On today, Armistice day (Veterans Day), the focus, as ever, is on remembering. One of the nicest things I've seen today was a local bus company who, not only "wore" the poppy on the front of their bus as they usually do, but had changed their destination board to read:-
Lest We Forget
The Fallen Heroes
I thought it was nicely done.
War and conflict of course are the staples of many a fine novel, though one thing that has struck me about Jane Austen's work was her ability to completely ignore the Napoleonic Wars in her era. Proof perhaps that escapism is not a new thing in fiction.
But whether we read/write escapist fiction or not, remembering should come into our stories somewhere. Why? Our characters have their own lives and remembering, if only the mistakes they've made and what they learned from them, should come into the story somehow. Readers need to see where our characters have come from. What our characters remember is a vital part of why they are the way they are.
Lest We Forget
The Fallen Heroes
I thought it was nicely done.
War and conflict of course are the staples of many a fine novel, though one thing that has struck me about Jane Austen's work was her ability to completely ignore the Napoleonic Wars in her era. Proof perhaps that escapism is not a new thing in fiction.
But whether we read/write escapist fiction or not, remembering should come into our stories somewhere. Why? Our characters have their own lives and remembering, if only the mistakes they've made and what they learned from them, should come into the story somehow. Readers need to see where our characters have come from. What our characters remember is a vital part of why they are the way they are.
RSS Feed
