Talk:Historical novels by Nigel Tranter set before 1286

Format

I have just created this page. I hope there are others who will contribute, or offer suggestions. My proposed format is as follows: Under each title should be publication information, followed by the chronological dates and a brief outline of the plot, detailing the historical characters or events involved. These should be wikilinked where possible. It might also be appropriate to link that page back here (under 'other reading' or 'fictional accounts'. See Robert the Bruce for an example of this.

For advice on linking articles, see Wikipedia:Links

Gwinva 12:58, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

For an example of what I have in mind, see Robert the Bruce trilogy. What do you think? Gwinva 17:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

To Do

1. Introductory paragraph needs fleshing out. Perhaps a discussion on influences of his work, reviews, Scottish identity etc? Gwinva 22:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

2. need a few pictures. How about covers? I don't know how copyright works on those: have to look it up WP:FAIR.

3. settle on a good title for the three pages and alter links.

4. Follow links to people and places and improve articles at that end.

A few days ago I created the Saint Theneva page (ie Thanea, lead character in Druid Sacrifice). Just a stub at this stage Gwinva 12:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Dating of stories

The chronological dates I have entered under each book come from no official source, only the notes I have made when reading the books over the years (ie understood from the text). Therefore, they may be inaccurate. If, from your own reading, you feel the dates are not right, then please change. But please only take these from the primary source (ie books) or confirmed research by Nigel Tranter himself, not hearsay or supposition. Thanks. Gwinva 16:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Title

A promising start. I suggest you move the page to Historical novels of Nigel Tranter set before 1286, to make it clear it is the events in the books that are pre-1286, not the books themselves. Similarly, "List of books in chronological order" should be "List of books in chronological order of the events narrated". Thats a bit cumbersome to be honest, but you see what I'm getting at? "Chronological order" would normally mean the order in which they were written. Maybe "Books by historical order of events"? ::Supergolden:: 09:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree title could be misleading. When starting the three pages, most of the titles I considered were rather clumsy -they need to be easy to use if you are linking frequently (or perhaps you can create shortcuts?). Also, if we are to be consistent with other Wikipedia articles it should really say 'historical novels by Nigel Tranter'. I'll sit on it for a while (no point rushing into another title if there is an obvious one that I've so far missed. I've also been hoping that others will become interested and come up with some ideas!) As to the second point: 'List of books in chronological order' is the how the publishers head up the list in the front of the books. However, their lists are sometimes inaccurate (some books out of order) so perhaps we could argue they are misleading there, also. Of course, if I was listing them in order of writing (as on main Nigel Tranter page, I would describe it as 'List of books in order of publication'. The problem is, I'm on my own here at the moment. Need someone to bounce ideas off. Gwinva 12:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

moved as per suggestion.Gwinva 16:12, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Why not separate pages for each book?

I know it is the custom (for many authors) for each novel to have its own page, but I do not think this is suitable for Tranter. 1. 100s of books = 100s of pages (who's going to bring them all up to standard?). 2. these usually include detailed plot summaries. There is little point doing this for Tranter's historical novels as the plotting is known: eg. for a detailed plot summary of The Bruce Trilogy, a reader just links to Robert I of Scotland. For this reason, I have not put any spoiler warnings on the list!! 3. Tranter's works do not exist in isolation: he took a broad brush across the whole of Scottish history, seeing it as one story. Readers of these pages want to see how the individual books all fit together to form one picture: they don't want to hop from page to page. Am I talking sense? Gwinva 14:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Are there any readers? Or am I existing in my own little world? Gwinva 14:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Nigel Tranter with Historical novels by Nigel Tranter set before 1286

There are no sources cited here, and even if there were, there's no reason no reason to separate these from other books. If there is enough reliably sourced information in the future, it would then make sense to see the articles. See WP:WHENSPLIT CapAdventurous65 (talk) 04:12, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, unless there are independent sources splitting Tranter's bibliography this way there is no license for us to do so. Historical novels by Nigel Tranter set between 1286 and 1603 and Historical novels by Nigel Tranter set after 1603 should be merged as well. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:32, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

• Support I agree. scope_creep^Talk 11:25, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
• Support, I don't really see the point of this. – numbermaniac 13:52, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: Wouldn't a full bibliography page work better than merging it with the author? A Nigel Tranter bibliography page? Why? I Ask (talk) 05:29, 30 November 2022 (UTC)