""To weave bast shoes, I insist!" or the rule of three "P"

Today we have a small analysis of various writers' tips concerning the authenticity of the text.

Let's make a reservation right away - so far only on this topic. There is a huge amount of advice to a writer in the information ocean right now, coming from anyone: publishers, writers, editors....

We will consider, perhaps, far from the entire array, but only the most noticeable, interesting and serious sources for our subjective taste.

In general, of course, advising is a rather complicated matter, and we do not undertake it. But to tell what we think is please.

Let's outline the circle of sources to begin with, whose advice to writers we considered: Chuck Palahniuk, Neil Gaiman, Elena Khayetskaya, Henry Lyon Oldie, Maria Semenova, publishing notes from Astrel-Spb and Eksmo. Not only for this article, but in general, the list of sources is also valid for our next notes on the topic of comparing tips and recommendations.

So, back to the topic. Bast shoes and authenticity.

What is authenticity?

This is a measure of the persuasiveness of the text. Not a "bucket of rivets" described with meticulous care and photographic accuracy, not matching a bunch of sources, references, documents. This, if you want, is precisely persuasiveness and... compliance with logic and common sense.

Exactly. How to achieve it, you will immediately be told from five sources - write about what you know! It's so easy, right? You know perfectly well how any person on the planet Earth, for example, makes tea. Or cutting bread. Or sitting in a cafe, riding a tram....Okay, stop. What, it turns out, to write only realism? Moreover, the realism of a purely geographical name and time period, where and when do you live? It looks like yes. In any case, such a formulation suggests such an idea. It can't be that everything was like this - anyone who has read such advice will exclaim in frustration, surprise or indignation. After all... but what about historical novels? What about adventure, fantasy, fantasy and mystical stories? How without them?!

And don't do it without them. Let's still go with them. Even the most biased advisers, critics and other participants of the literary process will not dare to offer you and throw out such a number of books from the world layer of culture. Although, you know ... * in a whisper * there are such. But let's not talk about them yet.

Let's read the tips further. Write about what you know! Inspiringly advise all writers. And if you don't know, then find out! You see, the adviser begins to feel deeply, you see, you can reliably describe it only by understanding the essence of the phenomenon. Having tried it, so to speak, on an empirical tooth. But our modern life - it has changed so much since the fourteenth-fifteenth century, and a modern city dweller without preparation will not write in detail about the life of yeomen, and even about a citizen of those years will not write, well! Because it represents the entire body of everyday affairs of a person separated from him by a fifth of centuries, very vaguely. And this is the truth.

This is indisputable, immutable, and there is no getting away from it. We agree one hundred percent. Of course, you can write it, but no one will read it; even boys and girls of school years who have watched enough of some TV series in pseudo-historical scenery will not. Well, or only very unassuming boys and girls.

Let's turn to the quotes, probably for clarity. Maria Semenova, the one who "Valkyrie" and "Wolfhound":

"Before I write another episode in my novel, I think through to the smallest detail what the characters should do, why they will do it, how the previous narrative will be reflected in this episode and how it will affect the future. And if my character gets to the lapotnik championship, then, fantasy or not, they weave bast shoes all over science. So, I should be able to weave bast shoes. Or, for example, in another book from the cycle "Brothers", the hero plays a lot on the harp. Which means I should be able to play them, too. And on the ones made with their own hands"

Op! Op-op-op! Here it is. The grain of most of these tips. Write about what you know. You don't know – go, learn, whip bast shoes, build a psaltery, cut a log hut. Shoot a bow if you're writing about Yeomen. After all, how is it? It's better to write about how a deflated bowstring hits an unprotected forearm when you've experienced it yourself, right? When you know and remember what it feels like in your hands when you pull this very bow, how to hold an arrow and how to pull your elbow away, how to squint to catch a target, how the string creaks and with what effort the shoulders of a longbow that was lent to you at the historical club bend... so, stop. Here - stop.

Picking up a longbow or recursion, which you will be offered by familiar lovers of historical weapons, you will know the name of this_bow. Not archery at all. That's why, it would seem. And we will explain.

Watch your hands: let's say you have absolutely no experience with this subject in the anamnesis. Let's say you're writing about Robin Hood, and you need, really need, well, you just need to describe the shooting scene. And by all means do it beautifully, in detail and -to-be-sure.

What will a person write who heeded the advice of an indisputably venerable writer? No, not like that– what will he do? He'll go looking for a place to shoot. The historical one-the sports section. He will find it. Spend a lot of time.... Get what? Modest experience, limited and conditioned by a)the quality of the inventory b) personal pens of the trainer c) time.

This experience will never, in any approximation (we are now talking about experience, not knowledge, this is important) compare with the experience of a person who has been shooting since the age of seven. Shooting not on Sundays for fun, or because Aunt Maria Semenova said it was necessary, but for the sake of survival. To have something to feed yourself and your family. Or to protect yourself from the enemy. Or to get the coveted prize at the tournament?

What will the person who strictly followed the advice write? A text that will generate a wave of cries a la Stanislavsky. "I don't believe it!"

I do not believe. That's just - not a single word. Why? Well, why, I did it... I shot, I know how, I know! By the way, in particularly severe cases, a wave of mocking comments, reviews and jokes may still follow, yes, yes. Disbelief reaches its climax. "But I..." - the author is offended.

No, dear writers and sympathizers. The authenticity does not lie in the fact that the author wove bast shoes and played the harp – but in the fact that he knew, and knew well, how people play these harps in general. Ideally, people with the same amount of experience as the described hero. To do this, you do not need (if you really want to, then you can, but there is no need) to weave them yourself. There are books for this, communication with people who are inside this activity, special literature.

After all, the author can not try out all the activities of the heroes on himself. After all, what are we talking about archery or bast shoes? The war, for example, is in the book, and the character is sitting in a dugout under machine gun fire... eh? What, to get hired in a PMCs and go to tame "tame recalcitrant zusuls" (c)? Let's go without extremes.

And then a painfully macabre picture turns out: the author who needs to write about, say, political intrigues, graduates from a prestigious law school, builds a career of a successful politician, bypasses a competitor in the elections in the most Macchiavellian ways, gets the post of president ... and right at the inauguration turns around and goes to his small cozy office, sits down and writes a single chapter in his novel.

Where is the reliability, if not in personal experience? In books, then.

And here lies rake number two. Rake number two is also called "riveting" - a term quite common among writers, and very much loved by Mr. Oldies. Us, in general, too. It means a detailed, meticulous description of all the details of material culture - up to the size and shape of the rivet on the armor of the fifth legionnaire in the seventh row. If we very briefly retell Oldie's position, with which we fully agree, it looks like this: the pursuit of rivets kills the soul in the text.

What does it look like? But here's how: when the text is full of tactical and technical details of every object or event that comes into view so much that it begins to resemble an encyclopedic dictionary or a short guide to some technology, even if baking bread, then there is almost no room for a free narrative that includes the thoughts and feelings of the characters. For an amateur format, let's face it.

He may be reliable in the material sphere, but he ceases to be reliable in the sphere of feelings, thoughts, actions and even sometimes the speech of the hero. After all, the book - if it's not a technical manual – is about characters. About living beings with thoughts, emotions, feelings and their own way of expressing them. And how few of those living and thinking who will express themselves with formulations like "I saw a fence made of hot-rolled steel rod with a square section a little to the side"! A living, ordinary person will say - he saw the fence, iron. The color will still tell if the fence is painted (yeah, "according to the primer, aklkid enamel in two layers") And that's it. The character should behave naturally, and not retell the encyclopedias read by the author page by page. Because otherwise it will be here again – I don't believe it. After all, any book is a book about people, even if the characters in it are humanoid robots or intelligent mushrooms. Because a person writes a book, which means - pa-pammm - writes about what he knows. We all always write about what we know, sometimes we just forget about it, that's the secret.

That is, after all, the advice about writing-about-what-you-know is being fulfilled one way or another, yeah. It's already good. You can exhale and try to finally figure it out – but what about the bast shoes?

The author needs knowledge, including specific ones. Necessary, in fact. We ourselves said above – the unreliability of what is happening will be visible to the naked eye if the author does not have this knowledge.

Let us recall again the words of Oldie - authenticity is born at the intersection of the spheres of knowledge of the author and the reader. After all, the writer writes for people like himself – many of whom yesterday did not really know anything about the life of yeomen, or about the everyday life of a groom, or about weaving the notorious bast shoes, except that well, there is such a thing somewhere, someone is doing it. Or did it once.

How to write about it and reliably, and in detail, and beautifully, and interestingly?

Beautiful and interesting – this is the personal talent of each storyteller. The power of visual means of language and the ability to build a narrative. But reliably and in detail – here is just the advice about weaving bast shoes personally by the author turns into harmful advice. We explained above why: because of the inevitable narrowness of the circle of experience.

Reliability. The queen of the fields, practically. That's how it comes into the text – the author, taking all the knowledge available to him, must first comprehend them himself. To understand what he saw, heard or even experienced personally impressed him the most. To understand what place it will occupy in the head of people who do this all the time. Literally– how much do you pay attention to the moment the lights turn on in the apartment? Yes, most do it automatically! So think about it – if the weaving of bast shoes is the same household routine, is it worth giving the character a separate time to diligently celebrate - a little to the left, a little to the right, don't mix it up ... is it necessary? Or not really? It can be different, by the way. What if your character is just learning to weave them? That's why we say: correlate the degree of experience of your character with the knowledge that you have obtained. In general, it is already possible to build a model of a person's ideas within the environment about this very environment – and this will help to call the elusive lady Authenticity into the text. Even if we are talking about a fictional craft – like the same Quidditch game in Rowling's texts, for example.

Therefore, therefore, gentlemen, we have created for ourselves the rule of Three "P", or even Three "P" + one. It sounds like this: Read it (in russian - Прочитай). Listen (Послушай). Understand (Пойми). If you want, then try it yourself, but don't think that trying (to weave bast shoes) is all you can do.

And only then go to the main "P" - Tell me. So that it would be interesting to you and your readers. The retelling should be concise and catch only the most important, interesting and/ or vivid.

The author is not obliged to be able to play the harp himself – the author is obliged to understand his character and the place, as well as the time where his character lives.

The author should remember about the balance – in this case, the balance of detail and simplicity.

To summarize, let's say this: we don't have many rules of our own, in fact. But we strictly observe them. The main thing is the balance rule. The second one is here. 3P+1. And authenticity is born in their combination.

Sincerely yours, E.G.