the truth is rarely pure

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…

Now first, I have to say, that the plot you’re able to come up with in one day is not going to be without its flaws, but coming up with it all at once, the entire story unfolds right in front of you and makes you want to keep going with it. So, where to begin?

What is your premise and basic plot? Pick your plot. I recommend just pulling one from this list. No plots are “original” so making yours interesting and complicated will easily distract from that fact, that and interesting characters. Characters will be something for you to work on another day, because this is plotting day. You’ll want the main plot to be fairly straight forward, because a confusing main plot will doom you if you want subplots.

Decide who the characters will be. They don’t have to have names at this point. You don’t even need to know who they are other than why they have to be in the story. The more characters there are the more complicated the plot will be. If you intend to have more than one subplot, then you’ll want more characters. Multiple interconnected subplots will give the illusion that the story is very complicated and will give the reader a lot of different things to look at at all times. It also gives you the chance to develop many side characters. The plot I worked out yesterday had 13 characters, all were necessary. Decide their “roles” don’t bother with much else. This seems shallow, but this is plot. Plot is shallow.

Now, decide what drives each character. Why specifically are they in this story? You can make this up. You don’t even know these characters yet. Just so long as everyone has their own motivations, you’re in the clear.

What aren’t these characters giving away right off the bat? Give them a secret! It doesn’t have to be something that they are actively lying about or trying to hide, just find something that perhaps ties them into the plot or subplot. This is a moment to dig into subplot. This does not need to be at all connected to their drive to be present in the story.  Decide who is in love with who, what did this person do in the 70’s that’s coming back to bite them today, and what continues to haunt what-his-face to this very day. This is where you start to see the characters take shape. Don’t worry much about who they are or what they look like, just focus on what they’re doing to the story.

What is going to change these characters? Now this will take some thinking. Everyone wants at least a few of the characters to come out changed by the end of the story, so think, how will they be different as a result of the plot/subplot? It might not be plot that changes them, but if you have a lot of characters, a few changes that are worked into the bones of the plot might help you.

Now list out the major events of the novel with subplot in chronological order. This will be your timeline. Especially list the historical things that you want to exist in backstory. List everything you can think of. Think about where the story is going. At this point, you likely haven’t focused too much on the main plot, yeah, it’s there, but now really focus on the rising actions, how this main plot builds its conflict, then the climactic moment. Make sure you get all of that in there. This might take a few hours.

Decide where to start writing. This part will take a LOT of thinking. It’s hard! But now that you’ve got the timeline, pick an interesting point to begin at. Something with action. Something relevant. Preferably not at the beginning of your timeline - you want to have huge reveals later on where these important things that happened prior are exposed. This is the point where you think about what information should come out when. This will be a revision of your last list, except instead of being chronological, it exists to build tension.

Once you’ve gotten the second list done, you’ve got a plot. Does it need work? Probably. But with that said, at this point you probably have no idea who half your characters are. Save that for tomorrow, that too will be a lot of work.

(Let’s get it straight: Most societies over history have defaulted to skirts for everyone because you don’t have to take anything off to relieve yourself, you just have to squat down or lift your skirts and go. The main advantage of bifurcated garments is they make it easier to ride horses. But Western men wear pants so women wearing pants has become ~the universal symbol of gender equality~)

The book I’m reading literally just had its medievalesque heroine declare that peasant women wear breeches to work in the field because “You can’t swing a scythe in a skirt!”

Hm yes story checks out

peasant women definitely never did farm labour in skirts

skirts definitely mean you’re weak and fragile and can’t accomplish anything

skirts are definitely bad and will keep you from truly living life

Skirt hiking: Definitely a Thing. (Janet’s tied her kirtle green/above the knee and not below…)

(Seriously, the notes on this post are a goldmine for people mentioning their cultures where men wear skirts. I couldn’t fit them all in. This is missing toooons of cultures from every part of the globe, especially Asia, Africa, and the Americas.)

Ancient Rome

Modern Morocco

Medieval Europe

Traditional Saudi Arabia

16th century Russia

Traditional Papua New Guinea

16th century Turkey

and when i showed up for work in a skirt, all the men went BALLISTIC.  they told me i’d trip, i’d get stuck, i’d freeze, i’d quit within the month when i found that i had underestimated how hard the work was.  i asked what they thought women wore to work outside before the mid twentieth century, and they told me “women didn’t work outside then.  they stayed in the house all the time.”  and that’s when i learned that hatred of the skirt is another way of erasing women’s history–if you can pretend that all women were too hobbled by their clothes to even function, you can pretend that they never contributed jack shit to society.

Of course people who rarely/never wear skirts are going to have a harder time working in them than people who wear them every day! I wear shirts with big puffy sleeves everyday, and I never have any trouble with them, but someone who’s used to t shirts probably would.

I have to strongly disagree with the assertion that bifurcated garments are only useful for riding horses though. Plenty of cultures wore some form of pants, wether they had horses or not. Often you’ll see bifurcated garments with skirts layered on top of them.

Try and tell me that traditional Inuit women’s clothing includes trousers because they were riding horses they didn’t have and not because it’s sometimes -40 there. Skirts without anything underneath are very practical in some parts of the world, but in others you would quite literally freeze your junk off.

When someone tells you that you “can’t do X in a skirt”, they are wrong.

Specifically, they are leaving out some critical modifiers. It’s not true that you physically cannot do various things - ride horse, climb tree, run hard - in a loose skirt such as normal people have historically worn. What they may not be aware that they mean is: you cannot do those things in a socially acceptable fashion, which generally means without a chance of anyone seeing your underwear/lack of underwear. If you are in serious danger, or are alone, or simply choose not to care about this, I promise you can do those things just fine.

(Personally, in my life I find that I can also shovel snow in a skirt, because my scandinavian heritage makes me get warm VERY fast when I’m exercising. Obviously snow is not Super Cold Weather, but: you can do it. It will kind of suck if it goes over the tops of your shoes, though. Get good shoes.)

I run a corseting panel at anime conventions. I always start it with my feet up on the table, chatting with the audience until start time. Then I say “so, who believes I’m corseted right now?” WITHOUT FAIL the people who raise their hands are all veteran cosplayers, often wearing a corset of their own. Then I say “you’re right, I am. How many of you believe I’m tightlaced?”

The hands go down. My shirt comes off. I turn around to show them my laces and tell them tightlacing is defined as a waist reduction of over 4”, and I’m at slightly over 6”.

Then I turn back around and say “also, I’ve pushed a stalled car across eight lanes of intersection like this” and you should see the faces. They’re gobsmacked. They’re HOOKED. They never quite know what to say after that revelation. I never bother telling them I wasn’t even breathing hard because I know they wouldn’t believe me.

General:

Were you confused at any point of the story?

What genre would you say this book is?

When did you put the story down?

Is the ending satisfying?

If you had to cut 3 scenes what would they be?

When did you feel like the story really began?

What was the last book you read before this story?

Characters:

Do you get any of the characters names confused?

Which character is your favorite?

If you had to remove a character who would you and why? (you don't have to remove the character, just make sure their role is meaningful)

Which character do you relate to the most?

Which character do you relate to the least?

Do the characters feel real?

Are character relationships believable?

Are the goals clear and influence the plot?

Are the characters distinct (voice, motivations, etc)

Setting:

Which setting was clearest to you?

Which setting was the most memorable?

Am including enough/too much detail?

Plot and conflict:

Are the internal and external conflicts well defined for the main characters?

Are the internal conflicts and the external conflicts organic and believable?

Are there enough stakes?

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

Which can be an extremely effective device within narration!

They can work very well for characters whose names the narrator doesn't know yet (especially to differentiate between two or more). How specific the epithet is can signal to the reader how important the character is going to be later on, and whether they should dedicate bandwidth to remembering them for later ("the bearded man" is much less likely to show up again than "the man with the angel tattoo")

They can indicate when characters stop being as an individual and instead embody their Role, like a detective choosing to think of their lover simply as The Thief when arresting them, or a royal character being referred to as The Queen when she's acting on behalf of the state

They can reveal the narrator's biases by repeatedly drawing attention to a particular quality that singles them out in the narrator's mind

YES. the way this hasn’t left my mind….Like okay they’re still Victorians. They’re still sexist and homophobic. My thought for this alternate history is third gender people are expected to only marry into already married couples. And they’d probably throw in a lot of Christian Holy Trinity and Mary Joseph God imagery to religiously validate triads.

Or three people (of all different genders of course bc again. They’re Victorian) could marry all at once but the courting situation would be a nightmare.

This is why it was so important for women to marry well: even if you worked as a married woman (and many women did), your money wasn't actually yours. It's one thing to have to live with a drunk asshole; it's worse to have that drunk asshole be the sole person who decides if that paycheck goes towards rent or more booze.

So, having a trinity/three parts of one whole entity would totally fit Victorian ideas of coverture. I think you'd still have it be men > everyone else, because they'd expect some kind of hierarchy, and even within the Trinity, God is still the leader.

Second thought: separate spheres. The Victorian era was very heavily focused on men being involved in the "dirty" business of work/politics/etc., and women being more morally pure and better suited to the domestic sphere (the whole "angel of the house" thing). Obviously this wasn't actually or practically true a lot of the time, but it was the aspired-to standard, the thing you'd measure people against to say if they were acting appropriately as members of their gender or not.

So you'd need a third sphere for Honorables to inhabit that is completely separate from the work/domestic dichotomy, or create an entirely different three-way dichotomy. Basically, you'd need a thing to point to, like "X is very ladylike" or "Y is not manly," but for Honorables.

So, extrapolating:

You'd still have "Mr. and Mrs. Robert Smith," it'd just be, "Mr., Mrs., and Mx. Robert Smith" (differentiating by title, not by first name). I could actually see there being a different title for unmarried vs. married Honorables, like Master vs. Mister or Miss vs. Madam/Missus. Mix vs. Max, maybe?

I think Honorables would definitely need to have some kind of dowry. It actually might be even more necessary, because unless the guy is insanely wealthy on his own, you're going to need enough money to support three people, not just two.

The idea of who should be in charge of household accounting has always waffled between a man’s job and a woman’s job. Is teaching the realm of governesses and school mistresses or lecturers and professors. Academics are too weak and frail to be masculine but too logical and rigorous to be feminine.

Thus, men, even if they're unqualified on whatever area of knowledge they're dealing with, and even if they have no understanding of their or other people's feelings whatsoever, still possess an inherent and intangible quality that makes them the only part truly suited for decision making.

Woman: Caretaker

Honorable: Assistant/Advisor

I saw a post on my main blog about how hiking groups need to keep pace with their slowest member, but many hikers mistakenly think that the point of hiking is "get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible" instead of "spending time outdoors in nature with friends," and then they complain that a new/less-experienced/sick/disabled hiker is spoiling their time-frame by constantly needing breaks, or huffing and puffing to catch up.

I run into a related question of "how long does it take to travel from Point A to Point B on horseback?" a lot, as a fantasy writer who wants to be SEMI-realistic; in the Western world at least, our post-industrial minds have largely forgotten what it's like to travel, both on our own feet and in groups.

People ask the new writer, "well, who in your cast is traveling? Is getting to Point B an emergency or not? What time of year is it?", and the newbies often get confused as to why they need so much information for "travel times." Maybe new writers see lists of "preindustrial travel times" like a primitive version of Google Maps, where all you need to do is plug in Point A and Point B.

But see, Google Maps DOES account for traveling delays, like different routes, constructions, accidents, and weather; you as the person will also need to figure in whether you're driving a car versus taking a bus/train, and so you'll need to figure out parking time or waiting time for the bus/train to actually GET THERE.

The difference between us and preindustrial travelers is that 1) we can outsource the calculations now, 2) we often travel for FUN instead of necessity.

The general rule of thumb for preindustrial times is that a healthy and prime-aged adult on foot, or a rider/horse pair of fit and prime-aged adults, can usually make 20-30 miles per day, in fair weather and on good terrain.

Why is this so specific? Because not everyone in preindustrial times was fit, not everyone was healthy, not everyone was between the ages of 20-35ish, and not everyone had nice clear skies and good terrain to travel on.

If you are too far below 18 years old or too far past 40, at best you will need either a slower pace or more frequent breaks to cover the same distance, and at worst you'll cut the travel distance in half to 10 or so miles. Too much walking is VERY BAD on too-young/old knees, and teenagers or very short adults may just have short legs even if they're fine with 8-10 hours of actual walking. Young children may get sick of walking and pitch a fit because THEY'RE TIREDDDDDDDDDD, and then you might need to stay put while they cry it out, or an adult may sigh and haul them over their shoulder (and therefore be weighed down by about 50lbs of Angry Child).

Heavy forests, wetlands and rocky hills/mountains are also going to be a much shorter "distance." For forests or wetlands, you have to account for a lot of villagers going "who's gonna cut down acres of trees for one road? NOT ME," or "who's gonna drain acres of swamp for one road? NOT ME." Mountainous regions have their traveling time eaten by going UP, or finding a safer path that goes AROUND.

If you are traveling in winter or during a rainstorm (and this inherently means you HAVE NO CHOICE, because nobody in preindustrial times would travel in bad weather if they could help it), you run the high risk of losing your way and then dying of exposure or slipping and breaking your neck, just a few miles out of the town/village.

And now for the upper range of "traveling on horseback!"

Fully mounted groups can usually make 30-40 miles per day between Point A and Point B, but I find there are two unspoken requirements: "Point B must have enough food for all those people and horses," and "the mounted party DOESN'T need to keep pace with foot soldiers, camp followers, or supply wagons."

This means your mounted party would be traveling to 1) a rendezvous point like an ally's camp or a noble's castle, or 2) a town/city with plenty of inns. Maybe they're not literally going 30-40 miles in one trip, but they're scouting the area for 15-20 miles and then returning to their main group. Perhaps they'd be going to an allied village, but even a relatively small group of 10-20 warhorses will need 10-20 pounds of grain EACH and 20-30 pounds of hay EACH. 100-400 pounds of grain and 200-600 pounds of hay for the horses alone means that you need to stash supplies at the village beforehand, or the village needs to be a very large/prosperous one to have a guaranteed large surplus of food.

A dead sprint of 50-60 miles per day is possible for a preindustrial mounted pair, IF YOU REALLY, REALLY HAVE TO. Moreover, that is for ONE day. Many articles agree that 40 miles per day is already a hard ride, so 50-60 miles is REALLY pushing the envelope on horse and rider limits.

NOTE: While modern-day endurance rides routinely go for 50-100 miles in one day, remember that a preindustrial rider will not have the medical/logistical support that a modern endurance rider and their horse does.

If you say "they went fifty miles in a day" in most preindustrial times, the horse and rider's bodies will get wrecked. Either the person, their horse, or both, risk dying of exhaustion or getting disabled from the strain.

Whether you and your horse are fit enough to handle it and "only" have several days of defenselessness from severe pain/fatigue (and thus rely on family/friends to help you out), or you die as a heroic sacrifice, or you aren't QUITE fit enough and become disabled, or you get flat-out saved by magic or another rider who volunteers to go the other half, going past 40 miles in a day is a "Gondor Calls For Aid" level of emergency.

As a writer, I feel this kind of feat should be placed VERY carefully in a story: Either at the beginning to kick the plot off, at the climax to turn the tide, or at the end.

More recently, some scenes in “Wolf Hall” were also shot with period live-flame lighting and IIRC until they got used to it, actors had to be careful how they moved across the sets. However, it’s very atmospheric: there’s one scene where Cromwell is sitting by the fire, brooding about his association with Henry VIII while the candles in the room are put out around him. The effect is more than just visual.

As someone (I think it was Terry Pratchett) once said: “You always need enough light to see how dark it is.”

A demonstration of getting that out of balance happened in later seasons of “Game of Thrones”, most infamously in the complaint-heavy “Battle of Winterfell” episode, whose cinematographer claimed the poor visibility was because “a lot of people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly”.

So it was nothing to do with him at all, oh dear me no. Wottapillock. Needing to retune a TV to watch one programme but not others shows where the fault lies, and it’s not in the TV.

*****

We live in rural West Wicklow, Ireland, and it’s 80% certain that when we have a storm, a branch or even an entire tree will fall onto a power line and our lights will go out.

Usually the engineers have things fixed in an hour or two, but that can be a long dark time in the evenings or nights of October through February, so we always know where the candles and matches are and the oil lamp is always full.

We also know from experience how much reading can be done by candle-light, and it’s more than you’d think, once there’s a candle right behind you with its light falling on the pages.

You get more light than you’d expect from both candles and lamps, because for one thing, eyes adapt to dim light. @dduane​ says she can sometimes hear my irises dilating. Yeah, sure…

For another thing lamps can have accessories. Here’s an example: reflectors to direct light out from the wall into the room. I’ve tried this with a shiny foil pie-dish behind our own Very Modern Swedish Design oil lamp, and it works.

Smooth or parabolic reflectors concentrate their light (for a given value of concentrate, which is a pretty low value at that) while flatter fluted ones like these scatter the light over a wider area, though it’s less bright as a result:

This candle-holder has both a reflector and a magnifying lens, almost certainly to illuminate close or even medical work of some sort rather than light a room.

And then there’s this, which a lot of people saw and didn’t recognise, because it’s often described in tones of librarian horror as a beverage in the rare documents collection.

There IS a beverage, that’s in the beaker, but the spherical bottle is a light magnifier, and Gandalf would arrange a candle behind it for close study.

Here’s one being used - with a lightbulb - by a woodblock carver.

And here’s the effect it produces.

Here’s a four-sphere version used with a candle (all the fittings can be screwed up and down to get the candle and magnifiers properly lined up) and another one in use by a lacemaker.

Finally, here’s something I tried last night in our own kitchen, using a water-filled decanter. It’s not perfectly spherical so didn’t create the full effect, but it certainly impressed me, especially since I’d locked the camera so its automatic settings didn’t change to match light levels.

This is the effect with candles placed “normally”.

But when one candle is behind the sphere, this happens.

 It also threw a long teardrop of concentrated light across the worktop; the photos of the woodcarver show that much better.

Poor-people lighting involved things like rushlights or tallow dips. They were awkward things, because they didn’t last long, needed constant adjustment, didn’t give much light and were smelly. But they were cheap, and that’s what mattered most.

They’re often mentioned in historical and fantasy fiction but seldom explained: a rushlight is a length of spongy pith from inside a rush plant, dried then dipped in tallow (or lard, or mutton-fat), hence both its names.

Here’s Jason Kingsley making one.