IHOSE: What are some of the nuances an inexperienced author might miss?
LF: There are about a kajillion, but they fall into general categories.
Historical research can be a bear trap-- you might know what a dog cart and a tantalus and a seven per cent solution are, but did you know bagged tea was invented in 1895? (What a year!) Conan Doyle didn't have to do research into what to call an underhousemaid or how to address an earl--he was living it. These are contemporary accounts, not period set pieces. Hell, he didn't even bother over finding out if snakes drank milk. And if you got your historical information from films, pack up and go home--no gentleman would ever have worn a deerstalker to the opera, and I have
Murder by Decree to thank for those nightmares.
Category two would be humor. The Sherlock Holmes canon is hilarious, and if you set out to write a very very serious and very very perfect pastiche as a very very serious devotee, you will fail, because they (spoiler alert) contain jokes. Thus I put it to you, and thus I leave it: no humorless person will ever fully succeed at imitating Doyle.
Mostly importantly, and I cannot emphasize this enough, Holmes is often written as a caricature rather than a character, and this always breaks my heart. In the canon, he may be larger than life, but he is a person, one with private hopes and lazy daydreams and a sharp temper and a kind spirit. People seem to want to write him as only caustic, or only brooding, or even only drug-addled, when really he possessed elements of all these
in addition to being something of a scrapper, a Nature poet, and a practical joker. He cannot be a one-dimensional fellow in a deerstalker coldly hurling himself to the floor in search of a clue while crying, "My dear Watson!" It hurts my eyeballs.
IHOSE: What are some common "red flags?"
LF: Esteemed Sherlockian Otto Penzler once said, "...
noir is not unlike
pornography, in the sense that it is virtually impossible to define, but everyone claims to know it when they see it." A really great pastiche is similarly elusive, but there are some common rookie errors.
If the relationship between Holmes and Watson is effortless - effortless bickering, silences, discussions, offenses, debates, sulks, smiles, quips, and quibbles - then it's a good pastiche. If their dialogue is strained in any way, you're in immediate peril. If you put them at odds in any sense other than trivial banter, you're toast. Their characters mean absolutely everything to the series.
Language is of course extremely important. It has to be Victorian, but never antiquated, and that's difficult. Some of the sentences in the canon last two or three words, and others smoothly sail along for thirty or so. Many people simply cannot hear the voice, and instead they borrow phrases from the canon and twist a word or two to suit them--this semi-poaching rarely goes unnoticed by the connoisseur.
Finally, leaning too heavily on any one aspect of the canon is fatal. Some people write pastiches that are all foggy-London-haloed-streetlamps, others endless streams of wearying deductions; if you forget that plenty of cases took place outside of London proper or even (gasp!) in the summer, and that Holmes also reminded Watson to pack his tooth-brush [SPEC], you're done for. Pastiches shouldn't read like a stream of rehashed cliches. The story we are about to hear should be true--or at least sound it.
IHOSE: Speaking of pastiche, what's your take on the difference between pastiche and fanfiction?
LF: I think that the storytelling urge that produces "pastiche" and "fanfiction" are identical. We want to read further. We want to know them better. Some have found it eccentric that a newly discovered pastiche is being called a fanfiction online. Well, why not? They're the same animal, save for matters of self-identification and commercial intent.
A pastiche is a work "that imitates the work of another style, artist, or period." Fanfiction is "fiction about characters or settings from an original work of fiction." In what way do those descriptions differ precisely? They simply don't, to my mind. I always differentiate due to the commercial use of "pastiche" versus the more intimate community use of "fanfiction," but the real line of demarcation in my mind is people who insist on the fact they write "pastiches" and people who don't. Not to mention "homage," thank you Anthony Horowitz...
Previous coverage of this topic:
Conan Doyle Was Not the Author of the Lost Sherlock Holmes Story -
ihose.co/ACD_not
A Stylistic Analysis of the Lost Sherlock Holmes Story -
ihose.co/ACDstyle
Lost Sherlock Holmes Story - Clearing up Authorship (Storify) -
ihose.co/LostStory
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Melinda Caric
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