writing something that’s a bit more grounded. Surely anachronisms can’t be acceptable then, can they?
Well … almost. And here is where we get into an odd little tweak to what seems like a simple rule: What if the audience doesn’t want an accurate story?
There’s a direct example I can give you lifted right from the publishing world itself. Let’s talk for a moment about Regency Romance and Victorian-era fiction. At first glance, these stories would seem straightforward, wouldn’t they? They’re stories or romances set during a specific period of English history. Historical fiction, in other words.
But are they accurate? Well … no. And here’s the thing: If you talk to one of the writers in this area of publishing, they’ll tell you that despite the audience always saying they want an accurate novel in this period, the accurate ones tend to perform poorly and be rejected by the audience, while the less-accurate ones that have anachronisms tend to perform well.
Wait, what?
The reason for this is actually pretty straightforward: The audiences for these books do not actually want a period-accurate story, but a story adjacent to it. They want a protagonist with more modern ideals mixed into the pot, rather than period-accurate ideals.
They also don’t want all the details of how odd life back then could be. For example, how obsessed Victorian-era people were with piercings. Yes, you read that correctly: The Victorians we see as prudish? Actually pretty crazy outside of portraits and their public persona. And one of those wild sides included a lot of piercings. In a lot of places. For men and women.
Google it. I’m not making this up.
Sure, historically accurate. But it turns out, that’s not what readers of Regency or Victorian literature are looking for. They’re looking for a sanitized view of things, closer to the public performance and persona that those in the era took on and are remembered for.
Let’s have another example, shall we? A fun one. When was the last time you read a story and someone had a sandwich. Even a story set a long time ago? Well, oddly enough … if that story took place before 1792 … then a sandwich is an anachronism.
That’s right, it’s a modern food. Especially one with cold cuts, mustard, or even tomatoes, depending on the region. Most of that stuff is so recent it’s newer than some of the industrial revolution.
But readers … A lot of them don’t care about that. if you’re writing a very specifically realistic historical fantasy, then yes, they will care. But most of the time?
They won’t.
Which is where this idea of “acceptable anachronisms” comes from: The audience. Sometimes our audience doesn’t want to be bothered by all the specific details of a setting, even if they might be accurate. Instead, they want a story that fits their expectations and moves slowly. Something like “Victorian-era piercings” may be accurate, but it’s now what any of them are there for. The lack of an anachronism might be something that for that audience, gets in the way of the story itself and serves as a distraction rather than an enhancement or even a conveyance.
But here’s the thing: Audience. It’s totally down to audience. Meaning that you can’t just grin and say “Sweet, no more research!” and go wild with anachronisms. No, what this means is you still need to the do the research—sorry—but now with an added layer: that of the audience.
Yes, you need to know the details of your setting, but you also need to know what your audience is going to expect and what might pull them out of it. Is it really worth it to have a paragraph of your story set in Venice about how everyone’s pretty sure tomatoes are poisonous and used as a decoration rather than eaten during that period? Or would the audience just rather the story moved on with things despite there being a slight inaccuracy?
You need to be able to answer that question before you start making calls about what’s acceptable and what isn’t. Because at the end of the day, the audience is the one making that call, not you.
Don’t forget that there are multiple audiences when trying to figure this out. And again, don’t go wild. An audience may be totally accepting, for instance, of your Victorian novel not having body piercings everywhere, but still balk at your female lead completely ignoring period-accurate gender roles.
Then again, you might find a niche audience that does want that, but also wants the piercings. Go figure.
Point being, at the end here, anachronisms being acceptable or unacceptable, as well as which ones those are, is entirely dependent on the audience, so you need to know your audience in addition to your setting. Sometimes, they’ll want the accurate stuff, and sometimes they’ll want it to slide one way or another.
Your job is to discover which it is.
Good luck. Now get writing!
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