[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Good morning. Or afternoon. Or whatever time it is where you are. Speaking of time, let’s speak of time. History, to be precise.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”24362″ border_color=”grey” img_link_large=”” img_link_target=”_self”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
What historical fiction is
Historical fiction is fiction set against the backdrop of actual historical events, whether that’s the Battle of Hastings, Watergate, or a generic nineteenth century British factory. The setting doesn’t have to be super specific but must include enough details for the reader to get a sense of the time and place depicted. For example, there isn’t a big difference between a factory in 1850 and in 1855, but there’s a huge difference between a street scene in 1875 and one in 1885, since many large cities installed electric lamps around 1880.
Historical fiction can include actual historical figures but the historical figures must behave plausibly based on what we know of them. Examples: Gone With the Wind; The Other Boleyn Girl; The Hornblower series; Sharpe’s Rifles; Forrest Gump; the Clan of the Cave Bear series; the Aztec series. (Warning: the last two examples are pretty much straight-up porn by the end.)[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
What historical fiction is not
Historical fiction is not fiction written in the past about events that were contemporary to the time of writing (the Nero Wolfe books). Nor is it fiction set in the past but containing mystical characters or characters that behave improbably (Animal Farm; Her Majesty’s Dragon). It’s definitely not time travel (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court), AU or steampunk (no, you can’t kill Hitler and the Titanic has to sink).
We’ll get to fantasy and spec fic and steampunk, trust me. I love those genres too much to let them go. But this ain’t the time. If you have time travel in your story you are not writing historical fiction.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
How do I write historical fiction that doesn’t suck?
One word. Google.
I’m not kidding. If I had a dollar for every story I’d read that contained phrases like “the broad plains of Northern Idaho” I could quit this gig and move to one of the 114 named mountain ranges in Idaho.
Here’s the secret: you don’t have to know everything about the time period you’re writing in. You don’t even have to know very much about the time period you’re writing in. But you do have to know at least as much as your readers do.
What do I mean? Well. One time I was reading a pretty fantastic book that involved the heroine having flashbacks to a past life as an Aztec priestess. Don’t laugh, it was integral to her ability to locate El Dorado. Ok, laugh. But the point is, the author described her Aztec historical priestess, well before the era of the Conquistadores, as wearing silk.
Silk, as a quick trip to Wikipedia will tell you, is the output of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori, native to Asia. Not to North America. Now, I’m sure that the author meant well when she included this anachronism, but it’s one that most people would catch. If you’re going to write a New World story, you can’t put Old World stuff in it before contact has been established between the two.
The part that makes me the saddest is that the author was obviously trying to give this character the most exotic, glorious, fancy cloak she could think of when she described it as silk brocade. However, had she done the bare minimum possible research, she would have discovered something even better: Aztec priests often wore cloaks sewn from millions of hummingbird feathers. By failing to do this tiny bit of research the author not only made herself look stupid, she lost the chance to put one of the coolest items of clothing ever into her book.
Don’t be that author.
If you’re not sure what your characters should be wearing, don’t make it up. Look it up. It takes ten seconds, and it can add details to your story that you never would have thought of. If you’re writing a story set in the time of Jack the Ripper and you need to know what London looked like, there’s plenty of information available. You don’t need to become an expert on the sociopolitical underpinnings of Victorian society to write that story, but you do need to know the difference between London and the Square Mile, and whether either one had electric streetlamps.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
OK, so how do I write awesome historical fiction?
Step one is to ask yourself this question: why would I write a story that everyone already knows?
That’s what you’re doing when you pick a major historical figure to write about. Unless you’re Barbara Tuchman, you don’t have the time or desire to exhaustively research every detail of a historical figure’s life. And that’s what you have to do if you’re going to write about someone everyone already knows everything about. And unless you’re Longfellow, you probably won’t get away with that crap.
What if, though, instead of writing a story about Anne Boleyn set on May 19, 1536, you wrote a story about a guard keeping watch on Tower Green that day? Everyone knows all about Anne Boleyn; the details of her life are very public and have often been written about. The guard, however, is fair game. Nobody remembers them; there’s almost nothing archived that would allow anyone but a serious Tudor scholar to contradict you. Sure, you’d have to look up the uniform the guard would have worn, but that’s a lot less work. History has provided you with an empty shell to fill: what are the guard’s thoughts and feelings?
Another way to weave your story around known historical events is to use events that people know about to build a sense of tension. Think about writing a dinner party on the Hindenberg. A day in Hiroshima. If gently handled, the fact that the reader knows disaster is looming over your characters can provide a great sense of dramatic tension. Everyone knows the Titanic sinks; they don’t know if your characters will survive.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
a few final thoughts
Don’t look stupid: Google
Don’t write about things everyone already knows unless you know a whole lot about those things.
No time travel. I don’t care when you set your story, but you have to stay then.
Do pick minor characters and make them large. Your main character doesn’t have to be the most important person in the room for you to write about important events.
You don’t even have to include major historical events; they’re just a cheap and easy way to anchor your story in time and place. If you want to write about two guys talking over a fence in Ireland in 1802, go for it. If you want to write about the guys whose job it was to process crocodile dung into contraceptives in ancient Egypt, go for it. Just give the reader enough of a hook to figure out basically when your story is set.
Watch out for anachronisms! Sometimes it helps to get another set of eyes on your story. A reader can tell you “Um. The Normans spoke Norman French, not Middle French.” Or they can if you pick the right reader.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
