Tuesday, June 11, 2013

How to work in boring information?

So I recently decided that one of my novels, I'm going to first put into a short story. It will have a lot of differences from the later novel version but some things remain the same. Things like... there's some boring information that I think is really important to my story! In the novel, I intend to just leave it as an introduction but how do I work some "boring" (I don't find them boring!) historical notes into my short story? I don't think I can just include an introduction but it feels like it's important to set up the culture going into my story as it's something many people aren't quite aware of.

I'll share the introduction below but I'm also angsting a bit because I'm just shy of 15,000 on the novel and the word count limit for the short story is 20k. I'm going to have to do some serious reworking of the pace and some of the finer details of the story to make it fit. Luckily I have a good amount of time to get ready to sub. I think maybe I can give the short story the happy ending that I don't feel befits the novel. Hm... Lots to think about!

The introduction is the following (and obviously it's in need of some editing):

Before the World Wars Germany had been a wonderful place to live. There were advances in many parts of society, advances that even America had lacked, still prior to even the black civil rights movement. In Germany, there were movements for gay rights, for equality, for democracy. The Wiemar Republic had noble intentions and hopes for a progressive society. It was the beginning of what could have been a golden social revolution. Perhaps the only country that was progressed as far as gay rights by this time was France, and the influence was not far from Germany.

For years, Magnus Hirschfeld pioneered the study of sexual science. He paved the way for many of the congresses and institutes that are dedicated to the study in this field. Hirschfeld was a Jewish, homosexual physician and a socialist. It was through him the groundwork for the gay rights movement in Germany and much of the modern world was laid down, not only that, but his was the first institute dedicated to the subject of sexual science.

Unfortunately, it was also through his work that the argument for why homosexuals were part of contragenics (any human who was not Aryan). He had hypothesized that homosexuals were actually a third gender and while he later debunked his own theory and abandoned it, it wasn’t before the Nazi party had latched onto it and used his theories against the people that he was crusading to help; the Nazi party used it as a basis for saying that homosexuals, like Jews were sub-human. During the Weimar Republic, however, he did prosper and provided invaluable research in a previous untouched field of study.

The hopes that were carried on the shoulders of the Republic were all but completely decimated after Germany’s defeat in World War II left the country in shambles and seeking a scapegoat for the hardships that followed, unstoppable inflation and skyrocketing unemployment. Everyone that was not the accepted majority of Germans fell victim to the anger and blame that the German people desperately needed in a time of nationalistic tragedy, rising inflation and fear of communist revolution. The Bolsheviks had succeeded in taking over Russia and Germany feared Communism as did most of the western world. Communism, after all was the worst fate that a country could fall to in those days.

Turmoil and desperation created many enemies two of the most pronounced and loathed the Jews and the Homosexuals even though many other groups bore targets as well. In the same desperation, Germany found two heroes, that they trusted would bring them out of their dark plight and restore Germany back to it’s previous glory. Hitler and Himmler.

The events of Roehm’s massacre in June of 1934 and the subsequent further outlawing of homosexual activity in June of 1935, the dates being no coincidence, and making it so that men had to even fear touching another man.

It is in this dark time that this story takes place.


It might be out of place to ask but if you were working with historical information but you have limited word count availability and it doesn't quite tie in nicely to your story then how do you make sure to set this kind of information without boring your audience?

So this stuff has pretty much been all that's on my writing plate lately as my cowriter hasn't been tossing me back her parts on the stories we're writing together. Hopefully next update I'll be able to talk about the progression of those.

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2 Comments:

Blogger dar said...

This is quite good. How about something like this:
'There was a time, before world war 1 and 2, when homosexuals had rights.' Stick a footnote flag on it to give the rest of the history, then move on with the story. Does that work for you?

June 13, 2013 at 12:37 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

I'm not sure if in the format it'll be published if footnotes are an option. I might just submit it with an introduction and just leave it to the editor etc... I don't know. I still have to finish writing the story. Ahhhh... That's probably a bigger issue than what to do with the history. D:

June 18, 2013 at 5:01 PM  

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