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valarltdJust a few thoughts, mostly inspired by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
erastes posting the writing rules for various styles.
1) All pirate captains are noblemen--or noblemen's bastard sons--in disguise
2) The heroine, if she encounters him first as a pirate, will be terrified of him and not believe his nobility until taken to the estate he inherits around page 250-300
2b) If the heroine encounters him first as a nobleman, she will find him insufferable and fall in love only at sea. Then she will not believe the piracy until confronted with his flag or a sea battle.
3) All heroines must be orphans, or at least motherless.
4) All pirate novels will be set in and around the Caribbean between 1600 and 1776. They will not be set in Louisiana, the Carolinas, Scotland, Ireland, China, the Red Sea or the Barbary Coast. Nor will they be set after 1776, and certainly not into the 1900s. (The Wind and the Lion, with Sean Connery being all Arabic-Scottish, not withstanding)
5) All pirates sail galleons or brigantines. No one ever sails a bark, a sloop or a schooner. No one has even heard of a xebec. And under no circumstances will your pirates use canoes or pirouges.
6) All treasure will be in pieces of eight or doubloons. Even if the ship carrying it is Dutch or French or English. They will never capture loius d'ors, silver pennies or reales or escudoes.
7) Spaniards are always bad. French are usually bad. English can be bad or good. Americans are always good. And the Dutch never figure into it.
8) Despite the fact that only the trade in molasses and rum was more prevalent, the pirates will never capture a slave ship. Nor will any sympathetic characters own slaves. If, by chance, they do take a slaver, they immediately free the slaves instead of keeping them or selling them.
9) Despite the Code of the Brethern, women end up on shipboard with astonishing regularity.
10) Nobody ever drinks anything but rum, even if they hate it. The heroine will invariably hate her first taste of it.
11) Food is usually decent. Only if the plot calls for the ship to be becalmed (so that the Captain and his lady can fall in love) will there ever be weevils in the flour, maggots in the ship's biscuit and slime in the water casks.
12) Ships never leak. All cabins are dry and snug and well furnished.
13) All pirates are superstitious. But there is always one who is worse than the others and prophesies doom and gloom at every cloud.
14) If someone is flogged, he will be fine after being washed with sea water, having rum poured on his wounds and more inside him. In fact, rum is the sovereign remedy for everything short of an amputation, and it makes even that bearable.
15) No one is ever keelhauled, and the plank is run out only for plot advancement.
16) All sea battles are fought with cannons. All cannons are the same and all gunners are either excellent shots or really execreble. If the latter, the one time he's not supposed to fire is when he will hit his mark.
17) All pirates use cutlasses. No one ever uses a brace of pistols, a regular sword, a club or a belaying pin. If, by some error, you do write use of a pistol, it must either misfire, or mysteriously reload itself immediately.
18) Pirate, privateer, buccanneer etc, must all be used interchangeably.
19) Under no circumstances will your pirates run into a REAL pirate, like edward Teach or Calico Jack Rackham. Unless, of course, those are your pirates.
erastes posting the writing rules for various styles.1) All pirate captains are noblemen--or noblemen's bastard sons--in disguise
2) The heroine, if she encounters him first as a pirate, will be terrified of him and not believe his nobility until taken to the estate he inherits around page 250-300
2b) If the heroine encounters him first as a nobleman, she will find him insufferable and fall in love only at sea. Then she will not believe the piracy until confronted with his flag or a sea battle.
3) All heroines must be orphans, or at least motherless.
4) All pirate novels will be set in and around the Caribbean between 1600 and 1776. They will not be set in Louisiana, the Carolinas, Scotland, Ireland, China, the Red Sea or the Barbary Coast. Nor will they be set after 1776, and certainly not into the 1900s. (The Wind and the Lion, with Sean Connery being all Arabic-Scottish, not withstanding)
5) All pirates sail galleons or brigantines. No one ever sails a bark, a sloop or a schooner. No one has even heard of a xebec. And under no circumstances will your pirates use canoes or pirouges.
6) All treasure will be in pieces of eight or doubloons. Even if the ship carrying it is Dutch or French or English. They will never capture loius d'ors, silver pennies or reales or escudoes.
7) Spaniards are always bad. French are usually bad. English can be bad or good. Americans are always good. And the Dutch never figure into it.
8) Despite the fact that only the trade in molasses and rum was more prevalent, the pirates will never capture a slave ship. Nor will any sympathetic characters own slaves. If, by chance, they do take a slaver, they immediately free the slaves instead of keeping them or selling them.
9) Despite the Code of the Brethern, women end up on shipboard with astonishing regularity.
10) Nobody ever drinks anything but rum, even if they hate it. The heroine will invariably hate her first taste of it.
11) Food is usually decent. Only if the plot calls for the ship to be becalmed (so that the Captain and his lady can fall in love) will there ever be weevils in the flour, maggots in the ship's biscuit and slime in the water casks.
12) Ships never leak. All cabins are dry and snug and well furnished.
13) All pirates are superstitious. But there is always one who is worse than the others and prophesies doom and gloom at every cloud.
14) If someone is flogged, he will be fine after being washed with sea water, having rum poured on his wounds and more inside him. In fact, rum is the sovereign remedy for everything short of an amputation, and it makes even that bearable.
15) No one is ever keelhauled, and the plank is run out only for plot advancement.
16) All sea battles are fought with cannons. All cannons are the same and all gunners are either excellent shots or really execreble. If the latter, the one time he's not supposed to fire is when he will hit his mark.
17) All pirates use cutlasses. No one ever uses a brace of pistols, a regular sword, a club or a belaying pin. If, by some error, you do write use of a pistol, it must either misfire, or mysteriously reload itself immediately.
18) Pirate, privateer, buccanneer etc, must all be used interchangeably.
19) Under no circumstances will your pirates run into a REAL pirate, like edward Teach or Calico Jack Rackham. Unless, of course, those are your pirates.
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