Historical Fictionistas discussion

My notebooks are filled with little useless (at the moment) details, details that sometimes just jump out and add color to a story, especially historical stories. I remember recently spending hours tracking down whatever I could find (very little, as it turns out) about Theresa Capone, Al Capone's mother. My story is NOT about Al Capone, but I wanted to put the Chicago mob at the setting of my book in a memorable way to lay a groundwork for things that happen much later. So I had Al and his brother talking at the site, and wanted to present them as family men, not mobsters. So they referred to their mother, who they were planning to visit, and who was raising Al's brother's son. I felt I needed to understand "Grandma" better. Most people will think this borders on obscession, but it gave me the insight I needed to create the dialogue for the scene, as in understanding their mother I understood this aspect of the men's lives better.

Karen wrote: "I've always been intrigued by the idea that people were "here" before me in good times and troubled times. How did they feel, how did they get by, what kept them going? That curiosity just leaks ou..."

It's virtually impossible to truly understand how people from earlier eras got by. The best an historical fiction writer can do is thoroughly research a period, then make his/her best guess.

Line from a John Stewart song: "They were just a bunch of people doing the best they could."

It is not impossible by any stretch of imagination, you simply have to study your local history 'the hard way', IOW go out and talk to those who lived in a previous time.

Where I live I can toss you in the car and within an hour I will have you in a time 70 and more years ago. Sure, they have electric and cell phones now but that's it. In the outlying villages I can take you to our Orthodox Churches and you will hear the choirs singing like angels and you will know that the young women and girls in that choir were born in the village, will live in the village, will marry and procreate in the village, and will die in the village. Such is life, but you must talk to them, those of all generations, and not only listen but understand what they are telling you.

It is only through listening to the elders and those who are living the same life that you will understand what it was like in olden times and to an extent even today. In this AO history is not forgotten and our elders who lived through those perilous times are not forgotten and are honored to this day.

R.H. wrote: "It is not impossible by any stretch of imagination, you simply have to study your local history 'the hard way', IOW go out and talk to those who lived in a previous time.

Where I live I can toss ..."

If you know people who lived in the 18th or 19th centuries who want to talk, please put me in touch with them!

I don't think anyone from the 18th century would still be alive today....

I don't know for sure but just up the street there's one very old babushka who keeps talking about some old guy with a boat load of animals in pairs whom she knew as a child.

Earlier in this discussion I mentioned that I write 'recent' historical fiction but many of my characters are not young and their histories go back long before the actual events in the two books. To understand what life was like then you must speak to the older men and women and I can assure you that here you can find many people who have vivid memories of what their grandparents and even great grandparents told them when they were young.

Researching one particular item we went to Odessa in late spring of '13. In that research cycle we spoke to two very elderly ladies who had diaries and many photos from their grandparents from well before the turn of the century over 100 years ago. However, those two ladies were not the reason we were in Odessa. The person we went to see and talked to extensively was a font of historical, current and near future events. It was an eye opener and all was recorded with that person's knowledge and agreement.

Doug wrote: "Karen wrote: "I've always been intrigued by the idea that people were "here" before me in good times and troubled times. How did they feel, how did they get by, what kept them going? That curiosity..."

Good points, Doug.

If you talked to six people about life today, you'd get a half dozen points of view. Getting to the reality of life in, say, the 19th century is harder because while there is plenty of source material, you don't have your own experience as a reality check to filter the accounts.

I think that's why historians go to as many primary sources as they can. If they find two or more accounts that say pretty much the same thing, they're probably getting close to objective reality.

It's a great observation that elderly people can pass along oral history from an earlier generation. Just as we know the stories that our grandparents old us, they know stories told to them by THEIR grandparents. Old people are just a walking encyclopedia of knowledge about the past. I interviewed so many World War Two veterans when researching my novel Bird's Eye View, that I wound up publishing an entire non-fiction book titled My Favourite Veterans.

Elinor wrote: "It's a great observation that elderly people can pass along oral history from an earlier generation. Just as we know the stories that our grandparents old us, they know stories told to them by THEI..."
As an author of a World War 2 novel and a huge fan of that era, I look forward to reading Bird's Eye View.

Has anyone experienced problems getting parents to talk about their history? My parents were born in the twenties, and really didn't want to talk about the past. My GRANDparents, on the other hand, were more than delighted to fill me in. Now I'm a grandparent myself, I'm finding my children have little interest in my past. Should I conclude from that that I should be filling in my grandchildren instead? I conclude from this that children and their parents may not relate as well as when skipping a generation.

"Mom, what was life like during the Depression?"

"We were fortunate. My father had a job through the whole time."

That was it. She and my dad said nothing more. My grandparents didn't talk much about their pasts either.

I wish I had drawn them out more.

I tried with my mom. Sat down with notepad and all. After a few reluctant replies it was "What do you want to know that for?" The one word answers I got after that convinced me it wasn't going to work. I didn't have to prompt Grandma - she just talked off the top of her head whenever I was around.

The first book I wrote (published second) came about because my husband's ancestor had been a notorious smuggler centuries ago. We thought it was just family folklore but when I was on the Isle of Wight at a Boot Fair I found a book mentioning him and it all turned out to be true.

I'd been fascinated by smugglers' caves right from when I was a teenager or maybe even before (there's an Enid Blyton Famous Five book about smugglers).

Then the character of Lieutenant Karl Thorsen arrived in my head and Daniel came soon after and off they went. One trying to kill the other!

Maybe it's just that some people are storytellers but others aren't.

Writers are in the storytellers group.

Or maybe the personal experiences were too painful to relive by telling. That was the case with my mother, who grew up in deprivation during the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s and she lost her own mother in a bomb attack in Guangdong. Every time she began telling about her past, she couldn't hold back her tears. So I didn't have the heart to ask any more.

Pat wrote: "Has anyone experienced problems getting parents to talk about their history? My parents were born in the twenties, and really didn't want to talk about the past. My GRANDparents, on the other hand,..."
Get your kids to ask your parents. Or get their sons- or daughters-in-law to ask them. Takes away any lingering baggage or adverse family dynamics that might be making them reluctant to talk to you or your sibs. Yeah, it's a problem.

All these amazing stories of the 1920's and 30's makes me feel so bad for being so young. Mom was a teenager during the 1990's, and knows the decade like the back of her hand. Whenever I don't understand a 90's reference to pop culture or history, I ask her.

My grandparents were teenagers in the 1970's, and my grandmother considered herself to be a flower child. She told me of one time when she was younger and her and her friends protested the building of a nuclear power plant, and they even tied themselves to a tree on the construction site. They were almost bulldozed anyway, but at the last second the builders changed their minds and untied them and cancelled the construction.

My grandfather protested against the Vietnam War, and he also told me how they met.

My great-grandmother is dead now, bless her, but I wasn't very interested in history when she was alive, so I didn't learn very much.

I did learn that she got sick with polio when she was very little in the 1920's and was nearly paralyzed on her left side, but didn't want to be paralyzed so she forced herself to do things like walking to school everyday until she recovered.

She was an amazing woman and once I heard that story, I knew that was exactly the kind of woman I wanted to be. I also have a picture of her from when she was in her late twenties in the 1940's.

I didn't know historical fiction existed until I ran across one of Alice Borchardt's books incorrectly shelved in a sci-fi section of a bookstore. I was hooked after that.

Around that time I was also getting interested in genealogy and learned I had an ancestor who served in the Continental Army for the entire Revolutionary War. I spent the next twelve years researching his exploits, and learned his was an amazing story. I tried once and failed to write it as a serious non-fiction history. Then I found my way into a screenplay writing class, where the professor suggested I try writing the story as historical fiction (by adding dialog), and he also claimed it was easier to convert a screen play into a novel than the other way around. Two years later, here I am.

I couldn't stop watching Japanese chanbara flicks. I was also a fan of the 1960s Mission: Impossible series, and thought it'd be really cool to mix the two together and redefine the ninja. That ended up being the first book I ever published by a stroke of luck, despite it being such a niche subject.

I am about to start my first historical novel, after just finishing my first book, a murder mystery. After a few weeks of not writing, I found I had to start again.

Why historical? Years ago, I purchased a scrap book on EBay created by a woman from Kansas on her first around the world trip on the ocean liner Carinthia in 1925. The scrap book was quite complete, with itineraries, menus, post cards, letters, telegrams, ship newsletters, and more from the seven month adventure. I've started to research the ship, crew, passengers, and the era. Since I've always enjoyed traveling by ship, I was was somehow drawn to this topic.

Hello to everyone in this group. I just joined the group and am a self-published author and a Goodreads author. I started writing historical fiction novels because I love history and reading about it. It also blends in with sci-fi novels with time travel themes, my favorite writing subject. I was always intrigued by the 'what if' factor involved in time travel stories and I then decided to try my hand at writing historical fiction books. My favorite historical period for historical fiction is World War Two, and I constantly read books and specialized magazines about WW2 and always find something new to learn about it.

The base of it all was the technical and report writing I did during my Navy career. After retirement from the Navy, I was reading a non-fiction about the Navy's role in the Korean Conflict. Like a fly ball coming out of the sun, it hit me. There was at least one really good story to be had in all that. My first novel was born.

I was doing research for what I thought would be a good topic for a doctoral dissertation in medieval historiography when the long-dead knight who had dictated the manuscript I was reading suddenly came to life. I wanted to flesh out the very little we actually know about him, but to do that I had to create a fictional character. So farewell to the academic research and hello to the world of historical fiction where I’ve lived happily ever since. I’ve written about the Fourth Crusade, Paris during WWII, and now a new mystery series set in New York’s Gilded Age. The key to it all is stumbling into a bygone era that reaches out and grabs you. Once that happens, you have to write about it!

Hilda wrote: "I'm interested in what prompted others to start writing historical fiction...."

I find more fascination in older cultures for several reasons. Of course, I suppose the best reason is that the author has the privilege of looking into the actual pertinent events of the day in which she's chosen to set her novel. Too, you can learn about everyday life in those days; if you love antiques - if you love learning about the simple, mundane lives of your ancestors were like - you'll love writing HF. That, to me, is the obvious reason.

But I personally enjoy HF for some other reasons:

1) that there was much more structure, and much stricter societal norms. This automatically creates an aura of "naughtiness" when a young person goes off the reservation. On the other hand, it puts him/her under some pressure, both to hide illicit actions, and to try to maintain a good facade, which provides all sorts of possibilities for an interesting plot to develop.

2) Most young people also begin with a level of innocence that can be a great obstacle, and also a very entertaining spectacle when it begins to crumble. Although I think many authors pierce this veil a little too freely - ascribing a repressed desire to a person who has never experienced that desire is rather unrealistic. That desire has to be awakened (more or less), especially in those strict cultures in which the unmentionable things were never mentioned.

3) The technologies that we have today tend to remove the possibility of characters being ignorant of some relevant event. Many great plots depend on some character not knowing some key piece of information.

Those are reasons that HF is the best sort of fiction. Pick out the greatest novels of all time: just picking a few that spring to mind, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch - all of their plots depend on some or all of the items above.

Rian wrote: "Hilda wrote: "I'm interested in what prompted others to start writing historical fiction...."

I find more fascination in older cultures for several reasons. Of course, I suppose the best reason is..."

Rian, this is a GREAT list! I've never thought about it in these terms, but your observations are spot-on for me. Structure, innocence, mystery -- absolutely! I can't imagine trying to write a modern fiction piece because these elements, which are so central to what I write, would be so very different.

I have worked as an aid worker for over 20 years, on the ground in wars and natural disasters from Yugoslavia to ebola. I've had the idea of a Balkan tale in my head since the 1990s, inspired by Na Drini ćuprija and the real events I witnessed. But for many years I was too busy working to give it much serious thought, and besides I lacked confidence in my ability to write. But over the last 10 years I have developed a parallel career as a translator, which allowed be to hone my skills expressing other people's ideas convincingly in English. I finished doing a degree in law in 2015, and suddenly confronted with a week with nothing to do, I decided to try and write an account of one of the more dramatic and tragic episodes I witnessed. The result was far better than I had expected would be possible, and I also found that once I had taken the step of sitting down and starting to write, there was no stopping it. The end result in now available: The Damned Balkans: A Refugee Road Trip

I started because I read so much historical fiction of the era that I ended up writing a novel about that it just fit. I knew about the time period, I was interested to learn more, and a short story grew into an entire manuscript the more I read and the more I researched.

I grew up in Town Line, NY, a tiny hamlet east of Buffalo that seceded during the Civil War. When we moved there, we were told that our house had been part of the Underground Railroad. It all seemed too bizarre to be true. Years later, I came across the oral history of the family that had built our house, and the details sent me into a years-long research project. Eventually, there was so much there that I had to write the book.

Daren wrote: "I grew up in Town Line, NY, a tiny hamlet east of Buffalo that seceded during the Civil War. When we moved there, we were told that our house had been part of the Underground Railroad. It all seeme..."

That is really interesting Darren. However, can you unlink your book? Per are rules you do not meet are minimum criteria to advertise your book. If someone specifically asks you may link your book, but otherwise you must first reach 25 comments before advertising.

John wrote: "I have worked as an aid worker for over 20 years, on the ground in wars and natural disasters from Yugoslavia to ebola. I've had the idea of a Balkan tale in my head since the 1990s, inspired by [b..."

John, please remove the link to your book. You do not meet our minimum requirements for advertising.

Lauren wrote: "I started because I read so much historical fiction of the era that I ended up writing a novel about that it just fit. I knew about the time period, I was interested to learn more, and a short stor..."

What time period did you end up writing about?

Jasmine wrote: "Daren wrote: "I grew up in Town Line, NY, a tiny hamlet east of Buffalo that seceded during the Civil War. When we moved there, we were told that our house had been part of the Underground Railroad..."

Eek! My first post, and already I'm violating rules. I think I've deleted the link. So sorry.

It's okay! Thanks for responding so quickly.

I wrote about the dawn of the Belle Époque in France. A crazy time, for sure! So much beauty following a century of turmoil and war and rebellion.

I started out wanting to write a novel but not knowing what to write about. At a creative writing class we did an exercise to create a six word title or first line which would intrigue people.
It was around 5th November - in the UK that is called Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night and there is a famous rhyme starting "Remember, remember the 5th of November".
This inspired me to write down "Remember, Remember the 6th of November" as I thought this may get people asking "why the 6th?".
I read up on the Gunpowder Plot and was hooked. It made for a great story and it was all real, so I started writing and two novels later, I'm now researching a different time in history for a third.

I read The Adventures of Marco Polo. He loved the ladies and he was on the road for the Khan for twenty years. I figured he had to have scattered some seed around and I wondered what happened to those kids. Silk and Song is the story of one of them.

I didn't think it was going to be a career change (I'm best known for crime fiction although I've written other stuff) or even more than a one-off, but THEN my book club read Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra and the status of women in Egypt in that time just astonished me. They could have jobs, they could own and operate businesses, they could divorce and keep the kids and get child support and alimony--for 55 B.C. that is astounding. So then I thought, okay, I'm going to write about a woman of that time.

Even if I didn't love reading so much I'd never stop because other people's books are where I get all my ideas. [grin]

Lauren wrote: "I wrote about the dawn of the Belle Époque in France. A crazy time, for sure! So much beauty following a century of turmoil and war and rebellion."

Lauren, did you read Strapless by Deborah Davis?

The family had heard Grandad's war stories over and over again. Fascinating tales of trials and tribulations as a young Yugoslav pilot coerced onto the wrong side of WWII. My daughter said, "If you don't write it, his story will be lost forever." So I penned his biography and printed copes for the family and the next couple of generations. I thought I was done. 3 years later, I played with the idea of fictionalizing that tale into a thrilling novel. After writing a few chapters, I was struck by my naivety. I knew nothing about writing fiction. I didn’t write another word for a year because I was reading everything I could on how to write fiction. 7 years would pass until the novel was released. That was last month.

It may sound a little theatrical, but my interest in writing 19th century fiction developed shortly after relocating to a mid-19th century farm.

When I was growing up, my family used to visit my great-Aunt every Sunday. She lived virtually her entire life in a five-floor walk-up tenement building on the Lower East Side in New York City. I was fascinated by the claw-foot bathtub in her kitchen and the chain-pull toilet in her bathroom. I tried to imagine what it must have been like to have immigrated to the United States in the early 1900's as my aunt had done, leaving behind family and friends and starting anew. Those early experiences are definitely part of what inspired me to write my historical novel about immigrants in the early 1900's.

As a child I grew up hearing about an Indian raid on my great-great grandfather's homestead west of Austin. He was a well known Texas Ranger and sergeant in the Civil War. The tale always fascinated me and I set out to write a fictionalized short story about the event unaware of where the decision would lead. After receiving early praise, the short story transformed into a full length novel that needed room to grow. As a result, the decision to write a short story became a life changing moment that gave birth to the Hard Land to Rule Trilogy.

As an American living in Japan, I became interested in the titanic changes that occurred in both countries in late middle 1800s (Japan entered the Meiji period and opened its borders to outsiders for the first time in more than two centuries; America was split in two by the Civil War) and how the changes seemed thematically related, in terms of breaking down and erecting borders and defining national identity. A story began to grow in my head that took place largely in Japan. I recall trying to do research on the period in Japan by visiting a museum in a small town near Mt. Fuji (called Fujiyoshida) about 15 years ago and doing a lot of reading about the period, but ultimately after sketching out about a hundred pages, I lacked confidence in writing within that setting, because the culture and language differences were too large for me to bridge. I focused instead on America then and grew fascinated with another set of dramatic, parallel changes, those of the civil war era and those of the first settlers to the U.S, More reading, more research, especially about the New England Puritans. I must have read twenty books about them. I realized that in many ways they had more of a claim to being the “founding fathers” of America than the “Founding Fathers” did. I imagined what would have happened in those founding Puritans encountered modern-day Americans, and how that could be arranged in a novel. What if the Puritans had somehow become stuck in a kind of quarantined condition, separate from the qualities that shaped the America I knew now? But nonetheless evolved somewhat in their separated state, linguistically and culturally? And the two worlds then met? The consequence of these crazy thoughts was my book The Language of Bears, which took about six years to complete. I hunted for an agent for about a years and half, was rejected by over 200 of them, and none even requested a partial. I was disheartened, and I threw the book away, or at least just gave up publishing it. Then Amazon Kindle Direct came along, so I resurrected it, cleaned it up and self-published it. I’m glad I did. It’s gradually garnered several glowing reviews and every day seems to bring some message or other from people who love it and, perhaps more importantly, understand what I was trying to say with it.

I once taught history &, when I retired, decided to write historical fiction with an old college friend. We both enjoyed history and crime / suspense (in the fictional sense). We opted to write historical thrillers set in the French Revolution partly because there seemed very few novels set in this period. So we enjoy the historical research and the particular challenge of co-writing novels.

I knew my ancestors were among the first Anabaptists over in Switzerland or Germany and I knew many of the group had been martyred but that's about it. I didn’t know enough about my heritage to pass along to my children, and I thought this was a shame. So I dove into research and found enough interesting stuff to keep me writing for as long as I'm sane enough to do so. And actually, now that I have found something to do that I LOVE I believe I will stay sane longer than I might have otherwise.

Elinor wrote: "It's a great observation that elderly people can pass along oral history from an earlier generation. Just as we know the stories that our grandparents old us, they know stories told to them by THEI..."

Hi Elinor, that's really interesting. My grandfather was a coal miner and he was always telling me stories - often the same ones....! He went down the pit when he left school at 14. If only I had written them down, now he has gone, I am trying to fill in the gaps in my memory - like darning a hole in a sock..! Re WW2, a learning centre I worked for did a community project on war memories and it was amazing how many people came along and shared stories, often to younger community members. There is nothing like hearing a story from 'the horse's mouth'. Your War Veteran book sounds very interesting.

Like Liz, I come from a mining background. My father was a divisional inspector of mines in the days when coal was king in the North-East of England. One thing he drummed into me was the need to respect my roots and, when I went to university, it was to read history. Now, many years later, after a career in broadcasting and print journalism, I am writing historical novels. My latest, The Man Who Lived Twice, is about the highest ranking Englishman to fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

You put us to shame, Trish. It takes me two years to produce one novel, let alone five. The great thing about writing novels, as you say, is when your characters take over the story and you fall in love with them.

I did a Q & A recently, Trish, in which my interviewer assumed that my journalistic experience had stood me in good stead as an author. Actually, this wasn't the case. I found that writing novels required a totally different skill set. Now, of course, I am totally immersed in the process. I enjoy taking real historical characters and imagining how they might behave in different situations.

I was a history major in college, loved European History, and also lived in France for 3 years... got hooked on the Dark Ages/Medieval period. Began with Promise of the Black Monks (11th Century, pre-Crusades) 2 years ago, and was lucky enough to be advertised in the NY Times Book Review twice! The 4th book of the series was just released last month and there's one left oto complete the series (Argus Publishing). I am loving writing it... but am EXHAUSTED!