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Panel Discussion: What is Plausibility?
- Thread starter Gary Oswald
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Thanks for the shout out for Sgt Frosty.
If I might take issue with the comment with regards to the upcoming Nitpicker's Guide:
Ultimately the Peter Jackson LOTR films, which David criticizes for their portrayal of warfare, are excellent and hugely popular for good reasons, an amateur writer is not going to be able to match that for spectacle or emotion.
The Peter Jackson LOTR films sometimes gets things very right*, and where things aren't historically accurate, there are usually good practical reasons why that's the case.**
Right at the start of the book, I point out that the needs of dramatic portrayal and strict historical accuracy can be at odds. Hence the title of "Nitpicker's Guide." Interestingly, some fictional sources come out very well (JRRT's vision of LOTR, for example). Other's are mixed (Jackson's LOTR), and others come out badly (I'm looking at you, Game of Thrones. And Gladiator. And 300. And so many others).
* For example, the pre-battle speeches by Aragorn before the Black Gate and by Theoden before the Pellenor Fields are absolutely spot on for the traditional format of pre-battle speeches. Whoever wrote those speeches understood the principles on which these speeches are traditionally found.
** The paucity of spears among charging cavalry is simply a result of the fact that film extras are generally not trained to the same level of skill as the cavalrymen they are portraying, and charging with lowered spear in close formation without extensive training is a good way to have a lot of accidents killing extras and, more importantly, horses. Hence reducing the density of troops and reducing the issues involved with the right weapon.
If I might take issue with the comment with regards to the upcoming Nitpicker's Guide:
Ultimately the Peter Jackson LOTR films, which David criticizes for their portrayal of warfare, are excellent and hugely popular for good reasons, an amateur writer is not going to be able to match that for spectacle or emotion.
The Peter Jackson LOTR films sometimes gets things very right*, and where things aren't historically accurate, there are usually good practical reasons why that's the case.**
Right at the start of the book, I point out that the needs of dramatic portrayal and strict historical accuracy can be at odds. Hence the title of "Nitpicker's Guide." Interestingly, some fictional sources come out very well (JRRT's vision of LOTR, for example). Other's are mixed (Jackson's LOTR), and others come out badly (I'm looking at you, Game of Thrones. And Gladiator. And 300. And so many others).
* For example, the pre-battle speeches by Aragorn before the Black Gate and by Theoden before the Pellenor Fields are absolutely spot on for the traditional format of pre-battle speeches. Whoever wrote those speeches understood the principles on which these speeches are traditionally found.
** The paucity of spears among charging cavalry is simply a result of the fact that film extras are generally not trained to the same level of skill as the cavalrymen they are portraying, and charging with lowered spear in close formation without extensive training is a good way to have a lot of accidents killing extras and, more importantly, horses. Hence reducing the density of troops and reducing the issues involved with the right weapon.
Good topic for a panel discussion!
Yes, I think your article was misinterpreted, which is always annoying when it happens!
Re the speeches, one change which the Jackson films made was to move the "Death, death!" Rohirrim sequence to the start of the battle, rather than it being a call for revenge when Theoden is killed. You can probably argue whether it's more important for it to be thematically in place or whether it would break suspension of disbelief to have it happen mid-battle (Tolkien was using the classical tropes of Norse sagas where everything can operatically halt in order to have a dramatic death scene).
Yes, I think your article was misinterpreted, which is always annoying when it happens!
Re the speeches, one change which the Jackson films made was to move the "Death, death!" Rohirrim sequence to the start of the battle, rather than it being a call for revenge when Theoden is killed. You can probably argue whether it's more important for it to be thematically in place or whether it would break suspension of disbelief to have it happen mid-battle (Tolkien was using the classical tropes of Norse sagas where everything can operatically halt in order to have a dramatic death scene).
Also @SpanishSpy are you on Twitter, because in these ones your name sticks out as one I haven't @'d and I hope I've not just overlooked yours being mentioned!
@SpanishSpy 's point on plausibility changing as our knowledge of history broadens is a good one. I remember reading Boristopia and being caught out early by Johnson being uneasy about the sort of socially illiberal campaigns that, post-book, he happily hung around, or how actual PM Johnson didn't do things from Biteback's two what-if-Boris-was-PM essays. And that's learning what's plausible for a famous, very documented politician in the last seven years! (Or how Russia's many foul-ups in Ukraine wouldn't be plausible in a story published in January, "of course they'd take out the UAF early!")
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Possibly so. I don't feel like I did but if two people say so then I guess either I have misunderstood the book I am talking about or they have misunderstood me.
So the bit I said here was.
"I mentioned Sgt. Frosty Publications above and I do think David Flin’s upcoming book ‘The Nitpicker’s Guide to Ancient Warfare’ is interesting in this context cos it’s essentially saying ‘Hey a lot of mainstream fiction gets these details massively wrong, let’s do it better’ which is like you say part of the motive for this. Ultimately the Peter Jackson LOTR films, which David criticizes for their portrayal of warfare, are excellent and hugely popular for good reasons, an amateur writer is not going to be able to match that for spectacle or emotion. But we can be more authentic, it’s the one angle Hollywood has left for us, we can write for that audience who moan about the logistics of the siege of Minas Tirith."
Essentially plausibility is a way of finding a niche that allows to compete with fiction which is other wise impossible for amateurs to match because it is produced by professionals with a huge amount of time and money to devote to it. Hence the nitpickers guide.
Which opens with the questions does getting these details right matter? It opens in fact with the following page.
"They’re all nonsense, of course. Oh, they make for great cinema, but they bear no resemblance to how things were actually done.
Fiction books – and even books that claim to be historically accurate – are often no better. In The White Company, Conan Doyle has a longbow arrow punching straight through a shield at a range of 50 yards; the depiction of the Dothraki in Martin’s Game of Thrones; or depictions of a city under
siege, where there is no hinterland to the city, such as Peter Jackson’s depiction of Minas Tirith. Which leads one to the first question. Does it matter?
Is there a case that a work of fiction doesn’t need to be accurate? Aside from the fact that it’s no harder to get things right than it is to get them wrong, when you get it wrong, it’s hard to maintain internal consistency. As we will get to see throughout the course of this explanation, it’s no harder to get it right than it is to get it wrong.
And, of course, there will be readers who understand these things. Outrageous errors of the type mentioned above will demonstrate to those readers that the book probably isn’t worth bothering with.
These lead to a second question: Does it matter?
The military reflects the society from which it is drawn. I’ll be going into this in more detail in the book, but for now, it’s enough to know that it is the case. If things are to be internally consistent, one needs to have a basic idea of what the situation is.
Furthermore, knowing how the military is going to be structured will give us an idea how conflict with another military play out. Everything links together, and if you understand the links, it all makes sense. Or, if you rely on things like Game of Thrones, it doesn’t make sense.
This leads to a third question: Does it matter?
Quite honestly, getting things right, especially in alternate history where stuff is being changed, should be a goal in its own right. If people spot things that are obviously wrong, the willing suspension of disbelief will be lost. Plausibility is key, and if the reader sees a whole load of stuff they know is nonsense – arrows piercing plate armour at long range (thank you, Peter Jackson and Helm’s Deep), for example – they’ll not take the story seriously."
That bit twice uses Peter Jackson's films as examples of details being wrong and that the aim of the writer should be do better.
That is not to say that I think David was saying that Peter Jackson's films were bad, he doesn't. But that the weakness of them is they aren't historically accurate and that is a weakness we can not have.
Again, it's about finding the niche. The thing we can improve on. Because otherwise we are outgunned.
I apologise, if I have interpreted anything in a way that David didn't mean, but I am surprised to find that my summary of that book is not what was intended, because it seemed like I was just reading the text directly.
(Note: The text above isn't exactly the same in the published article on this blog, because I edited it for the blog. I didn't use that edited text because it felt unfair to do so given I changed the wording. Instead I used the words David sent directly to me.)
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Precisely so.
The whole issue of the changes between book and film is an interesting (in my opinion) and one that there is a lot of subject matter in. But not really relevant to AH.
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No need to apologise. It clearly means that I need to revisit that introduction, because if intelligent readers can miss the point I was trying to make, then that is clearly a fault of the writer and not of the reader.
For the record, what I'm trying to do with the book is to explain what was done historically. There may be needs for fiction in different medium (films, books, radio plays, whatever) to diverge from historical accuracy (heavy cavalry charges being a great example - extras unfamiliar with cavalry work may suffer an unfortunate number of accidents in trying to recreate what people extensively trained in such could do relatively easily). Ideally, these changes would be done with the creator understanding that they are diverging from historical accuracy for good reasons.
It's why I'm so hard on things like Game of Thrones, because GRR Martin makes great play about how much historical plausibility applies in the books (and films), and it just isn't so. By contrast, stuff like Jackson's LOTR gets criticised in terms of explaining what would have been historically accurate - I really ought to note why things are different.
Take, for example, this still from the Battle of Helm's Deep from the film.
Gimli the dwarf, whose helmet is barely visible, is precisely the right height for the wall on the fortress. Those elves are far too tall, and would be vulnerable to archery because half of their body is not protected by the wall. Especially Legolas who, being a named character, doesn't wear a helmet so that the audience can see who he is. There's a reason why fortifications have arrow slits. There's no point having arrow slits if you can just fire over the top of the wall anyway.
Of course, the reason it's done this way in the film is that doing it correctly would mean a dramatic shot in the film of a wall with possibly a few bumps where the helmets poke over, like that of Gimli. Which isn't very dramatic.
Jackson decided that the needs of the drama of the film outweighed getting it right.
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Nothing public-facing, no - I try to stay off that site for my sanity.
I should note that I like using the term "acceptability" over "plausibility", because I think it conveys what should be done much better. It's not "is this plausible" so much as "does the reader accept it" (and of course different people will have different thresholds!)
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Difficult to argue with that; the number of times I've come across real life events that simply aren't plausible ...
Talwar
Well-Known Sword
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A great read, folks.
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That essentially brings the term back to the ancient concept of "Willing Suspension of Disbelief." Which makes sense to me.
I think the other important aspect that hasn't been looked at is "Internal Consistency". Generally speaking, a fiction will set up its own internal logic. This may be a bizarre logic - but it needs to be internally consistent, or else the reader/viewer/listener will lose their willing suspension of disbelief. This was hammered home to me when telling the tales of Sergeant Frosty as bedtime stories to the intended audience. Trust me, any lapses in internal consistency were quickly complained about. For example, the audience knew that Sgt Frosty couldn't fly, although he could fly a snow helicopter. Likewise, a piece of Alternate History fiction will get criticised if one has Margaret Thatcher being tolerant of human frailty in others and being willing to compromise as a first option.
napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
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To some extent I think plausibility in alternate history can be considered a form of internal consistency within a shared universe. Like how in comic books you have to make sure that the characters' personalities and their powers match up to what the other writers have written (unless the point of your story is that this is a completely different version of those characters), but instead of what other writers have written you're being measured up against recorded history.
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I've thought a fair bit about this comment, and I can see how it arose from the Introduction of Nitpicker's as currently written.
Which is a useful bit of beta reading (although rather more public than I am used to), and informs me that the Introduction needs a heavy re-write.
The concept for the book arose when I was reading a book (it doesn't matter which) in which - with a straight face - the author has a Roman army of 500K marching for a couple of months across the Persian desert. I was not, to put it mildly, convinced, and it was difficult to take the rest of the book seriously.
That suggested that there was a niche for a book which outlined what is and what is not historically plausible for ancient military. And, by my nature, I enjoy pointing out trivial errors in films and books as part of the entertainment process. Look closely at the backs of the leather jackets worn on Game of Thrones, and you'll see machine stitching. Hand stitching, as would be appropriate on the front, where it's most visible, but machine stitching on the back, to keep costs down. That's what Nitpicking is. The difference makes little difference to the dramatic impact of the film, but it's fun noticing these things if one is that way inclined.
Sometimes things are incorrect in films for very good reasons, and that's fine. I feel that it is worth knowing what would be historically accurate, so one can make an informed decision as to whether or not changes are necessary. One can (and I will) cite such examples (for example, the Emperor's Thumb).
As a specific, I will be going into the logistics of the siege of Minas Tirith in some detail. It's a case where the Tolkien books get it pretty much spectacularly right, especially with regard to the operational movements and the move/counter-move between attackers and defenders. The inevitable constraints are observed, both commanders make sensible and effective use of their resources, and it is a brilliant piece of writing from the viewpoint of military operations. The Jackson film has to make some sacrifices to the requirements of filming the thing and having regard for the bladders of the audience (because to do a thorough job would treble the length of the film). But, in general, both film and especially the book have much to commend it from this rather specialist viewpoint. Or, no way am I going to moan too much about the portrayals of the siege of Minas Tirith.
Now, Game of Thrones, on the other hand ...
FriendlyGhost
Haunting history in a good way
I completely agree with this interpretation. It seems to me that what we are considering here is similar to the difference between 'hard ' and 'soft' sci-fi. No-one watching Star Wars, Star Trek or Doctor Who really believes that lightsabres, warp drives or TARDIS's are possible in the real world, but we accept them as part of the world we're watching. 'Hard' sci-fi, on the other hand, tries to ground itself in what's known to be physically possible (in the sense of 'permitted within the laws of physics as we currently know them'). So a 'soft' AH story might be a spy story set in a world where Sealion was successful and as long as the story itself is good we'll let it go, whereas a 'hard' AH story would not be able to get away with that.
Bringing up Star Wars actually brings me to my favorite acceptability anecdote. See, Kevin J. Anderson (whose reputation among SF fans is about as high as Mike Sparks' among armored vehicle enthusiasts) made a horrible short story about a robot who was onscreen for less than a minute in TESB getting plugged into the second Death Star and on the verge of being involved in copyright litigation with James Cameron when it's destroyed. He already had a record of trying to one-up the movies (OOOH MY SUPERWEAPON IS THE SIZE OF A FIGHTER AND CAN DESTROY ENTIRE STAR SYSTEMS -true story), and this was the biggest yet.
I remember even as a kid going "No. This isn't right. I don't accept this [emphasis added]".
No one has any illusions about Star Wars' accuracy, but I remember that just felt so offthat I couldn't accept it.
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Hence my reference to internal consistency.