Authenticity vs Accuracy

I remember being on a panel in one of my first Bouchercons with authors Sharon Newman and Laurie King, and since we all wrote historical mysteries, the discussion naturally rolled over to “authenticity vs accuracy.” When you write historically, history is king. You never change the history to serve the plot, it’s always the other way around. If your plot doesn’t work with the history, then it’s back to the drawing board for that plot. It’s the contract the author has with the reader that the author will try to get the novel as historically accurate as they can. That’s why readers tune in to historicals. They like history with their mystery.

But what do we mean when we say “authenticity vs accuracy”? Well, for one, my earlier books are set in late fourteenth century London; my more recent books in the Tudor period under Henry VIII, and a very Sherlockian nineteenth century England. When talking about the fourteenth century books, the Crispin Guest Medieval Noir books, that is, there isn’t a publisher in the world that would publish my first Crispin books if I wrote them in the more accurate Middle English instead of modern English. Some accuracy must be sacrificed for readers to be able to, well…read it. So the flavor of the language is re-interpreted. It’s plain to see by the way my characters use their words and phrases, that we are in a different time period. That’s job one.

World-building is a phrase usually employed when talking about sci fi or fantasy books, where entire world’s must be established for the reader to be immersed. In George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (that became TV’s Game of Thrones), he has to build from the ground up the land of Westeros, the dynasties, foreign languages, the authentic presence of dragons, built loosely on the medieval War of the Roses as its backbone.

But even if you aren’t writing fantasy and you’re writing in a time period that readers may not be entirely familiar with, there is a certain level of world-building for the reader; they may not know, for instance, anything about the monarch or the intrigue going on in the background, or how the everyday person lived, or what they believed. All of this must slowly roll out for the reader to absorb and believe mostly through dialogue and some through narrative.

For instance, in my Sherlockian series, An Irregular Detective series, a character might mention checking their Bradshaw (as Sherlock Holmes did in the Doyle stories), with no more explanation because in Doyle’s day, everyone who used railway travel knew what it was. Bradshaw’s Monthly Railway Guide was the ultimate compendium of all the railway schedules and prices in Britain and Ireland in the mid to late 1800s. But to mention it in the series (and allowing a character to explain it to other characters who don’t know what it is) is giving life to people who were as familiar with it as we are with our own highway system today.

Now, is it accurate to depict my creation of Tim Badger, the former Baker Street Irregular of the series title, to be the focus along with his black friend Ben Watson as partners in crime-solving? It is accurate in the sense of its possibility. Since the Doyle stories and novels of Sherlock Holmes were not historical fiction for Doyle and were written in his own time period, I consider them historical documents from which I may not veer.

Is it accurate to depict Henry VIII’s jester Will Somers as an investigator of crimes?

It wasn’t likely, but if that person were inclined and had a keen mind, he might set himself that task and relate his findings to the authorities (in this case, the captain of the Yeoman Guards of the King’s Body) and as long as these investigations depict authentic people and events, one can slip it into an historical piece with narry a lash blinked.

And finally, in the Crispin Guest series, is it strictly accurate for a knight who committed treason to be tried, found guilty, and live? Not necessarily. The common outcome was a very nasty execution. But by using the history of the time—and that the Duke of Lancaster, the king’s uncle, did have rumors whispered about him, that he would attempt to take the throne from his ten-year-old nephew—this accurate history opened the door for my protagonist, Crispin Guest, to have been living as a knight in Lancaster’s household and get caught up in this treasonous conspiracy. And authentic and logical even, for the duke to plead for his favorite protégé’s life so that he could survive, albeit without his title, lands, and a sense of himself.

And it may not necessarily be accurate for this disgraced knight to take up a career as a private detective (I call him the “Tracker”) finding lost objects for a fee, when there was no such thing as a detective, but the fact that it’s possible for the time period lends it enough authenticity for the premise.