We Need More Author's Notes

Why reading what the author intended can be a good time

Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author and a podcaster who is also a librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!

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As usual, my friend

Gina Hogan Edwards

and I were talking about books recently. She was frustrated because she had recently read a historical fiction novel and been thrown out of the story by some anachronisms that kept popping up. They were subtle, in that they were sociological terms and concepts that were simply unknown/undiscovered in the era the story was set in, so they were markedly out of place (and time!).

While I do not write and rarely read historical fiction, I understood her disappointment, because nothing will drive me out of an epic high-fantasy story faster than the phrase “laser-like focus.”

To be fair, it’s easy to do. I once was writing a story set in a pre-industrial society and had a character say, “Let’s put the pedal to the metal!” Which, if you don’t know, means pressing the gas pedal of a car all the way down to the floorboard in order to go as fast as possible. The characters were not driving a car, and in fact, cars did not exist in that world at all. I think they were running? So it was wildly inappropriate to use across all vectors.

Fortunately, I caught it in edits! But there are plenty of times when a story makes it to print with anachronisms like that. We’ve all seen them at some point.

In the case of the book Gina read, though, I wondered. Had the author of the historical fiction novel purposefully chosen those terms? They might have. It was a book that dealt with a lot of issues like racism, classism, and sexism, which were threaded through the storyline. Could it be the author wanted to make those elements clear to a modern audience?

We can argue about whether or not that is a skill issue, but I can see situations where even a highly competent author of historical fiction might want to do that.

I should know. I am that author.

To be fair, I’m talking about fanfiction in this case, which by its very nature requires a huge investment on “suspension of disbelief” from the outset. And also, I’m not entirely convinced I’m “a highly competent author,” but I am, at least, one possessing a professional level of experience.

Here is the situation: I am a huge fangirl of the Chinese dramas Nirvana in Fire and The Untamed. They are very different stories, but both are set in fictionalized versions of “ancient China.” In the case of Nirvana in Fire, that’s around the year 600 c.e., give or take (the Southern Liang Dynasty era, although again: fictionalized). In the case of The Untamed…er, it’s more like the popular “vaguely medieval European fantasy world” of Western high-fantasy traditions. It’s a whole mishmash of aesthetics with a lot of magic on top that is generally and generously described (with a raised eyebrow) as “ahistorical.” Even for the wuxia genre (the name of the fantasy genre the show is in), The Untamed is infamously non-specific about era, setting, fashion, and politics.

In writing fanfiction for those stories, I’m coming in like a wrecking ball: middle-class white American woman who does not know Mandarin and who has never visited China. I walked through the touristy parts of Chinatown in San Francisco once, which I can tell you for sure does not actually count for anything.

In such stories, a lot can fit into a small mistake. If I read a fanfic for The Untamed where the lead characters get married, they better be in “wedding red” and not “mourning white”…unless the story has been shifted to a western setting and they are very specifically having a Western-style “white wedding.” If an author does not explain that in-story, the author’s note needs to pick up the slack. If neither is in evidence, I will definitely bounce. I do not want readers to bounce out of my own stories, so I head that off at the pass.

My solution? The humble author’s note.

While an author’s note is not a required field in ye olde Archive of Our Own (AO3), it’s used a lot. For me as a writer of c-drama fanfic, I often use it to make clear what research I’ve done, why I made the choices I did about some aspects of the story, where I know I’ve fallen short, and that I’m open to corrections. I do a lot of research, and in fact I am the creator of the NiF Resource & Rec List, a database of online resources not just for fans of the show but for people interested in the Chinese history and culture of the era it is set in.

Despite that, I know that I get things wrong. How can I not? What I want the readers to know is whether those things were done on purpose or out of ignorance. An author’s note is an incredibly convenient way to do that.

But I’m biased. Honestly, one of my favorite things to read is an author’s note. Whether that’s a preface, an introduction, or the humble “note from the author,” I love ‘em. And while they are not usually done by the author, I love annotated editions of books too.

I know, ‘death of the author’ and all that. I promise you that I can and do appreciate the value of reading a work without the author forcibly imprinting their interpretations on me outside of the text itself.

Still, I really enjoy hearing from the author about their work. I always have.

In my not-so-wayward youth, author’s notes were pretty sparse. Publishers had no space to give most authors for extracurricular writing, unless it was a special edition of an already famous/infamous book. Most of the meta was saved for interviews, magazine articles, or conferences. The scarcity made such asides all the more valuable and interesting, but on the other hand, they were pretty scarce.

That is not the case with fanfiction.

If anything, it’s the reverse. Writers use the author’s note to recount their inspiration, or talk about problems they had with the story, or thank beta readers, or explain story elements that might not make sense otherwise (such as shifting the canon timeline or the canon ages of the characters).

Furthermore, AO3 also offers authors endnotes as well as chapter notes. Not everyone uses all of these options, but many do.

For instance, I have used chapter notes to warn for upsetting content. I know some people hate content warnings, and it must be nice to live a life of such privilege. The rest of us often have things that we find so upsetting that we’re pulled out of the story, which can range from arachnophobia to animal abuse to rape. In my opinion, it’s just polite to give people the resources to make their own decisions about what they read. I use tags for stories I put on AO3, but the chapter notes are where I can detail what is happening in that specific chapter, if it relates to a warning.

(If you want to see this in action, the chapter note for Chapter 65 (“End of an Era”) of my fanfic The Bastards of Yunmeng is a good example, where I explain the scenario behind a “read more” cut for those who feel they need to know.)

But aside from all those practical reasons, author’s notes are great place to have some fun! I often include humorous asides about what characters are thinking in a given scene, which are little bon mots that would be completely out of place within the story itself. Not quite post-credits extras, not quite blooper reels, these tiny extra story bites invite the reader in on the joke with me.

Unlike printed material such as zines, journals, and books, space on a webpage is plentiful. I’d love to see more writers embracing the author’s note as a way to connect with readers. I plan to start using them more for my serialized fiction, myself!

It’s obviously not for everyone, as there are plenty of writers who simply want their stories to stand on their own. But for many of us, the author’s note provides interesting, enlightening, and intimate connections to the story, expanding it beyond the text into a personal conversation with the author. Readers who hate author’s notes can skip them, so there is little harm in putting them out there if you feel so inclined.

I, for one, would love to read them.

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