Historical Fictionistas discussion

Peter wrote: "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 intere..."

Yes, people have not changed so much over the centuries - they just keep making the same darned mistakes that earlier generations made. And it is often difficult to realize that unless you get down into the weeds of history.

I find that I have a problem with the genre category 'historical fiction'. I love history and many of my books are set in a historical setting. But is that enough to make them historical fiction? I am not sure and would welcome any comments.

Eileen wrote: "Yes, people have not changed so much over the centuries - they just keep making the same darned mistakes that earlier generations made. And it is often difficult to realize that unless you get down into the weeds of history.
"

History definitely repeats itself!

Joan wrote: "I find that I have a problem with the genre category 'historical fiction'. I love history and many of my books are set in a historical setting. But is that enough to make them historical fiction?..."

I don't worry about the genre question, some people need to put things into boxes, I am not so concerned with categorizing everything.

That said, I don't see anything detrimental in the application of such labels as long as they are relatively accurate. If a work of fiction uses historical events as a backdrop then I would say that it is historical fiction and if a reader finds this useful when looking for a new book then that is okay with me!

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 [..."

Mary wrote: "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..."

Sharon, did you know there is a list called, Fiction based on the Author's Ancestors?
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/3...
Readers interested in fiction based on real people from the author's family history have added to this. I hope you will add the two books.

Firstly, because I have always loved to read it. I love understanding human motivation and different lives that were lived, you connect with humanity, what it means to be human when looking at past lives. To write historical fiction, is to connect and recreate a past life drawing on our own understanding of what it means to live, to be alive, to feel and to think. It is an invisible thread that connects all of us, those who are alive today and those now gone.

I grew up reading Tolkien. On my hour-long (each way) bus rides I would dream up epic stories of me and Aragorn saving the world.

Once I became a teenager, I began writing medieval novels. By two years ago I had ten of them in various states of completion, and I began self-publishing them.

At this point I have twelve complete and published.

There's just something about the medieval era for me. I've belonged to the SCA for many years, I have many medieval dresses I've sewn, and I'd be quite happy living that way each weekend. I do appreciate coming back to "modern life" though :).

Lisa

I love history since childhood. What motivated me to write historic fiction was the thinking that people should know more about history, but many find it kind of boring to read. I first read about Servetus´life in the classic Will Durant, The Reformation. I never knew there was a protestant inquisition, to me inquisition was a catholic thing. So, I decided to share this knowledge with others, and to do it in fiction, turning it lighter to read.That´s how THE TWO CHAMBERS was written, after 3 years of research. I really don´t think it is enough to write a novel only placing the characters somewhere in the past. Historical fiction must contain information about history. The reader must finish the book knowing more about history than he knew before.

Joan wrote: "I find that I have a problem with the genre category 'historical fiction'. I love history and many of my books are set in a historical setting. But is that enough to make them historical fiction?..."

Joan, if your readers learn something about historical facts, it is historical fiction.

I wanted to introduce readers to my little known Igorot culture. since we donut have written documentation that dates beyond the turn of the 20th century, I compiled what I knew from stories that have been passed down verbally from generation to generation. most of the written works of our people are from anthropologists and historians in the early 1900s. For me. their works are far too academical, so I took the opportunity to write fictional accounts and stories to make it more dynamic.

Well...I have always loved history but wrote modern literary fiction for a while before a writer friend 'convinced' me that writing romances was where the money was. Chasing the almighty dollar (I will admit, not my brightest hour) I began looking into becoming a romance writer and decided the only way the genre could hold my attention was to write historical romances. Well, two books later (never published) I couldn't take it any more. And one day an idea came to me that originally was going to be a romance but morphed into a dark historical mystery. I kind of fell into it and I really could not say why I hadn't thought of it before because dark, horror-esque, historical mysteries really fit me to a T. All the research keeps me riveted and the characters/settings are just so much more exotic, really.

Tracy,
Your historical mystery book does sound intriguing, and it sounds like something just 'clicked' one day for you, and you Knew; I've been working on two novels for ten years, both loosely based on our family's survival during the Holocaust. It's not about the horrors, it's about love and war and guilt, etc.
Anyone else out there writing on the same topic, please let me know, I'd be interested.
Good Luck!
Janet Lee Berg

I was a newspaper editor who really wanted to be a novelist. One night a story came across my desk about and orphan train reunion. I ripped it out and stuck it in my future file. Years later, the news biz long behind me, I came across the article and started researching as characters and story began forming in my mind. The history of the Ozarks became an instant fascination. I am currently working on another historical set here.

I've always thought of history as stories -- not dry facts. Fiction allows us to step inside another time and live and breathe it in ways very little else can. I wrote my book because of a visit to Greenwich Village as a 12-year-old and trying to imagine what people's lives were like when the tourists went home.

Jenna
The Beat on Ruby's Street

I conceived my historical novel The Eagle and the Swan while writing my nonfiction books on art history and architecture. In The Annotated Mona Lisa, I became intrigued with the glorious Byzantine mosaic in Ravenna showing Empress Theodora and Emperor Justinian. Then while writing a history of architecture (The Annotated Arch) I learned how Justinian supervised every detail of the construction of the amazing basilica Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. When I read that his wife was a ex-circus comedian, exotic dancer, and courtesan, I wanted to find out more about her. The more I discovered, the more I thought she needed to be given a voice to speak for herself, since she was venomously slandered by their court historian. Seven years of research and writing later, my passion for history, art, architecture, and setting the record straight resulted in an eBook.

My grandparents immigrated to Paterson, NJ in the 1990s. I was born in Paterson, NJ but my family moved away when I was 11.

I read an article that the Passaic County Historical Society was giving lectures on the era of the silk industry in Paterson which I knew my family had worked in. I wanted to see what it was like back in those times.

I went to the lectures and the tours of the historical district and an idea for a novel materialized. I did a lot of research of the era and wrote Silk Legacy.

It took me ten years to write Silk Legacy, re-write and re-write again. Inbetween I wrote mystery and suspense novels.

Richard Brawer
www.silklegacy.com

I think that's the beauty of this type of writing - we help people learn about real world history but do it in a way that they'll actively seek out in their leisure time. Many people won't read non-fiction tomes for "fun".

Lisa

I think it takes historical fiction to really give the experience of what life was like in the past. Non-fiction historians rarely speculate on what people were thinking or feeling, much less their undocumented words,actions, and gestures, all the details that make us "see" the characters as human beings. In a novel you can learn intuitively through the subtext provided by descriptions of setting, clothing, weather--all the tricks of a novelist's trade. "I, Claudius" gets me closer to the Roman Empire than anything except letters from the period.

I wanted to share my Igorot culture to the world in a way never done before. My people, the indigenous highlanders of the Philippine, have always used word-of-mouth to pass down our heritage from generation to generation. Literature didn't appear until the early 1900s, and it was from foreign anthropologists, historians, and missionaries. Up until now, everything about us has been the type of non-fiction that interests academic minds (few people). When I read books and watched movies about different world cultures (Braveheart, Last of the Mohicans, Whale Rider, etc), I knew the best way to share my culture to the world is through fiction. This is why I wrote the first Fiction Novel about Igorots: Igorotdo: The Enlightened Warrior Within. In doing so, I became the first Igorot author to write a fiction novel. Like many of the previous comments, it's a great way to tell about world history.

Lisa wrote: "I think that's the beauty of this type of writing - we help people learn about real world history but do it in a way that they'll actively seek out in their leisure time. Many people won't read non..."

I totally agree with you Lisa :)

Lisa wrote: "I think that's the beauty of this type of writing - we help people learn about real world history but do it in a way that they'll actively seek out in their leisure time. Many people won't read non..."

Lisa, until I discovered historical fiction and fictionalized history, I had a strong aversion to "history"; but now I can't get enough of it...learning so much and loving the process.

I was having trouble finding something to write about when I remembered the adage 'write about what you know.' I'd recently completed reading Dickens' novels and also accounts of his travels in America. Having him sire an illegitimate son an his first USA tour and then having that son go looking for him on his second seemed compelling, especially when I gave the story a twist by introducing a conman whose scam was impersonating the great writer. The novel sold as 'The Snake OIl Dickens Man'. I enjoyed historical research and writing so much I set my second novel, 'The Edge of the Crowd' in the London of 1851. Setting it then meant I could research The Great Exhibition, something I had wanted to know more about. It also meant reading a lot of Henry Mayhew and I've put that research into a non-fiction booking coming out in March called 'Crime and Punishment in Victorian London'. I've recently written my first present day-set comedy but for my next I'm feeling the pull of the past...

I began writing science fiction because I wanted to emulate Ray Bradbury. My critique group convinced me I had no apptitude for science fiction. Since I love history I thought I would try historical biography. I researched Ben Franklin for a year. The pieces I submitted to my critique group were dry and boring. Then my son brought me newspapers from Ireland when he traveled there with his best friend. I was intriqued by a story about children wounded in the peace zones in Belfast. Two characters popped into my head and I began writing pieces for my critique group. Those pieces resonated with my group and the instructor. After a year my critique group instructor suggested I had enough material to begin a novel. That lead to my debut historical novel, MURPHY'S TROUBLES, now available on Amazon.

Its mostly because I grew up loving reading about historical fiction and studying history.

My school actually had a Narrative History class - it was one of several options for a term where you could try out different things - I think I missed out on a citizenship-style class to take this one. But the idea was that you got to watch an historical film - Cromwell, Mary Queen of Scots etc and then you wrote your own story about the subject of the film. Great fun and fuelled my love of history and imagining what life would have been like in the past. I think mainly my interest is derived from a fundamental interest in history as a subject itself, but wanting to get behind the scenes and find out what really happened.

Mark wrote: "My school actually had a Narrative History class - it was one of several options for a term where you could try out different things - I think I missed out on a citizenship-style class to take this..."

Your school sure had a great idea. I often thought schools did not take advantage of the available historical fiction to help their students get a real feel for the times and places their history books discussed.

I like regional myths, and based my WIP on one from French explorers in Arkansas. The research on La Bibliotheque nationale was grueling, but I now have fictional main characters with real setting, etc.

Mark wrote: "My school actually had a Narrative History class - it was one of several options for a term where you could try out different things - I think I missed out on a citizenship-style class to take this..."

Agreed! Dates and times aren't enough to engage students.

Schools seem to be pressured hard to teach kids just what they'll be tested on. A lot of good other stuff like this tends to get left behind.

I think that's the value of the web - hopefully those kids can find support groups like this one to build their talents.

Lisa

I got into it because it really bothers me that so much of women's history has been lost. I do thorough research and then i write what I think the story plausibly might be, because otherwise it won't be told at all.

Historical fiction has always been my favorite genre to read, so it was natural for me to write HF. I do write and read other stuff, too, but I get most excited about HF as both a reader and a writer. History is just my thing -- I find it so thrilling to feel a connection to the past.

I started writing science fiction. While I love the genre, it doesn't love me. I tried biography - even bored myself. I started writing about two characters, Ian Murphy and Timolty Doyle and their story evolved during The Troubles in Ireland - so historical fiction discovered me - I guess?

I decided to write historical fiction through an interest in genealogy. I got the inspiration to write my first novel when I realised most of my ancestors were from the town of Nantwich, which was the scene of an English civil war battle (I live near Nantwich now but grew up elsewhere). After some research I started to get interested in local history which led me to realise that the civil war history of Nantwich was a fabulous story that had to be retold.

My first HF novel was when I was in high school. Jean Auel's brilliant Clan of the Cave Bear got me hooked but it wasn't until 5 years ago that it dawned on me to write what I loved to read. I had written a mystery novel before but I struggled through it. I found writing the HF novel kept me excited, passionate, engaged and most importantly my butt in the chair to complete it. I am working through re-editing it (again and again). One day, Lord willing, I will see my own HF novel on goodreads and on the bookshelves of Chapters! (P.S. I am Canadian and in our province and city, Chapters is our bookstore.)

I find the various paths to HF writing absolutely fascinating. I found my way via non-fiction. I had just finished writing a scholarly work on late-medieval international relations, and was left with a number of curiosities about the crusades, crusaders and crusading. I suppose I could have written another non-fiction, but since what I really wanted to do was explore what made crusaders (and, especially, Templars) "tick", fiction seemed the way to go. Being an avid HF enthusiast also helped pave the way.

I started writing HF because of my heritage and recording the stories of my grandparents some 30 years ago. Most people, when I tell them that my book is HF, they shy away. Why do people think that history is boring???
Keri Topouzian, Author
"A Perfect Armenian"

Keri wrote: "I started writing HF because of my heritage and recording the stories of my grandparents some 30 years ago. Most people, when I tell them that my book is HF, they shy away. Why do people think that..."

I never figured that out myself. Story is story on matter when it took place. SciFi is future - why isn't future history boring?

Laurel wrote: "I got into it because it really bothers me that so much of women's history has been lost. I do thorough research and then i write what I think the story plausibly might be, because otherwise it wo..."

This is very true, Laurel. In a discussion about this, a friend described it to me as 'giving a voice to the unvoiced'. Very worthwhile.

Laurel wrote: "I got into it because it really bothers me that so much of women's history has been lost. I do thorough research and then I write what I think the story plausibly might be..."

I started studying Talmud 22 years ago and learned that Rashi, the great medieval Jewish scholar, had no sons, only daughters. I became curious about them and did a lot of research just for my own edification. At first I had no intention of writing anything, but what I learned about the lives of Jewish women in 11th-century France was so fascinating that I decided to put it into a historical novel - the book that I wanted to read. I never imagined that anyone else would read it, and I wasn't even sure I'd finish it.

It took me 7 years, but eventually, just in time for the 900th anniversary of Rashi's death in 2005, I self-published Rashi's Daughters: Joheved.

My first novel is wartime fiction, which is very recent history as there are still people alive who remember the war. Nevertheless, their stories are being lost forever. I wanted to honour women's contribution in particular, since they don't usually find their way into the military history books.

I was writing in a completely different genre. Then I went biking on the C&O Canal and learned about all of the history associated with it. Being a writer, I started trying to think up a way to tell the story of the canal. At the time, I believed all non-fiction history was like my high school textbooks, so I started playing with fiction ideas. The most-interesting time on the canal was during the Civil War and voila', a historical fiction novel was born. I have since developed not only an appreciation for historical fiction but also narrative non-fiction.

James wrote: "I was writing in a completely different genre. Then I went biking on the C&O Canal and learned about all of the history associated with it. Being a writer, I started trying to think up a way to tel..."
I'm just wondering what you mean by narrative non-fiction, James. What sort of books would come into that category?

Hilda, narrative non-fiction is simply a term used for non-fiction that tells more of a story rather than simply laying out facts. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, 1776 by David McCullough and Manhunt by James Swanson are all good examples. They read like novels but they are non-fiction. I hope that helps.

My novel, Raping Aphrodite, is set against the 1974 invasion and division of Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean Sea. My parents are both from there, but were already living in the United States when the invasion happened. All of my relatives still living there either became refugees or were killed. Earlier in my life, I was a journalist, working for newspapers and just living, doing my thing. I was young and really didn't think as deeply about what happened. Later, after I had children of my own and my parents began to age, I began to realize what our family had lost. The book has two story lines, taking a character in present-day who is facing a crisis and weaving it in with the 1974 invasion in Cyprus during that war-filled summer. I did it to chronicle family history, but also to educate people because I routinely came across people who either didn't know where Cyprus was, hadn't heard of the invasion, or both.

I write ancient history and got sick of the machismo representation that popular media gives the genre (like 300 and Hercules - sigh). Back in my school days studying archaeology there was a trend to "Engender" Archaeology. Meaning, revisit the "facts" with a less male biased view point, and in some cases come to new conclusions. It was truly amazing what anthropologists were discovering in the paleolithic era about matriarchal societies.

When I started working on my novel, The Princess of Sparta, I felt responsible to take the era I studied (the Late Bronze Age) and try to shed new light on characters, societies, and international warfare. It turns out that there is a lot of historical context unknown to the public, and even shocking parallels to our current middle-eastern wars.

Ultimately, the goal is to entertain and educate at the same time. If I can achieve that, then I can die happy ;o).

Aria wrote: "I write ancient history and got sick of the machismo representation that popular media gives the genre (like 300 and Hercules - sigh). Back in my school days studying archaeology there was a trend ..."

I'm currently writing with a setting about 8000 years ago. An intelligent friend kept saying, "no, that's not realistic," to many of my postulates about gender. Truth is, there's way more we don't know than stuff we do know. I'm really enjoying writing about a time so far removed, it allows for so very much more speculation then writing about the 16th century did!

I have always been a reader of historical fiction, but I didn't get into writing it until I got interested in the specific topic of Saint Augustine and his mistress. Here's a link to my blog post describing exactly how that interest arose: http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/2014/06...

Like many before me, it was a genre I have read avidly for years. I also have a real problem with a lack of plot credibility in so many 21st century based thrillers.

I read military history at uni and weirdly it was the lack of fiction in my chosen period that drew me to it. I'd always read historical fiction (and when I started book reviewing that was my chosen genre) so was somewhat surprised no one had addressed the Irish War of Independence as pure historical fiction. So figured I'd give it a crack!

Great topic. I was a graduate student doing research, and I discovered historical incidents—in US-occupied Germany, in my case—that seemed better treated by fiction. I recently posted about it here:

The Wild West of Occupied Germany

Of course, no one warned me it would take years to re-learn how to write fiction. Or maybe I wasn't listening!