Ever since I finished that "test story", I got pretty busy but continue to read stuff all over the place. In a post last Sunday, Cookiegod said this...
This specific phrase was said inside a more general post where, at some point, he suggested things about AARs and other things.
since that test run of a story that I wrote a few months ago, I've been pretty busy but the general idea of writing again, maybe in a more expansive way, is always there and that phrase, about novels and movies, stayed at the forefront of my thoughts this week. One of the thing I was brewing over was the idea of accuracy vs authenticity in writing historical pieces (novels/movies/etc...). What I am questionning myself with, in that "opposition", is how much one feeds directly from the other while how much one can "move away from the other" and still retain a "feeling of reality"? And the latter, for good or bad reason alike.
I'd use my short story as an example. What I wanted to do was to create something that felt real, felt authentic, but that never really happenend. Yet, most of the "authenticity feels" I used are mostly based on "thesis" and/or studies and deductions based on artifacts, texts, etc... I remember that someone made a comment about the "language" I used and that he liked it and that it felt real. In the end though, I mainly "took upon myself to give it a Rome TV-series tone" and that was all. Thinking that it felt authentic but I jut don't know if it is authentic or not, just that a TV-series, highly praised for it's authenticity. On the other hand, something in that same TV-series, the military salute, is apparently something that, for most historian of that particular period, is a fallacy. Apparently, no text talk about a specific military salute, no statues or frescos or piece of art demonstrate a specific military salute. Nonetheless, most (I think) take it as being true (the salute the characters do) because the TV-series was praised so much about it's authenticity, that there is some kind of: "This must be ture.... most probably..." attitude that may isert itself in.
So, authenthic vs real and how they feed/oppose each other.... Am I going into a unnecessary rabbit hole? Is it a rabbit hole???
Benoit