There's Gold in Them High, Proud Hills

The Fact That you have never before written a word for publication should not deter you from being the author of a fast-selling, money-making historical novel. It may, in fact, be an advantage.

In these times, when anybody can be a Real Oil Painter by simply filling in certain numbered areas, the literary muse has become a distinctly available girl. She'll hover around anyone--even you--if you know a few tricks of the trade. Here are those tricks.

A hero is your first requirement. His dominant quality should be endurance, because you have some grueling ordeals in store for him. This hero is a sexually voracious type and will require two women--a "good" one (flaxen-haired) and a "bad" one (black-haired). There need be no other difference between them. They are equally ravishing and equally ravished. Their clothes are periodically torn in the same places. Both are the owners of high, proud breasts of precisely the same measurements. (Note the phrase "high, proud breasts." Almost all historical breasts are high and proud. The only exceptions are the occasional "full, firm" or "soft, rounded" varieties, and even these are falling into disuse. Later, when you've mastered the fundamentals, you may want to experiment with such sensual swank as "Her young breasts were like newly ripened apples, swollen with rich juices, rosy with life and pearled with the fine glistening dew of love's awakening." This sort of thing is especially useful when you're being paid by the word. For the present, however, "high" and "proud" will serve you in good stead.)

You will need a villain. He should be the cold, intellectual type. That this cold intellectual is capable of harboring a healthy hunger for the high, proud breasts of the "good" girl may seem like faulty characterization at first glance, but it is one of the little felicities of the historical novel, one of the charming conventions that readers have come to expect. It lends a certain épice to the genre.* It is important that your villain have no good qualities. Making him love dogs, for instance, is the kind of careless writing some incompetent novelists may defend as "rounding out the character," but it only confuses the readers. They may get him mixed up with your hero. No, your villain must be bad through and through. And establish this early in your story. Devise a scene in which he calmly munches grapes while his mother is being barbecued over a slow fire. This will get your point across admirably.

These, then, are your main characters. Subordinates, such as right-hand men, confidantes, faithful slaves, wives, husbands and other helots are purely utilitarian. Make up a batch and keep them on hand for those odd moments when your main characters need someone to talk to or to hold the ladder while they escape from the villain's lair. After use, they may easily be discarded, like Kleenex. A stray arrow or bullet will get them out of your way in one sentence.

The rich, high-flown language of the historical novel may seem unattainable to you, but this is nonsense. Write in any style you wish, but be sure to sprinkle it liberally with such accepted expressions as Ods bodkins, 'Swounds, Hey nonny nonny, Nom de nom, and By the beard of the Prophet. You will find the more well-heeled of your characters dispensing money with a reckless hand. Denominations such as kopecks, crowns, drachmae, kronen, pieces of eight, etc., sound very good in these substance-squandering scenes. When in doubt, however, simply say "a purse of gold."

Eras, in historical novels, come and go on the tide of literary fashion. At one time, the French Revolution was all the rage. The Old South was another favorite. Both have had their day. For your first novel, it will be best to choose an era and locale about which little is known, such as Tenth Century Latvia. This will allow you that much-needed freedom of expression so necessary to your development. There will be few hard facts to obstruct your flights of fancy.

For the same reason, never use well-known figures of history as your main characters. Make them up out of whole cloth. But your novel will be rendered much more authentic if you occasionally treat your readers to The Dum-de-Dum-Dum Device. Here's how it works:

Your hero is a colonel in the French army. He is in the midst of the fray, cannon are booming, men are dying all around him. Suddenly, out of the melée appears a young sub-lieutenant bearing a dispatch for your hero. He reads it: it's good news. Turning to the panting, battle-stained messenger, he says, "You must have run swiftly, soldat."

"Only five miles," puffs the sub-lieutenant, "in five minutes, mon colonel."

"Good lad!" beams your hero. "You'll go far. What is your name?"

"Bonaparte, sir."

The reader can almost hear the portentous dum-de-dum-dum of destiny.

Your title is very important. Give it plenty of thought. Remember, the film industry may pay you several thousand dollars for the rights to your novel, and then use nothing but the title. So it must be good. Try such titles as How Deep Was My Cleavage, Rape the Wild Wench, West Blows the Wind for Passion, The Oleander Codpiece, The Buskin, Doublet, The Doublet Buskin. Nobody knows what a doublet or buskin is, but it sounds real historical.

We come now to The Plot. This is simplicity itself. Plots are everywhere. In libraries, for instance. Don't let bourgeois morality hinder you from making an artistic selection from all the best plots. After all, Shakespeare borrowed freely from other writers: why shouldn't you? Of course, there's a certain knack to appropriating the plots of others, and a beginner, by not disguising his borrowings deftly enough, may find himself face to face with the attorneys of Thomas Costain, Frank Yerby, Rosamond Marshall, or all three. So it may be wiser to think up your own plots just at the start. And here we discover a very encouraging thing. Historical novels don't have plots. They're more like travelogues. They will open in, say, England where the hero falls in love with sweet, flaxen-haired Lady Cecily, thus incurring the wrath of her uncle, Lord Roderick Biggerstaffe. This rascal is secretly lusting after Cecily himself, so he has the hero exiled to the coasts of High Barbary on a trumped-up charge of poaching, whilst he (Lord Roderick) gleefully gets out the warming-pan and prepares his bed for the fair body of innocent Cecily. The hero (usually called Jeremy) is captured by pirates and sold to an Arab slave-trader, who in turn sells him to Fatima, heartless but beautiful daughter of the local Shah. (Fatima is the "bad" girl of the novel and therefore has black hair--as well as sloe eyes, a velvety voice and an exposed navel.) In the course of the action, she exposes more than her navel, but Jeremy declares himself the property of Cecily and thus piques Fatima who has him hung by his toes over a vat of boiling oil, stark naked. This changes Jeremy's whole concept of fidelity. A chapter of unabashed lasciviousness ensues. (Meanwhile, in England, the unsuspecting Cecily is getting dangerously close to Roderick's trundle bed.)

When next we see Jeremy, he is wearing a turban and swearing allegiance to Islam. This is never adequately explained. Allegiance to Islam would seem to include drinking great quantities of date wine and making several sorts of whoopee with Fatima and also with a new development named Halvah. (One of the aforementioned subordinate characters. Halvah is a tasty slave girl who has been manufactured by the author to give Fatima a rest. Later, she's found out by Fatima and fed to the ants.)

Jeremy has undergone so thorough a brain-washing that he's jumping with joy over the prospect of leading the Islami hordes against the English infidel dogs. (Note: the word "infidel" is never used except in conjunction with the word "dog." It is something like "damyankee" in that respect). At the end of Chapter Ninety-Seven, Jeremy is diligently sharpening his Saracen blade. (Back in Merrie England, Cecily's bodice is already askew, baring her high, proud and also her full, firm breast to the eyes of Roderick.)

War! Shouting heathen oaths, Jeremy carves a bloody path through the Anglo-Saxon flesh of the valiant Crusaders. One of these is Benjy, a subordinate character who used to be Jeremy's closest friend. As he is dying, Benjy tells Jeremy of the impending invasion of Lady Cecily by Lord Roderick. This intelligence is like a dash of cold water to Jeremy's elastic allegiance. He turns on his Islami comrades and carves a bloody path through them to the waterfront, shouting Christian oaths. There he stows away on a merchant ship bound for Cathay where he transfers to an Italian barca sailing for Venice where he hitch-hikes a donkey ride to the coast of France, swims the channel, and arrives at Lord Roderick's castle to find that blackguard calmly munching grapes while sweet Cecily hangs by her toes over a vat of boiling oil, stark naked. (This serves a dual purpose: it gives Cecily and Jeremy something in common, besides getting rid of all her clothes for once.) Jeremy is about to run his sword through Lord Roderick when he is stopped in his tracks by Cecily. "Stay your hand!" she cries. "Would you slay your own father?"

This comes as a surprise to Jeremy. If Lord Roderick is his father, then Cecily is his sister. Or is she his niece? Or first cousin once removed? It's all too complicated for Jeremy (and the reader), so Cecily, still naked but no longer hanging by her toes, explains everything in a detailed genealogy that leaves us with the vague but comfortable feeling that, though she and Jeremy are rather closely related, they can share the same warming-pan with a clear conscience. This settled, Jeremy cheerfully kills his father and embraces Cecily. The rest is silence.

You see? There's nothing to it. With these basic precepts firmly grasped, all you need now is plenty of spare time, some paper, and a pencil. An eraser will not be necessary.

*A handy glossary of French terms may be obtained by sending one dollar to the author of this article.