As my mind was wandering around, as is its wont, I remembered a program I saw many years ago about movie music. John Williams was one of the people doing the show, and he and a much older gent talked about the limitations of the Hayes Code, and how that influenced films, and thus their scores. One example was a dance in a dream scene. The older gent said that everyone in the screening room was holding his breath, waiting for the code inspector to catch on and flag the scene. Nope. All he said was, “Lovely dancing, good music,” and went from there. Limits did not ruin creativity in that case.
Consider, too, Renaissance and Baroque art. The Catholic Church and others imposed theological and taste limits on what could be depicted, and required certain elements, depending on the purpose and subject of the work. And yet, despite limitations, the results are amazing. Realistic art has limits, and yet manages to trigger imaginations and creativity even so.
All writers have limits. We might be limited by language, experience, personal morals and scruples (“I would never show that in my book!”), genre demands, and other things. Raconteur Press has different topic and language restrictions for the new boys’ adventure series than they have for their usual anthologies. Or an editor or printer might set a word or page limit because of the anthology’s demands. Sometimes the cost of printing leaps with a few more pages, and some careful trimming is needed. Mechanical limits don’t always force creative limits, but as Dave said last week, a hard word cap means some things cannot be fleshed out, or must remain allusions and not full tales.
What limits do you work under, if any, and what are ways you’ve found to work with those limits, yet still tell great stories?
Mad Genius Club 
16 responses to “Working Within Limits”
I write non-fiction, so my limits are the facts. Can’t write it the way it “ought to be.” Have to write it “how it was.”
That said, I work within those limits by challenging the generally-accepted facts. I go back and make sure those facts are not just “sea stories.” A surprisingly large amount of times they are. Then I get to say so.
One example: one of the standard tropes about the Royal Navy during the Age of Fighting Sail (1756-1815) was that the Navy was mostly made up of impressed men, many of which were landsmen who had never been to sea before. Even the history books written from 1850-1950 said so, and it was standard feature in sailing-era fiction.
The reality, proved by going through muster rolls, memoirs and Admiralty records from 1970-2024 is different. Impressment was never ever used in peacetime (and an officer could get fined and disciplined if he attempted it) and sparingly used through most of the period. (Except possibly from 1806-1814.)
The majority of the crews were volunteers (at least 50%, often up to 75-80%) and those impressed were almost always experienced seamen. (Many ended up rated as master’s mates or petty officers shortly or immediately after being impressed.) Landsmen were never impressed, but frequently volunteered. (It was a good way of learning a skilled trade.)
Knowing that changed the complexion of several of my books (and has been squirreled away for a nautical adventure series I hope to write in the future.)
That reality check is news to me, and very welcome. Much more sensible than the fictional “impress ’em all” that you always see.
I’m researching how the various scientific, industrial, and trading circles/societies/clubs/sponsorships & investors, and so forth situations actually worked in Britain (vs the quick impressions we get from various sources). My latest read (The Jewel House by Deborah Harkness) looks in detail at the froth of activity in these activities in the Elizabethan period.
It’s a stew of foreign craftsman, educated men, hobbyists, well-connected traders, naturalists, workmen, noble patrons, inventive debtors in prison, etc. all living/working in a restricted area of London, interacting like yeast. (There are echoes of the intense interactions between participants concentrated together that mark the Industrial Revolution, and even our own tech explosion).
It’s so much easier starting from the complex and detailed versions of reality when simulating a fictional setting — what you (now) know instead of what you know that ain’t so. To present a story, you may need to simplify the complexity a bit for the comfort of the reader, but what’s left can have (from real life originals) incidents/settings/complexity/improbability that are very difficult to believably invent from scratch. [Who knew that you could get so much work done in prison?]
G’Kar knew:
I don’t know if you’ve looked at The Enlightened Economy by Joel Mokyer. It’s about all the social bits and pieces, as well as economic, that went into Britain having the Industrial Revolution start there. For example, only England and Scotland had engineers who were outside the military, and thus available for civil engineering and other non-army things.
Domestic Revolution by Ruth Goodman also covers things. The British, starting with London, used coal to heat. Thus, the first steam engines were pumping water from coal mines, and very poor efficiency could still make them useful.
I got dinged in a non-fiction manuscript when I filled in dialogue that everyone knows would have been said when a Bad Thing Happened. (Someone set a dynamite charge, assuming that there was nothing expensive in the ground near by. Oops. Messy and expensive oops.) Did I have a memoir with the words in it? No? Then I had to limit myself to “One can easily imagine the expressions of dismay as …”
Fun fact: pirates sometimes impressed skilled craftsmen. One ship impressed so many that they mutinied, turned the ship over the authorities, and got to live out their lives in peac.
Yep. And there were never many real pirates to begin with after 1650. Maybe 5000-6000 max at any one time. And piracy only springs up when three conditions are present simultaneously: pirates, prizes, and ports. That is to say people desperate enough to become outlaws, ships with cargoes worth seizing and places to fence the goods.
I wrote an article on space piracy for the Baen website a few year back. That was discussed as well as what constitutes realistic and unrealistic piracy in SF.
The best real-life example I know was a homily given at a funeral. For one of the hymns, the family requested a naval hymn – their reason was unclear, as neither the deceased nor the family had a naval background. Nonetheless, the rector worked with it and her homily was full of oceanic metaphors. It was a truly wonderful sermon.
The Hayes Code was to protect the young and innocent. And who are the young and innocent? Those who lack the judgment to figure out what is implied. You therefore could imply lots of things because those who understood had judgment.
Limits are part of reality, and often help with creativity, like trying to shove 12 motorized axes with sub micron precision and high speed into a tight space….that project is going OK except the rotary axes are too wimpy…
I’m currently rereading TxRed’s Shikari series, and truly appreciate its limits. (I like it better the second time through)
The fanfic thing I did a while back, I’d posted the first few shorts before anyone else had taken a look at them.
Later Margret Ball graciously edited them for me, and I’d completely balled up the point of view in one of them. So I had to go back and rewrite it, after it had already been posted…
I set a hard rule that I could not change the events. No retconning. Ended up being a real brain teaser trying to figure out how to fix it without changing events, but I think I pulled it off.
So that’s my rule: no retcons, no reboots, no intentional breaks of continuity.
Those are very good limits and rules. Based on the screams from Whovians [Dr. Who fans] and Star Wars buffs, retconning can lead to great fan unhappiness. Which leads to author unhappiness.
Since Raconteur Press got mentioned, can somebody explain why Lawdogfiles has been suspended? (Working on the rash assumption that the suspenders bothered to state a reason. Like Insty’s friend with the French Bulldog account.)
“We’re not at liberty to say” is an acceptable answer, if that’s the case.
LawDog mentioned that the hosting service that he bought Lifetime Hosting from…. decided that “lifetime” didn’t really mean “lifetime” anymore, even if they’d promised it did when he paid the exorbitant amount to have it hosted for life. He, and his IT guy, both missed the notice that they weren’t looking for, and when he didn’t pay the monthly bill they never agreed to, suspended his account.
It’ll be hard down until he moves it, because he’s muttering variants of “not one cent for tribute.”
As I understand it, a few years back he purchased a lifetime host for his blog. Recently, possibly under new management, his blog hosting company decided that life time was much shorter was much shorter than he thought, and started demanding money to keep hosting.
I don’t know where thing stand now, or if they are coming to an agreement.