How much license is provided by artistic license?
I am writing a novel of historical fiction containing a short scene in which the city of Kiev is bombed on the first day of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Twenty-two people were killed and 76 wounded in Kiev, according to official statistics. A 2011 Kiev newspaper article about this event mentions about ten specific targets that were bombed, and states "production and military facilities" and "peaceful city districts" were also bombed.
I have written a scene in which bombs fall on a large group of people who are celebrating within a certain park, which I name. I do not know if any bombs actually fell on this particular park. However, this one is germane to my story, and one of my characters is killed by a bomb blast there.
My question: Is it "permissible" to name this park without knowing for certain if there were casualties there? Although I think that this falls under "artistic license" I would like to read some other opinions. Thank you.
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1 answer
Look at it this way: artistic license is granted by the reader. You are not entitled to it in any blanket way. Some readers will grant you more; some will grant you less. Generally, they will grant you more the more you charm or entertain them.
If you are trying to write what I like to call diorama fiction, you will get very little license on these kinds of details, because physical and temporal verisimilitude the the chief pleasure of diorama fiction. (Though moral and philosophical verisimilitude are generally not wanted at all. Diorama fiction is a reenactment by modern people in period costume; historical values and patterns of thought are definitely not wanted.)
But if you are not writing diorama fiction, then your intended audience is not going to care, nor are they necessarily going to be deterred by the slings and arrows of the outraged diorama fiction addicts with too much time on their hands.
I tend to look at these matters this way: what pleasure is my book designed to provide? Will doing this or that enhance those pleasures or diminish them? There are no absolutely wrong techniques. It is all a matter of which ones create the pleasure your book is trying to deliver.
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