# Can you be too accurate?



## JasoninNV (Oct 7, 2019)

A good portion of the novel I am working on takes place in the late 19th century.
I'm a bit of a history buff and that is one of my if not favorite time periods.
I am peppering in a bit of slang terms and what not that are 100% accurate to the time, but is there a point when it becomes too much? Luckily, the speech really wasn't that much different back then from now, and even a lot of the slang is still in use. But it's been at the back of my mind to try and balance how much I'm using certain words unique to the period. I've tried to use them in an obvious way, so that the reader would know what was meant when a certain term was used. I'm pondering using a bit more of the unique terms and speech, but at the same time I don't want a reader to have to Google something to understand what's going on.
If you are writing a historic piece, is there something you do to try to keep a balance between being as accurate as possible versus being easy to read in today's time?

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## Ralph Rotten (Oct 7, 2019)

The reader has got to be able to understand the dialog, so a little modernization is not really out of order.


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## Irwin (Oct 7, 2019)

Like Ralph said, a little modernization doesn't hurt to make it more readable. For example, if you wrote a novel today in the style of Mark Twain, it wouldn't be successful because of the accents and dialect in dialogue. When it was written, people liked that style, even though it took a bit of work to read. Today's readers don't have that kind of patience.


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## tepelus (Oct 7, 2019)

The novel I wrote and currently editing is set in the 1920's, and I go easy on the slang from that time period. I had a beta give me props for not going overboard on the slang. Too much can be a turn off for some people. You want to give an historical work the flavor of the time period but also think about modern sensibilities by not going overboard. Often times I check words to see if they would have been used during a certain time period (this website is awesome for that). Like the term being grounded. That wasn't in use then, so I say she had her privileges taken away. Girlfriend and boyfriend weren't either, so I used the term steady, as in she's my steady. Or, because it takes place in 1923 and the movie The Sheik was popular, Sheik and Sheba were used as as slang terms for one's boyfriend and girlfriend.


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## JasoninNV (Oct 7, 2019)

Ok, I think I'm on the right path. I think I've only used one or two terms per chapter or so, and what I am writing is fairly heavy on dialogue.
One example would be 
"Hey how'd you get that blinker?" so and so said referring to his black eye.
So nothing too strange, and either explained or used in obvious context.

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## luckyscars (Oct 8, 2019)

A portion of my WIP is set during the 1940's and involves time travel. The speech itself isn't too different, but what differences there are I am having fun with. Stuff like this:



> “So we just walked all the way here for an empty book. Stellar.”
> “Stellar?”
> “Never mind.”




Obviously since yours sounds like it's set 100% in the past you would need to be mindful of not throwing readers out of the world through obvious anachronisms, but neither does it have to be too accurate. This isn't a history lesson, it's about capturing a feeling. 

To capture a 1940's sense I have tried to incorporate the way (very) old people nowadays talk. There's a lot less modern slang generally, at least of the profane kind, and presumably that would be even more true for the 19th century, but depending on the demographic and geography there may be some slang you can incorporate. 

19th century I am thinking Victorianism for anything European or colonial-British including in the more sophisticated parts of North America, and 'cowboy speak' for the rural areas. Consider that the UK was the dominant anglophone power in the 19th century, not the US, so upper-class types would have taken influence from British-isms. A form of received pronunciation was commonplace in the American South, for instance. It would be important to incorporate that for total authenticity.

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-slang/
https://mentalfloss.com/article/53529/56-delightful-victorian-slang-terms-you-should-be-using

And so on. Google is your friend. I think a lot of the language is actually fairly comprehensible even if it is *weird*, but so long as it is used in appropriate context I doubt it would flummox readers. At least, not readers with a brain. A lot of readers of historical fiction do know the period and may even know it better than you. It's one of those things you probably don't need to worry about so long as you know what you mean - it should rub off.

What I find much harder myself is capturing the sensory feel of the past. Ultimately that's something you can't learn all that easily from history books. So, it's guesswork, guesswork and working off stereotypes to an extent. Everything in 1940's America reeks of tobacco. Cities are dirtier, there's no environmentalism to speak of. Part of capturing that was having my time traveler constantly suffering from the sheer filth of New York 1940.

I think dropping in details is good, just make sure they don't stop or slow down the scene. Clothing is a good one. References to furniture and household items that are less common now (chaise lounges, cigar humidors, gramophones, etc). Since my era was the era of radios (yours less so, but this is an example only) a lot of my scenes incorporate them, which is a good way to set the scene with music (jazz, etc) and news reports while not necessarily involving direct involvement of characters. 

I guess to answer your broader question, I would see the time period of historic fiction as being more like a character than a setting. That is to say, you want it to work _with _the scene, not merely be there as a backdrop, otherwise it is liable to become irrelevant.


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## BadHouses (Oct 8, 2019)

User Theglasshouse posted a link to a neat article in another thread on this subject as well.

https://www.writingforums.com/threa...ory-is-about?p=2247070&viewfull=1#post2247070


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## ironpony (Oct 20, 2019)

I agree that you can be too accurate.  For example in the Breaking Bad episode Say My Name, the DEA is able to get a warrant to search not one, but multiple safe deposit boxes, where as in real life, there is no way, any such warrant would be authorized, but they want to move the story with out having to do spend so much time on all that red tape, to complicate things.


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## Bayview (Oct 20, 2019)

JasoninNV said:


> Ok, I think I'm on the right path. I think I've only used one or two terms per chapter or so, and what I am writing is fairly heavy on dialogue.
> One example would be
> "Hey how'd you get that blinker?" so and so said referring to his black eye.
> So nothing too strange, and either explained or used in obvious context.



I'd be careful with the explanations like that. They might work, depending on your POV, but the example felt clunky to me.

If it's words that you really don't think your reader will understand, I'd try to be more subtle about it.



> "Hey, how'd you get that blinker?" So-and-So asked.
> Harvey reached up and traced his fingers over his eyelid, feeling the heat from the bruise.



Or whatever. I'd avoid having a verbatim "referring to" if at all possible.


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