Originally shared by Mike Reeves-McMillan

How to be Period Authentic

Some resources. (Long post.)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve more than once had the experience of reading a novel set in a particular time period and getting no authentic sense of that period from the text. 

I’m not just talking about the Middle Ages here, either (though that too), but about the 1950s, or the 1930s, or the 1890s. And once I start to analyse the reasons for the lack of that sense of authenticity, it comes down to this: the text tells me a lot more about the time in which the author grew up than it does about the time period it’s supposedly set in.

What I mean is that the slang, the cultural references, the attitudes of the characters, and even the characters’ names come from, say, the 1970s or 1980s rather than from the setting. To me, this is just as bad as making errors in conveying a sense of place. It reduces the richness of the reading experience.

A lot of people don’t care, of course, because they don’t know, any more than the author does. But I care, and so do enough other people that I think it’s worth getting right – and getting it right is easier now than at any previous time in history.

Here are some resources to use if you agree with me.

1. For getting words, phrases and slang right:

Google Ngram Viewer: http://books.google.com/ngrams. This draws from a large corpus of texts and shows you on a graph when a word or phrase first came into (written) use. So, for example, if you used the word “hallucinogen” in your book, and it was set before about 1955, you might want to find another way of saying the same thing.

And if you want to say “freaked out” (1960s) but your story takes place in 1939, you might find this resource useful: 

http://www.phrases.org.uk/

There’s also the Historical Dictionary of American Slang at: http://www.alphadictionary.com/slang/

2. Getting Names Right

Names go in and out of fashion. Most of us have had elderly relatives with “old-fashioned” names that at one time were the newest hot trend. I myself have the most popular boy’s name from the year of my birth, but in 1930 it was relatively uncommon. 

Some names only became popular relatively recently, and even if you’ve grown up knowing several people with these names, it doesn’t mean that your grandfather would have. For example, Samantha is now a common girl’s name, but its popularity dates back to Bewitched in the 1960s. Before that, it was very rare.

(I am certain that even now there is a member of Generation Y writing a steampunk story set in 1855 with protagonists called Kyle and Madison. Don’t be that person.)

There are plenty of resources for getting these things right. My favourite is Behind the Name (http://www.behindthename.com). Not only will it tell you, for a specific name, when it began to be popular and show a popularity graph for each country where it’s used, but it has charts of the top 100 and top 1000 names going back to the 1890s for the US (less far for other countries, but a bit of time with Google will quickly pay off there).

3. Getting the Facts Right

Google is your friend. For example, I recently read a book in which a female superhero’s costume was described as having a “cheerleader-style skirt”. Now, in 1939, when the book was set, cheerleaders didn’t wear short skirts (which is what the author meant, based on a character illustration). Those didn’t come in until the 1970s.

How do I know? I took 30 seconds to type “history of cheerleading uniforms” into Google and scan through one of the top results. 

4. Getting the Money Right

The value of money, and the names of currencies, have also changed over time. How much did a nickel buy in 1930?

If you need to know, you can probably find out using some of the resources here: http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/current/howmuch.html 

5. Getting Cultural Attitudes Right

Cultural attitudes are a lot harder to research than the things I mention above. For one thing, they’re fuzzier and harder to Google, and for another thing, not everyone in a culture at a given time period thinks identically. If you don’t want all your characters displaying 21st-century attitudes all the time, take some time to immerse yourself in primary texts from the period, including ordinary people’s journals and memoirs (you can probably find some on Project Gutenberg and similar sites, especially for older times). That’ll also give you an idea of how they wrote – though remember, that’s not necessarily how they spoke. 

Better still, if it’s within living memory, talk to someone who grew up in that time. I’m now old enough to remember how different some cultural attitudes were 35 years ago, and trust me, things have changed a lot. 

I hope those resources are helpful to you. You don’t have to obsess about getting every detail right (Mary Robinette Kowal famously has a spellcheck dictionary which contains only words from Jane Austen, which may be taking it a bit far), but on the other hand, making no effort at all leaves you with a book that carries no sense of authenticity – and will itself date rapidly.

http://books.google.com/ngrams