Occasionally I receive submissions by publicists of articles by authors they're promoting. When one looks like it might of help to you, I'm glad to pass it on. Here's one by author Elizabeth Crook.
Seven Rules for Writing Historical Fiction
By Elizabeth Crook
Author of The Night Journal: A Novel
We grow up being told to write what we "know", but history is the unknown. You have to learn almost everything about a period and the social customs just to get your characters out of their beds, (or off of their skins,) and feed them breakfast.
Rule #1: Sweat the Small Stuff.
The authenticity of historical fiction depends on your knowledge and
use of historical detail. It is not enough to say a character walked
down the street. The reader has to be able to see the street, see the
conveyances; he has to smell the smoke from the factories or the sewage
in the gutter. If there are street vendors, he has to know what they're
selling. This is a new world: the reader can't fathom it unless you
give him images. These should be accurate and not recycled from old
movies.
Two suggestions:
1. Find experts on the topics you need to learn about. It's easier to track down someone who knows about sheep ranching in the 1890s and call them up when you need to know about scabies than it is to find, in documents or on the internet, the answer to every question that comes up in the course of writing a book. If you're going to write a scene involving a train wreck in 1891, get books on train wrecks, read enough to know what you're talking about, Google the authors and find out where they work. Call and see if they'll talk to you. Latch on to the friendly ones. "What about the couplers?" you can ask, having read enough to know that faulty couplers were a major factor in train wrecks.
I once needed to know about Mormons in Mexico. I Googled "Mormons in Mexico," found a woman who had written a dissertation on a Mormon settlement near Juarez and found her through the school. She spent two hours on the phone with me, describing vividly the Mormon settlement that my characters needed to visit.
2. If your story takes place after catalogs were in use, get hold of reprints of old catalogs. I have an 1895 Montgomery Ward Catalog that has descriptions of, and prices for, almost every personal item used by people of that time: hardware, books, stationery, toys, guns, toiletries, wallpaper, stoves, laundry equipment, harnesses and saddlery - the list goes on and on. It represents the lifestyle of that decade.
Rule #2: Dump the Ballast.
In order to write authentic historical fiction you must know a period
of time well enough to disappear daily through a wormhole to the past.
There you must understand the customs and use the manners perfectly
enough to be accepted by people walking the streets (if there are
streets) and to dress yourself, and make a living. This said, the major
trick of writing good historical fiction is not in compiling research
or knowing the details, but in knowing which details to leave out.
Avoid overwriting. Keep perspective on what will interest the reader. Historical fiction writers tend to be overly conscientious and excited by minutia: if you succumb to excess, and put in too much detail, then go back and take some of it out. Think of your novel as a boat that is about to sink from having too much weight on board: some loved items will have to go. Toss them over with impunity! If a rare, surprising statistic, or a moving anecdote, or an obscure reference you saw to an interesting thing that happened in the county adjacent to the one where your story takes place, does not advance your plot or provide your reader with important information about your characters, then it is irrelevant to your story and must go.
The care and time it took to assemble all that you have just thrown out has not been wasted. It was necessary to gather these facts and assess their worth in order to know which ones to save.
Rule # 3: Keep Your Conscience Clean.
If your characters are based on real people and you are using their
names, be reasonably responsible to the originals. You are probably
going to have to fill in a lot of gaps in the historical record: you
may know from the record what a person did and when he did it, but not
why. It's the "why" that defines his character. Ask yourself: Am I
getting this close to right? Am I doing this person a disservice?
Rule #4: Resist Judging Your Characters.
We live in the 21st century with certain shared values: our society
disapproves of prejudice and chauvinism and provincialism. But your
characters are people of their times; allow them to be bigoted or
politically backwards. Don't pass judgment on them, don't apologize for
their mistakes, and don't attempt to make them all into free thinkers
who are ahead of their times. You have to be able to see the story from
their perspective, even if it offends you. If you judge your
characters, you will date your book. Years from now when your own moral
sensibilities are antiquated, your book will be too.
Rule #5: Watch Out for First Person.
I put down three books recently because I was annoyed with the first
person viewpoint, which came across as self-absorbed. Unless you're
writing in the form of letters or journals, make sure any first-person
character has a good reason to be telling his story. People tend not to
like people who notice themselves too much or describe themselves or
seem overly aware of how others perceive them. Anyone relating a story
about himself
Rule #6: Don't Get Bogged Down by Back-story.
It is easy to be overly dutiful and bore your readers with too much
background information delivered too soon. There is no surer way to
lose your reader than to answer every question before he wonders about
it. Instead, let your story unfold dramatically. The trick is to delay
telling backstory for as long as possible. You will find that most of
it is never needed. It percolates up through the real story when the
real story gets going.
Rule#7: Anticipate a Long Process.
Historical novels usually take several years to write, as they require
research at every turn. You won't always be able to anticipate what
you'll need to know for a scene, and will constantly have to return to
your references. This is entirely different from writing contemporary
fiction.
Take, for example, a trip from Austin, Texas to the nearby town of
San Marcos. If you are going to write a present-day scene, you simply
need to put your character into a vehicle
But if your character takes this journey in 1906, you will have to learn a few things before starting him out, and learn more things along the way.
First of all, you need to know where the road is, and what's on
either side of it, and what kind of conveyance your character is
driving. If it's a flatbed wagon, what's pulling it
But here is where the magic comes in: you begin to think, "Wow. The discovery of Wonder Cave. Now that would make a scene . . ." And then suddenly you have a story, and a book to write. The only problem, of course, is that you will soon find out that Wonder Cave was discovered in 1898 instead of 1906, so you will have to move your story back eight years and find out what sort of vehicles they drove in 1898 and along what road, and the rest of it, or else joggle the facts and sacrifice credibility in the name of literary license. Or ditch Wonder Cave.
Writing historical fiction is like trying to get to San Marcos when you have no car, you don't know where the road is, and you have never in your life harnessed a half-lame mule to a flatbed wagon. Assume it is going to be a while before you arrive.
None of these rules, obviously, is iron-clad. I'm sure there is a Brilliant counter-example somewhere for each and every one of them. I hope you find them useful. Good luck! Happy Travels! God's speed.
Elizabeth
For what it's worth.
Ray
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© 2006 Ray Rhamey