la_marquise (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
la_marquise) wrote2010-02-16 05:34 pm
la_marquise) wrote2010-02-16 05:34 pm
Entry tags:
Writing mediaeval Wales
New words: 504
First line written: 'From somewhere: a spear.'
Owain is in the thick of it, Gif is excited and the king is in danger.
I'm back into The Drowning Kings, with some recasting and rewriting, as I think I'd begun it in the wrong place. I'm a little happier with the project now, though it may still need to be storyboarded in some way. I'm not used to this sort of plot and it feels very strange, but I know I need to keep it more controlled than has been my wont.
And it's going to fail the Bechdel test. The society it's set in is intensely male, very stratified, and very sexist. And, because it's historical and because it's slap bang in the middle of my academic expertise, I can't bring myself to alter that, I can't collude in the Great Liberated Celtic Woman Myth. The shape of the culture defines in advance some of the things that can and can't happen. For instance, my protagonist. The protagonist has to be male. A woman simply would not have the freedom of movement, the respect, the possibility to become the necessary traveller and investigator. This is not a time or place where a woman had any real lasting power (or much safety). He has to be from the aristocracy for more or less the same set of reasons: any rank below that again would lack the opportunities and freedoms necessary. This is a society where most people are poor, most are unfree, many are slaves, and no-one had many rights outside their homeland (by which I mean the [sub]kingdom they come from, not Wales overall). It's not romantic, it's not egalitarian, it's not comfortable. And it is Christian. Another of the great myths is lingering paganism. But Wales was Christian by c.400. There are no traces of any pagan survivals in the early mediaeval period. The mental landscape is one of saints and demons, holy wells and clergy. (Perhaps some the wells and saints may have had earlier incarnations, but that was not known, not considered and would not have been believed.)
And then there's the names. The purist, the academic in me wants to keep this as close to proper as possible, to avoid Anglicisations and modernisations. The writer in me recognises that some Welsh words are hard to recognise and pronounce if you aren't used to them. I can keep the names of original characters as easy as possible -- Owain, Cadog, Idwal. But one of the major historical characters is called Hyfaidd, and that I can't change. ANd there are worse ones than that.
As to place names. I want, I really want, to use the Welsh ones. Mynyw, not St Davids; Ynys Mon for Anglesey. Ceredigion, not Cardigan. I am determined to use the Welsh kingdom names. But this is going to mean a map. Which I don't really want, I have an unnatural aversion to maps in fiction, they distract me.
It's an interesting endeavour. And I can't know what works till I get on and write it.
First line written: 'From somewhere: a spear.'
Owain is in the thick of it, Gif is excited and the king is in danger.
I'm back into The Drowning Kings, with some recasting and rewriting, as I think I'd begun it in the wrong place. I'm a little happier with the project now, though it may still need to be storyboarded in some way. I'm not used to this sort of plot and it feels very strange, but I know I need to keep it more controlled than has been my wont.
And it's going to fail the Bechdel test. The society it's set in is intensely male, very stratified, and very sexist. And, because it's historical and because it's slap bang in the middle of my academic expertise, I can't bring myself to alter that, I can't collude in the Great Liberated Celtic Woman Myth. The shape of the culture defines in advance some of the things that can and can't happen. For instance, my protagonist. The protagonist has to be male. A woman simply would not have the freedom of movement, the respect, the possibility to become the necessary traveller and investigator. This is not a time or place where a woman had any real lasting power (or much safety). He has to be from the aristocracy for more or less the same set of reasons: any rank below that again would lack the opportunities and freedoms necessary. This is a society where most people are poor, most are unfree, many are slaves, and no-one had many rights outside their homeland (by which I mean the [sub]kingdom they come from, not Wales overall). It's not romantic, it's not egalitarian, it's not comfortable. And it is Christian. Another of the great myths is lingering paganism. But Wales was Christian by c.400. There are no traces of any pagan survivals in the early mediaeval period. The mental landscape is one of saints and demons, holy wells and clergy. (Perhaps some the wells and saints may have had earlier incarnations, but that was not known, not considered and would not have been believed.)
And then there's the names. The purist, the academic in me wants to keep this as close to proper as possible, to avoid Anglicisations and modernisations. The writer in me recognises that some Welsh words are hard to recognise and pronounce if you aren't used to them. I can keep the names of original characters as easy as possible -- Owain, Cadog, Idwal. But one of the major historical characters is called Hyfaidd, and that I can't change. ANd there are worse ones than that.
As to place names. I want, I really want, to use the Welsh ones. Mynyw, not St Davids; Ynys Mon for Anglesey. Ceredigion, not Cardigan. I am determined to use the Welsh kingdom names. But this is going to mean a map. Which I don't really want, I have an unnatural aversion to maps in fiction, they distract me.
It's an interesting endeavour. And I can't know what works till I get on and write it.