The Writing Blog: The Extant Man Dilemma

Here’s the history writer’s dilemma: it’s hard enough to get the inner world of a character down when you’re making them up from scratch. When you’re writing about real people, not only are you writing an entire new inner world, you’re trying to match it up with an inner world that actually existed, and in most circumstances is not available for fact-checking by the only person to truly experience it.

It’s sort of like playing that game with a rolling ball in a maze, only instead of trying to get a small iron bearing in a hole you’re trying to fit the lead framework of a stained glass window into the gaps between colored panes using only the stupid forward-back and side-to-side dials on the tilted table and no soldering tools. Frustrating and impossible and you are—at least I am—going to be aware of whatever little bits end up out of place.

My dissertation project, working title Antikythera, is set in the early 4th century BCE. I’m well aware that my main characters’ contemporaries are long dead. Their ancestors are long dead, or at least so well-scattered it’s hard to trace the family tree. I’m well aware that none of their friends are going to come up and tell me I’m doing it wrong. I know, logically, I have a little wiggle room.

It’s just so… awkward.

Writers of more recent history may not have this problem. I tend to lean towards ancient sources, so maybe I’m wrong, but the written record is more… extant for authors of World War II stories. We have some letters from Rome and Classical Greece—we have many—but by definition they’re simply… fewer. The accounts we do have are primarily from single sources, mostly wealthy, and almost entirely male.

I know friend of mine’s coworker solely by the name “Gaston”, because he eats an immeasurable number of eggs in the office in increasingly annoying ways. Imagine if someone was tasked on writing an accurate story about him based on that one sole account. It would not be accurate. (Maybe. There’s no way to tell for sure.)

For Antikythera, I’m currently trying to compile a list of big names in the late 5th century BCE to try and properly build up the politcal landscape. Most of them are probably dead, but it’s unrealistic for none of them to show up—my main character is part of the upper echelon of Athenian culture. Even with a massive political upheaval she’ll know a couple of them.

This has the unfortunate side effect of making it likely that Xenophon’s going to show up at some point. He’s a misogynistic jerk, but I’m familiar with the guy. He wrote so much firsthand.

He makes a great antagonist, at least.