Why write stories set in the past, say 1940s to the late 1970s

[Statius]

As an excuse to write fun 1950s salesman banter

Just read it. Funny as hell.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

I write mostly historical fiction. I do it because I love history, and I derive a lot of pleasure from the research that goes into my stories.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Many people at the time would have agreed that such sins were between the actors and God, just don't scare the horses. Nowt so queer as folk, etc.

Matthew Tomlinson's journal is an interesting example from the early 19th century: https://www.bbc.com/news/education-51385884

 

[AG31]

I see a lot of us have addressed reasons to set a story before the 1980s, but not so much about why in the four decades starting with 1940. I think the 40's began a familiar era. Some of us can actually remember the late 40s. We had cars and plains and public transportation and phones.... and familiarity. How many of you who were born after 1979 can see the appeal of 1940-1979?

 

[CalBishForNow]

How many of you who were born after 1979 can see the appeal of 1940-1979?

Not me. Sorry. But I guess someone who reads more realistic fiction than me might have a different answer.

All my stories here so far have been about realistic more-or-less-present-day people except for having much kinkier lives than anyone I know of in real life. (Except for two Halloween stories, but that doesn't count. I have some WIPs with sci-fi/fantasy elements, but they're still set in the "real" world except for those elements.) As for my non-erotica, I've written about people in a realistic world except vampires and other monsters exist, and everything I've read for fun in recent years has had some kind of fantastic element unless you count Agatha Christie. The present-day teenage billionaire is in some ways more unrealistic than the woman in the haunted house or the post-apocalyptic robot butler.

If I wanted to set a story in the realistic past, I'd be more interested in the 15th-19th centuries than in the mid-20th century. The mid-20th century doesn't feel like another world, it just feels like the real world with less convenience and more systematic discrimination.

 

[FrancesScott]

I’ve written two stories here which are set in the modern day, but which adopt the writing and dialogue style of two well known authors from the late 1880s to 1920s (Fitzgerald and Conan Doyle). It’s a challlenge technically and creatively, but I like challenges.

 

[yowser]

Several of my university years during the summer I worked at a beach resort town on Cape Cod to pay for textbooks and living expenses during the rest of the year. My (local) girlfriend had a friend who was fixated on the forties. He lived it. Only saw movies from that era. Quoted Casablanca incessantly. Dressed like it. Listened to Benny Goodman and all things swing. It was quite odd, but also charming. Drove a split window vintage car (I want to say 1948 Hudson, but could be wrong.) His grasp on reality, to put it mildly, was elastic, but everyone in town was fine with it. And of course I learned a lot about that decade.

As a writer it is great fun to imagine previous eras and try to write immersive tales. Of course the further you go back (unless entering some special period for which you have vast experience) the harder it gets, and anachronism lurks behind every corner, but sometimes just the research necessary itself is worth it all (maybe even more than the story merits.)

 

[HordHolm]

An important aspect of period pieces is that they don't age. They're already in the past, and the reader adjusts their mindset to read a historical piece.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

How many of you who were born after 1979 can see the appeal of 1940-1979?

(born 1970s but the point still applies) - You're basically talking about my parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents sex lives.

I used to think something like Woodstock sounded exciting and potentially erotic, until my mom who was there gave me her story of it (in short, if you thought you could hear music, you had better drugs than her friends had...) Clothes from 1940 to 1967 were boring and unpleasant even without rationing - though in suppose that's more reason to get out of them!

And the more depressing bits of history lessons. I did a 750 set in the 60s, but having done that, no, it doesn't really appeal, whereas I've written a fair bit set in the 1980s and planning to write more set in the 16th/17th centuries.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I think period pieces have a certain je ne sais quoi and I like doing them because it automatically sets a scene, technology level and even the fashion of the time.
We've all seen westerns, the way people dressed is fixed in our minds. It doesn't take much description if I add a blonde saloon girl in a yellow dress. The 1950s, 1980s, all the same way. And I was lucky enough to live through the 80s so I can bring everyting in my memories to the story.

 

[MillieDynamite]

For me, at least, writing in the past gives me a chance to learn about the time period before I write in it. It gives you the freedom of a setting where a wrong step isn't so easy to get away from. When you couldn't dial 911 on a cellphone. Going back into the fifties, the cops weren't concerned if Joe Blow knocked the crap out of his wife on a daily basis, because she was his wife, his property. You can write about what active racism was with a freedom that a current setting, with all the politically correctness, frowns on for a story that's in the here and now. But hey, I write some dark shit.

 

[Voboy]

I see a lot of us have addressed reasons to set a story before the 1980s, but not so much about why in the four decades starting with 1940. I think the 40's began a familiar era. Some of us can actually remember the late 40s. We had cars and plains and public transportation and phones.... and familiarity. How many of you who were born after 1979 can see the appeal of 1940-1979?

I was born in the '70s and have little or no interest in writing about the 1950s and after. I'll do pre-'50s and I'll do contemporary ("present-day") sort of stuff, but very little about the '50s, '60s, '70s, or '80s interests me as a setting; a lot of it feels like it's been overdone, for one thing. As for the '90s? For me, sexually, that's memory. So I don't even see it as "historical."

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Matthew Tomlinson's journal is an interesting example from the early 19th century: https://www.bbc.com/news/education-51385884

Indeed, along with the Secret Diary of Anne Lister, a woman in Halifax slightly earlier, who wore men's clothes and lived with a woman. The documentary about her is actually more interesting than the series Gentleman Jack, though it's good eye candy if you like masculine women on horseback and striding about and not taking any shit from men of the day.

 

[old_prof]

I was born in the '70s and have little or no interest in writing about the 1950s and after. I'll do pre-'50s and I'll do contemporary ("present-day") sort of stuff, but very little about the '50s, '60s, '70s, or '80s interests me as a setting; a lot of it feels like it's been overdone, for one thing. As for the '90s? For me, sexually, that's memory. So I don't even see it as "historical."

I was born in the 50's and the 70's are sexual memories for me. And the 60's represent a temptation to someone too young to participate in Woodstock or the summer of love but not too young to want to.

I think WWII offers lots of opportunities for good stories (I have not been inspired personally to write one, although I have a couple in my favorites). Soldiers about to go away to war, soldiers on leave, women left behind with few options, etc. Lots of emotional drivers, people willing to do things they might not have. The 50's, which to me actually extends from the end of Korea to the start of Vietnam (well the realistic risk of being drafted for the police action), so 54-65 or something, is just boring and I can't imagine being inspired to base a story there. But I know people have. Maybe it's just because my formative years were based in the rejection of 50's America.

 

[RetroFan]

As my user name suggests I mostly write my stories set in the past, and the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s are among my favourite decades. I write a lot of 1980s, 1990s and 2000s set stories too, and while I would write stories with a contemporary setting back in the 2010s, I dislike the 2020s so much that when writing a modern day story I'll move the setting back to the 2010s.

You can find more interesting plots in past-set stories, there is more mystery and actual communication between people (no social media or limited social media for stories set in the 2000s) and so many things in the modern day are a complete turn-off.

 

[XerXesXu]

Of course you did get a clampdown with Henry VIII's splendidly-named Buggery Act of 1533 (it wasn't illegal, previously), but that was mainly used for blackmail and having a handy pretext later to gaol anyone who had reported such an act but later fell out of political favour themselves. It was repealed by Bloody Mary, not because she was any more supportive of gay sex, but she felt it was down to God and the Church to judge such things, and disliked the petty blackmail opportunities it offered.

Repealed in 1967. The 1533 act was passed about 3 months after The Ecclesiastical Causes Act - the break with Rome. England was no longer a subject state of Rome, the King became the Head of the Church in England and entitled the revenues of the Church (who owned 1\3 of the land in England) previously paid to the Pope. Sacraments were reduced from 7 to 2, which did not include marriage, thus a contract and dissoluble. The monasteries also were 'dissolved' and their land reverted to the crown. This was achieved using the Buggery Act, which abolished 'benefit of clergy' requiring clerics be tried under common law rather than Ecclesiastical Law:
- 'Say 10 Hail Marys and 5 Our Fathers you filthy pederast ... oh and meet me behind the cloisters at 6 for personal counselling.'

The penalty was now death and your lands forfeit to the Crown.

The act had a 'sunset clause' of 3 years in its first 3 renewals, but this was then dropped as the act proved to be of wider utility than simply reclaiming monastery lands.

The common-law mitigated the severity of the act by requiring proof of penetration AND internal ejaculation. Generally, this could only be obtained by offering immunity to the catamite in return for evidence against the sodomite. You can see how that worked.

The Buggery Act 1533 tells a lot about politics and land law but nothing about the toleration of homosexuality at that time, which was widespread.

 

[ArdentHemingway]

I have one set in 1986 because that's when the events which inspired it took place.

And another begins in 1985 because it allows the main character to serve in Desert Storm and be tutored by a couple of elderly WWII veterans. It will culminate around the present day though as he raises his kids.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Um, Desert Shield and Desert Storm took place in 1990 - 1991, not 1985.

I have one set in 1986 because that's when the events which inspired it took place.

And another begins in 1985 because it allows the main character to serve in Desert Storm and be tutored by a couple of elderly WWII veterans. It will culminate around the present day though as he raises his kids.

 

[ArdentHemingway]

Um, Desert Shield and Desert Storm took place in 1990 - 1991, not 1985.

Yes. He wasn't old enough to jine up in 1985, he enlisted in 1989. He stayed in for the four years his fiancee was in college.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Well, that clears it up then.

Yes. He wasn't old enough to jine up in 1985, he enlisted in 1989.

 

[LetsMisBehave]

Thanks for all the replies. Some reasons for setting things in the past I didn't mention, but do (or will) explore in my own stories, include that setting stories in 1939 to 1943 in the UK means that the man might easily die within weeks. I definitely have reflected that women in the late 1970s/early 80s still expected it might be easier to be kept women, even if they were the intellectual equal of their husbands (and, let's be honest, often superior to them) or were less ambitious about the universities they applied to. One of my main protagonists is a totally fucked up human being (through no fault of her own) who is an intellectual Rolls-Royce and is trying to square the circle.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Just where does the month of Jine fall on the calendar? I wasn't alive back then, did we merge a month or two?

Yes. He wasn't old enough to jine up in 1985, he enlisted in 1989. He stayed in for the four years his fiancee was in college.

 

[SkyBubble]

I've actually thought about one set in the 1970s. She's a singer. Contralto.

 

[Actingup]

So you can write happy queers in such time periods, but need to understand the historical context, not plonk modern characters with their attitudes into the past.

This. It drives me nuts when historical fiction projects modern sensibilities onto the past. Apart from being insufferably superior ('we're so much more advanced now!'), it's also a complete waste of everybody's time by burning the narrative potential of telling a story that brings the actual past to life.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

This. It drives me nuts when historical fiction projects modern sensibilities onto the past. Apart from being insufferably superior ('we're so much more advanced now!'), it's also a complete waste of everybody's time by burning the narrative potential of telling a story that brings the actual past to life.

But if you don't project modern sensibilities backward, people will complain that your main character is unlikable. "Donatello treated his wife like a servant, except when he treated her like a child! And he beat his kids! He made his child labor work 12 hours a day every day!" Yeah, because he lived in Parma in 1123.