Historical Fictionistas discussion

Shelley wrote: "...History and literature are the two places where we can learn about what human beings are capable of. Is there anywhere else?"

Sadly, newspapers, TV news, and the Internet contain a virtually limitless supply of information of that kind.

I got into writing historical fiction after reading somewhere that a writer should write the kind of book they love to read, and write what they know. I'd been creatively writing for years but until I read this, I hadn't written anything in this genre. I thought about the kind of books I love; the classics of Thomas Hardy and George Elliot sprang to mind. Then I thought about the subjects which really interest me, i.e. history, social history, rural history, genealogy, and nature. Everything fell into place from that moment, and I knew right then the book I was meant to write. The research was an absolute joy as I was researching subjects that really interested me, and the writing flowed like milk from a 19th century cow! I had finally found the path to my writing soul. The rest, as they say, is history.Leap the Wild Water

Jenny wrote: "I got into writing historical fiction after reading somewhere that a writer should write the kind of book they love to read, and write what they know. I'd been creatively writing for years but unti..."

I came into writing historical fiction sort of through the back door. I had an idea, and the more I developed it, that's just what it turned out to be [g]. I haven't been here long enough to be allowed to advertise, so I won't.

I have always loved history, it was my favourite subject at school and most of the books I read are set in the past. History is essentially an endless reservoir of stories and the more you dig the better ones you find. When I started writing, historical fiction was the obvious choice and I have taken a particular pleasure in highlighting forgotten but amazing characters, giving them some recognition that they have long deserved. For me the napoleonic era in Europe and beyond is one of the most colourful, with plenty of contemporary records to uncover forgotten treasures.
There are real historical characters that make fictional heroes look positively dull in comparison. I remember first coming across a reference to Thomas Cochrane in Sharpes Devil by Bernard Cornwell. When I read the historical notes at the back his described life story sounded so far fetched I got his biography and found that if anything it was underplayed. When I later read his autobiography I found more amazing facts that his biographers omitted. The advent of the Internet means that there has never been a better time to write historical fiction. There is a growing range of memoirs long since out of print that are now appearing, often free, as PDF copies of old manuscripts and collections. Museums and libraries are now making more available online, recently I found key documents for the book I am currently writing in the Portuguese national library in Lisbon that I was able to copy and read in the comfort of my own home.
Researching and then devising a tale that will weave my central character between real events and real characters in an entertaining way is as much fun as crafting the book itself.

There are important lessons to learn by studying different periods of history and the way people lived during those times. The things people believed about the world in the middle ages are not the same things people believe today. A good work of historical fiction captures the way of life and the beliefs of a culture during some given period of time and teaches a lesson about them. All Quiet on The Western Front, which is a brilliant work of historical fiction, captures the attitudes prevalent in Europe during WWI and tells a story, using them to depict the horrors of war. I try to convey the same kinds of lessons in my own work.

I decided to write a historical fiction after I found accounts of American military nurses held prisoners in the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II. Their story is incredible, compelling and at the time available only to non-fiction readers. Ah-ha! A niche. I dropped my fictional characters into this already dramatic setting.

How did I get into HF? Well, someone once said, 'Geography is about maps, and history is about chaps.' In other words, if you encounter fascinating characters while reading non-fiction they often cry out to be set into a novel or a play.
Six novels later......

Tony wrote: "How did I get into HF? Well, someone once said, 'Geography is about maps, and history is about chaps.' In other words, if you encounter fascinating characters while reading non-fiction they often c..."

Very true! Especially if you encounter someone remarkable that no one has written about before. They are almost begging you to write about them from the pages of histories.

'Geography is about maps, and history is about chaps.'

Yes, I like that. So true. Mine is:

History is biography. Some historians forget this sometimes. HF writers don't.

I love this quote. Later, I will share how I come up with the settings and characters for my historical romance novels. It always starts with me imagining the lead character. Then, I create the place in my head. After a bit, I can sense in my head which direction the wind is blowing and the sun setting. It becomes that real to me; and therefore, hopefully, to my readers.

Sharon Penman got me started - anything by her is amazing. I don't think you will ever find a better writer in this area !!!!

I have questions about genre categories and this seemed the best place to ask it. I have a series that just happens to have a dragon in it. The King's RansomSo, Fantasy, right? It also happens to be set in the middle Middle Ages. So, is it Historical Fiction? Fantasy/Historical? or Fantasy/General? And, I have several works in progress that are set in the 90s. In one the plot revolves around an actual 1993 event. The others are simply set in the 90s because that's when I started writing them. My question: of course the 90s are not so long ago that these would be categorized as HF but are the 90s long ago enough that these would be considered period pieces? Or simply General Fiction? Thanks for your help.

I was an archaeologist doing research for a possible PHD but when that fell through I decided to turn the research into a novel ... lol

Very useful thing, research!

The mind has always brimmed with stories and characters.

I was a history major and have sailed for over 30 years, so writing a historical fiction about pirates seemed to fit.

How did I get started writing historical fiction?

My grandparents immigrated to Paterson, NJ in the mid 1890s. I was born in Paterson,but my family moved away when I was 11. When I read an article in the paper about the historical society giving lectures and tours of "America’s first industrial city" and the home of the silk industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, I decided to go and see what life was like when my grandparents got to America.

The stories about how the immigrants came to America looking for a new life away from the autocratic European rulers but quickly learned they had traded one type of autocracy for another--the tyranical silk merchants who treated their labor as expendable commodities to be used up and thrown away--were fascinating.

I had written 4 mysteries and liked to read historical fiction, especially the era post Civil War to the Depression. What I was learning fit right in the middle of this period.

I thought a story about the silk industry would make a great novel. After the lectures I continued to research the Paterson silk industry. I came up with characters, a domineering silk capitalist, his progressive socialist wife, and his radical unionist brother.

"Silk Legacy" was the result of those lectures and research. The story is a tumultuous romance wrapped around The Great Silk Strike of 1913.

I received many great reviews but as far as I am concerend these two are the best ones.

"I loved this book. The characters are so real…It is by far the best novel I have read on the Silk Strike of 1913." Angelica Santomauro, director, The American Labor Museum, Botto House Landmark, 83 Norwood Street Haledon, NJ 07508, the only labor museum in the country. Pietro Botto's House was a major staging point for labor rallies. Angelica Santomauro is an authority on the labor movement in Paterson during the silk era.

I was a volunteer docent at the American Labor Museum for 5 years so I am very familiar with your book. Everyone there always bragged that you wrote such a great book about the strike. It was always recommended for people and students as a "must read". The reason why it was recommended to students for research was because it was a good way to engage and absorb them into the nitty gritty of the strike without it being in the usual text book format. Dorothy Douma Greene

Well, I babbled enough.
Richard Brawer
www.silklegacy.com

I love the idea of taking real people and real events and weaving fiction around them. Presenting an alternative perspective of something important that happened in the past. Bringing it back to life.

Marjorie wrote: "I love the idea of taking real people and real events and weaving fiction around them. Presenting an alternative perspective of something important that happened in the past. Bringing it back to life."

I am not sure I necessarily want to give an alternative perspective, but rather just some, any, perspective. The Byzantine era I am writing about has not attracted authors in the past, although there seem to be more interested in it lately. I feel like too many authors write about the "popular" historical figures when there are a lot of other dynamic, exciting people in other times and places waiting to be discovered.

It all started with genealogy research. There was an 8-year gap in my immigrant grandfather's life--the 1890s in New York--so I decided to make up a story about it, working with what little information I had. Now I'm hooked on taking real people's lives and dramatizing their day-to-day life.

I started writing a book set in Greenwich Village in 1958 in the Beat Generation era because as a child I read a picture book about a little Beat girl. It fascinated me so much I started thinking about what she would be like as she grew older. In my story she is 11 going on 12. I think writing about the past can teach us a lot about where and who we are now.

First, I am not a writer but I have enjoyed reading your posts. I guess you could call me a want-to-be-writer. I have been mulling over an historical period that my ancestors were a part of and I am certain there is a story there. I have a few questions for you, if I may.

1. What is your primary source of information? Were you able to find the materials either online or at local libraries?

2. Did you travel to the locations of the story or do you feel you were able to use research material to envision sights, sounds, etc?

3. How long did you spend researching, approximately of course, and based on a completely new subject.

Thank you for any and all suggestions!

Kristine, good questions.
#1 -- original sources, then well-researched secondary sources. I lived in the San Francisco area during most of my research for my American Revolution novel and was able to use the Univ. of California Berkeley library and the Sutro Library (genealogy) in SF.
#2 -- I traveled twice to Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and walked part of the road taken by General Gates' army. That gave me a definite feel for surroundings, etc.
#3 -- at least a year and then bits of time over the years as I added to the original manuscript.

The subject matter I am researching now (the English settlements at Roanoke -- North Carolina -- in the 1580s) is thin on original sources with some amount of disagreement among secondary source historians. Internet sources have been helpful. I've had to buy several secondary sources because I now live well away from large libraries. I doubt that I will visit the area. I've been researching for a year and have more still to do.

Thanks Harold. I need to stop just thinking about it and jump into it!

Please do. Creating fiction based responsibly on fact is uniquely rewarding work.

Kristine wrote: "First, I am not a writer but I have enjoyed reading your posts. I guess you could call me a want-to-be-writer. I have been mulling over an historical period that my ancestors were a part of and I..."

My novel was inspired by traumatic events which really happened in my Welsh ancestor's lives. I discovered them while researching my family history - fertile ground for any would-be novelist. Before I began writing my novel, I visited archives, museums and read every book I could lay hands on about what life was like for rural people in the early 19th century. The Welsh writer, Richard Llewelyn, once said that 90% of a writer's research doesn't get included in the work. I think he was right. Most of my research was done so that I knew my subject so well that I could then vividly imagine myself there in that time and place. By the time I'd finished researching and writing the novel, I felt like I'd lived there with my characters! I wish you all the joy and knowledge which both researching and writing bring.

Thank you Jenny! I am feeling the same about this branch of my family and fortunately there is a lot of information on it, historically and family records wise. I searched my local university library site and they have a lot of information that I can use.

Kristine wrote: "Thank you Jenny! I am feeling the same about this branch of my family and fortunately there is a lot of information on it, historically and family records wise. I searched my local university lib..."

It's a wonderful journey you've embarked upon, researching your family history. I would do it all over again if I could!

I was researching local history to help have a road designated a Florida scenic highway and fell in love with the history. Then I discovered that no one else had ever written about it. But I didn't want to write a list of so-and-so did this-and-that in such-and-such year. I wanted to show how it happened. So I ended up writing fiction rather than history...

Family history is an interesting subject, and although I don't write it, I've love reading books inspired by ancestors... Babette Smith's non fiction and fiction accounts are both excellent reads A Cargo of Women: The Novel
A Cargo of Women: Susannah Watson and the Convicts of the Princess Royal

Sharon wrote: "Family history is an interesting subject, and although I don't write it, I've love reading books inspired by ancestors... Babette Smith's non fiction and fiction accounts are both excellent reads A..."

More books added to my tbr, lol.

I feel historical fiction chose me. I have three novels out now with a fourth, The Mapmaker's Daughter, coming out in March 2014. I wanted to try writing a novel and the women I wrote about in my first novel, The Four Seasons, kind of seemed to ask me to tell their story. Weird, but it feels that way. Laurel Corona

Of course, everyone is different, but as an historical fiction author I'd have to ask, do you read historical fiction? If yes, that's good, if no, then you are probably not qualified to write it. The second golden rule for me is that you need to find a subject (look around and he/she/it will find you). Be in love with your subject, you'll spend a lot of time with them. I went for a little known subject matter, but I'm so glad I did, as she's coming into vogue now. Look for that person or character that inspires you, it's so important. Good luck.

C.J. wrote: "Of course, everyone is different, but as an historical fiction author I'd have to ask, do you read historical fiction? If yes, that's good, if no, then you are probably not qualified to write it. T..."

C.J. - you are so right on both counts. A while back I met a woman who wanted to write historical fiction, but she didn't read it. She had never heard of people like Philippa Gregory, Bernard Cornwell, or any other best selling author of historical fiction, but thought that was what she wanted to write. I have to say I thought her writing was good, what I saw of it. But I did wonder why she wanted to. And I don't think she had made much progress with it.

As for writing what you love - yes. I heard Steve Berry say that at a conference earlier this year, and he was right. It is hard to sit in front of a computer for hours each day, and if you don't love what you are doing, then it will become unbearable.

Thank you, Eileen, I can honestly say I've made mistakes myself, legnthly ones, that cost me dear.

I agree it is critical to chose a subject/era you love. After all you will be immersed in it for two years or more, depending on how quickly you write. I have thought of many topics but have ruled them out because I wasn't sufficiently interested in doing the research. However, I disagree that you have to have read HF to write it. If you read a lot of classics you are sufficiently familiar with the feel of the past, and if you read any kind of fiction you have probably picked up much of the basics of characterization, setting and dialogue. I would say, just start and see what happens. You'll figure out what help you need soon enough. Laurel Corona, THE FOUR SEASONS, PENELOPE'S DAUGHTER, FINDING EMILIE, and in March, THE MAPMAKER'S DAUGHTER.

Loving the advice! I am already feeling the characters a little. I get ideas and "scenes" in my head, only hope I can get them onto paper! The big piece is definitely getting the facts/history together first. Thank you for the encouragement, I can tell how you all love what you do.

Kristine wrote: "Loving the advice! I am already feeling the characters a little. I get ideas and "scenes" in my head, only hope I can get them onto paper! The big piece is definitely getting the facts/history t..."

That is the fun part that gets you started. Remember that when you get to page 346 and wonder why on earth you are putting yourself through this because it is hard to find a publisher, it is hard to get readers, and does anyone make any money doing this?

One morning I was looking myself in the mirror and thinking why do I do this every evening after work when I could be watching tv with my husband? Then I remembered what was on TV and decided that was why I was doing this to myself.

LOL, Eileen. Good reason!

I got into writing HF because I love the challenge of immersing myself in a particular time period and place and trying to recreate that world in all its detail right from what people wear, eat, how they travel, think, speak, relate to each other. My first HF is set in a North East UK mining village at the start of WWII so I had some amazing stories passed down from my mother to help me and also an incredible living museum that recreated an actual mining town. My second HF is about a notorious female serial poisoner who just happened to be born around the corner from where my grandma lived a century later. I love HF because you can merge fact with fiction and come up with a fresh, unique take on a person or event from the past.

I got into it by asking myself a question: what side of WWII was Finland on? I honestly had no idea and don't know what prompted me to wonder but the more I looked into it, the more I realized the answer wasn't Axis or Allied, but a little of both. Then I realized that Finland, next to the gigantic bear of the USSR, was in a perilous place during WWII. What happened to the families that lived right near the border?

I think all good historical fiction starts with an author's self-education and curiosity. The best HF I've read is where we learn along with the author, rather than being lectured at.

Peter wrote: "I got into it by asking myself a question: what side of WWII was Finland on? I honestly had no idea and don't know what prompted me to wonder but the more I looked into it, the more I realized th..."

I agree. I started out by wondering why this particular Byzantine woman, dead for the best part of a millenia, would come down in history as having a deep hatred for a contemporary of hers. No historian that I have read, even now, has come up with any sort of guess about why, even when they have the same information available to them that I have. I'm not sure most of them cared. But I kept wondering and looking until I happened upon some genealogical info that gave me my "Aha!" moment.

It is those niggling questions that keep us up late at night that get us going.

Who is the Byzantine woman, out of curiousity?

Anna Dalassena

I got into writing historical fiction because I couldn't figure out how to invent a time machine (haha). I've always loved history and reading historical fiction is wonderful. But there is nothing like researching the time period and then immersing yourself in it when you write. Once after an intensive research and writing period, I went to a cemetery of the town I'd been researching. I was honestly startled to realize as I walked around that all the people I'd been writing about were deceased. They had felt so alive to me.

My fascination with writing American Civil War historic fiction really started when I was a child. Perhaps I was born with it, but my parents also encouraged it. For many years, starting when I was so young that this is one of my first memories, my parents took me to the Gettysburg National Battlefield Park. I remember the very long drive it was in those days from Washington, DC. We always stopped at an orchard along the way to pick apples and buy honey. I remember sitting in the auditorium in the main Gettysburg exhibit hall watching the lighted map presentation of the battle. I really did not understand what I was seeing, but the opposing colored lights were riveting as they pushed each other back and forth across the three dimensional map. Ridiculously primitive by today’s standards, it was the height of special effects when I was a kid. My Mom and Dad always bought me a Union kepi to wear, the hat of the common Federal soldier.

I also remember the old photographs of the dead on the battlefield. One in particular of a dead Confederate sharpshooter in the Devil’s Den, a small fortress of boulders that commanded an excellent view of where the Union lines were dug in, has always haunted me. The photo shows a young soldier slumped into a corner of the stones, his rifle leaning against the boulder next to him. I am sure it was the first dead person I had ever seen.

The picture is mounted in the Devil’s Den, and it seemed so odd to me, only about five years old, to be standing in that same place where the dead soldier had been. The picture was almost one hundred years old, but the rocks looked exactly the same. He had been there, right where I was. The place was the same, except he was gone and now I was there. I was there precisely because he, along with all of his comrades and his enemies, had fought there. His death had somehow changed my life, which was why I was in that little rural corner of Pennsylvania, but I did not understand how or why. There had been a war and people had killed each other over things I could not then comprehend, but what they had done changed something about me. I intuitively felt this, and knew it was important, that it had to have been important, because this very young man had died there 100 years ago.

Who had he been? What had brought him there? Why had he died? Why was he still there, in the Devil’s Den, at least in the photograph? Somehow, in some way, I knew he would always be there. The defining moment of his life was that one image of his death. The irony is that, as I found out much later, he had actually died somewhere else. The photographer had placed him in the Devil’s Den because it made a better picture. I suppose it did.

Today, my personal Civil War library includes about 400 books, and I have written two novels about the war. So you could say Gettysburg stuck with me.

Civil conflicts tear open and lay bare the soul of any nation. When brother fights brother, values are put in stark perspective by how the ferocity of our differences shatter our common bonds. In many ways, the United States was lucky. We created a mythology about the Civil War and what it meant that healed us as a nation, though a price was paid, mostly by the former slaves and their descendants. About a decade after the war, the North and the South finally reached an accommodation. Both sides would be allowed to maintain the nobility of the struggle, and the dignity of the surrender at Appomattox would form the core of the mythology of what happened between the two sides. In exchange, the South would accept reunification under the unspoken agreement that the North would end its half-hearted attempts to impose racial equality, permitting the South to maintain white superiority by violently repressing its African-American population in a form of semi-slavery. It was really the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s that wrote the final chapter of the Civil War, a hard fought battle by some of the most courageous men and women, black and white, that this nation has ever known. They faced enormous odds, and many died, but it is a credit to our nation that they finally prevailed. I do not mean to say perfection was achieved. It was not. The vestiges of racism live on, and vigilance is still required. But that is always true in any democracy anywhere I have ever been.

Which means that the Civil War really lasted a little over 110 years. From my experience of civil conflict around the world, that is about par for the course. Civil conflict is always the most enduring.

My recently published first novel is Touched with Fire

Touched with Fire

I didn't intend to write historical fiction. I just meant to tell my mother's World War II stories. But as I typed, I discovered holes I could not fill. What did a stove look like in 1936? What was the castle Mom described? What did poor people eat? Rich people? Were there sewers, or a movie theater, in a small town in Poland in that era? Cars? What did a market square look like, and what would they sell there? Who were the most famous dress designers of 1919? 1939? And what did SS uniforms look like?

It's hard work, writing historical fiction! You have to keep stopping to Google things!

I've always been interested in history, so I began reading historical fiction strictly out of curiosity. I was immediately drawn to the fact that the way one connects with a fictional character in any novel, I was connecting to an actual historical figure. This made me want to explore more historical characters and eventually write a book of my own on Mughal history.

I've enjoyed reading everyone's reasons for writing HF. Each (and every) explanation has a certain passion to it, the love of 'things'; historical facts, playing with words, promoting ideas.

I love to write HF because, like you I can take true historical facts and wrap them around exciting and compelling words. As we write (and read) the truth and importance of what has happened in the past comes to light. Sadly, the passage of time causes "us" to so quickly forget the love and devotion, trials and tribulations, and pain and suffering of those that lived before us.

For there is one truth above all about history. It does repeat itself. The trick about HF is to capture and hold the readers' attention to help them - remember.

Keep writing (and reading). The stories are amazing. How you mold your words about the past will help mold "us" and prepare us for what is yet to come.

Happy Holidays and thank you all for your inspiring words.

It is also worth noting that while times and circumstances chane, the human emotion remains the same. Thus our response to these Circumstances continue to remain the same.

I never intended my first novel to be in historical fiction, I just sort of stumbled into it!

Like many others I have an interest in history, it is pretty far reaching actually as I am also interested in archaeology and anthropology, but I did not have any ideas for writing a story on the subject.

The novel came about when I was travelling home from York with my wife and she pointed out a sign for the battlefield at Stamford Bridge and I told her about what happened there. She suggested I write something about it and it has taken over the last 4 years of my life!

I do read historical fiction but I also read plenty of other genres as well, my rule of thumb is that if it is a good story then I will read it.

I totally agree with this: Ruchir wrote: "It is also worth noting that while times and circumstances chane, the human emotion remains the same. Thus our response to these Circumstances continue to remain the same."

It underlines my rule of thumb, it does not matter the setting if the characters are well written and the story is interesting the genre can become inconsequential as long as we are able to empathise with what the story is about.