‘Edit: to prepare a piece of writing for publication by correcting, or otherwise modifying it’ – from OED (edited!).

It’s generally accepted that the sort of spelling and grammar checking built-in to most word processing software, is perfectly acceptable in novel writing. It is difficult to imagine a writer not using such tools in the 21st Century, unless explicitly as part of their ‘art’.

If your idea of editing includes giving an AI 1,000 words of your outline and asking for a 100,000 word novel, then most of us would say that it was not ‘your’ work. This is pushing the limits (beyond breaking point in my opinion) of ‘otherwise modifying it’.

The murky water lies between these two extremes and is further muddied when we ask what is, or is not, AI. When publishers, including self-publishing operations like KDP, ask if you used AI in the production of your novel, what do you say? If you used the tools built-in to your WP, does that count? What about stand-alone spelling and grammar checkers like Grammarly or PerfectIt? Cleverer software will check for inconsistencies in names, places or even ‘tone’. Is this then AI? To check for inconsistencies it will have to look at your whole MS at once. Are you happy about giving a remote computer your whole novel?

I am asking a lot of questions and not giving any answers. That is simply because I don’t think there are any definitive answers to any of these questions. You have to decide what answers work for you.

If AI is not much use for doing the writing, how can it help?

I think that it can be helpful in research. If you ask ChatGPT for something specific like “Describe the dress of a young law student in 1650s London. Give references.”, you get a reasonable answer and the references will allow you to check accuracy. Sometimes the references make it clear that answer is not as time accurate as you might like, but any major errors show up easily. Turning up and reading those references is likely much the same as doing your research from scratch, but the AI points you to useful ones very quickly.

Is this lazy? Or is it a useful saving of the author’s time that gives 90% of the result for maybe 50% of the effort? Good enough for a work of fiction, rather than an academic essay? Your choice.

A question was raised at the last Devon HNS meeting concerning AI and its effect on novelists, which made me think about how one might use AI in writing historical fiction.

You can use a prompt to make the AI write a whole piece of fiction for you.

I can see two major issues in doing this.

Firstly, I would not be interested in writing in this way. I write because I enjoy the process of creating a story and putting it down on paper and putting it out with my name on it; my creation. I can’t see any point in getting a computer to do that for me. What would be the point in ‘solving’ a crossword by simply looking up the answers and filling them in: or ‘doing’ a jigsaw by getting a computer to tell you where each piece goes?

But the bigger issue seems to me to be the quality of what comes out. What makes historical fiction good (as opposed to what makes other fiction good, which you need to do anyway) is the level of historical detail, evoking for the reader that particular time and place. This is precisely what AI is worst at. Not only that, but when there is detail, existing AIs are likely to make it up or transpose it from another place or time. So, if you want to avoid horrendous errors, you need to find them and correct them. If you are going to do the work and research that allows you to do that, you might as well have written the work yourself in the first place.

More on this another time.

Another interesting meeting of the Devon Chapter of the #HNS this week, at which one of our members told us the she is hoping to conclude a three-book deal in the near future.

Amongst other things, we discussed historical fiction as a genre and its sub-genres.

There has also been some discussion of ‘hard’ versus ‘soft’ historical fiction on Reddit this week, comparing it to science fiction where the distinction is often made – though, in the absence of a clear definition, it is difficult to categorise many works as one or the other. In historical fiction hard = sticking closely to accepted versions of history, while soft seems to be playing fast and loose with history. Where ‘soft’ fiction ends and fantasy begins, I have no idea, let alone where ‘alternate reality’ fits in. Equally, what is ‘hard’ historical fiction? If it’s sufficiently hard, is it history, rather than historical fiction? Where does, for example, Wolf Hall fit in? Mantel has stuck very closely to agreed historical fact, but her portrayal of the thinking and motives of Thomas Cromwell is not that of most historians – but we cannot know what really went on in his mind, so does this make her work ‘softer’?

What do you think?

I’m currently writing, albeit way behind schedule, about the printing house belonging to Nathaniel and Mary Holbeck in Foster Lane, near St. Paul’s. He is one of my Sudden Deaths victims which Ben has to investigate. At this point in the story Ben is suspicious of the wife and wants to look around the printing works for any sign that the victim might have been killed there, rather than in the street nearby, where his body was found.

In order to make this at all realistic I have had to stop and re-read Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises, a book describing a number of crafts/trades – the first to do so in English – published shortly after the events in the books. As recommended by @lsangha and Felicity Henderson.

The important bit, from my point of view, is Of the Office of a Master-Printer which describes in detail what the ‘printing-house’ should look like.

Moxon’s is available free at Project Gutenberg, Google Books or Internet Archive and is a great source for anyone interested in #EarlyModern.

I have just finished reading The Burning Grounds by Abir Mukherjee.

If the past is another country, then one thing better than a novel set in the past, is one set in the past in another country. This is the most recent in a series set in Calcutta in the 1920s, with a broken English policeman and an upper class Bengali sidekick.

They are all well-plotted and evocative of the time and place, with a selection of believable characters. Although some have rather too modern sensibilities, this is not too jarring, for me at least.

I like to think that the writing is not too different from my own.

If you have an interest in India and you like The Urchin, then you might well like this series – and perhaps vice versa.

I am excessively pleased to hear that the #HistoricalNovelSociety will be publishing a review of The Urchin in August, in their magazine (Historical Novels Review or #HNR) and on their website.

It will be one of probably 500 in that issue, but let’s not get too picky. 😄

Whether I will be quite so happy once I see the content of the review, is another question entirely.

At worst, hopefully there will be something I can quote, out of context, to make it look they liked it. Isn’t that what everyone does? 😉

How do you research the Republic?

I have a lot of books, ebooks and pdfs on the period, but I’m not going to list them here. Instead I’ll direct you to a couple of websites with resources.

www.worldturnedupsidedown.co.uk is a collection of materials for KS2 onwards, primarily aimed at teachers, but with material for anyone interested in the Civil Wars and the English Republic. Lots of podcasts, webcasts, articles and a really good book list for anyone wanting to investigate this period of British history.

manyheadedmonster.com is collection of articles ranging across Early Modern England and not so easy to navigate if you want something specific. But you can just dive in and read an article and know that it will be well researched and documented. Who would not want to read ‘Better a shrew than a sheep’?

In the White Hart with #HistoricalNovelSociety Devon Chapter again this week.

Much talk, as ever, about bringing your book to the public’s attention.

The conversation turned to public speaking about one’s period. One member said it was a very good way of promoting your books, but was so successful that it left her with no time to write. Seems you can’t win.

We also talked about the benefits and otherwise of doing an English degree. One of us, with an English degree from Oxford, advised his children against. Of course one did do English and, having graduated, asked “Why did nobody tell me that there were no jobs for English graduates?” – Teenagers eh?

The Bridewell Palace, beside the Fleet River, next to the Thames and just outside the city walls, was built for Thomas Wolsey, but he gave it to Henry VIII as a residence before it was finished. Henry enlarged it considerably, but then leased it to Jean de Dinteville, the French ambassador (portrayed in Holbein’s portrait of that name).

In 1553, Edward VI gave it to the City of London as a prison for minor offences (the first ‘house of correction’) and ‘hospital’, that is a place for the care of pauper women and children from the City. The name became a generic term for a prison. A physician was appointed to care for the hospital inmates, making it sound more like the current meaning of hospital.

In Sudden Deaths I have given it a mortuary or morgue, though I don’t know if it had one in real life.