1. Writing Historical Fiction 1 – Creating your historical world.
2. Writing Historical Fiction 2 – Doing the research.
3. Writing Historical Fiction 3 – Using fact in fiction.

If you enjoy reading books like The Long Song and the Ruso series you will also enjoy my literary thriller, The Peace Garden, which deals with the aftermath of the Soweto Riots and its repercussions in the lives of two young lovers. To find out more, read Ruth Downie’s review of The Peace Garden.

Related posts:

1. Writing historical fiction 1 – creating your historical world
2. Writing historical fiction 2 – doing the research
3. Writing historical fiction 3 – using fact in fiction

Related posts:

1. Writing history for the commercial market – 2: narrative history writing techniques
2. Writing history for the commercial market – 1: finding the social context
3. Writing historical fiction 2 – doing the research

Research is Like Underwear…

In 1541, if you came from London, you considered Yorkshire to be a barbarian land. Once you turned off the Great North Road, the journey to York was a ‘wretched track’. The woods contained boar and wildcat and the locals still shared thatched hovels with their cattle.

This is what we learn from the first few pages of CJ Sansom’s Sovereign. Interesting, but not gripping.

Now let me add that our hero, Matthew Shardlake, is exhausted. He’s just buried his father and discovered the family farm is in massive debt. He’s risking travelling at night because he’s afraid he will miss his deadline for a ‘strange mission’ he has been given by the Archbishop. Meanwhile, the man who’s supposed to protect him is complaining that they’re lost and in danger of being kidnapped.

Now would you want to read on? Sansom has woven the research into a background that reinforces the plight of his characters. Already, we’re in suspense. That’s one of the reasons the Shardlake books are bestsellers. That’s also why research is like underwear. It’s crucial to help form what appears on the surface, but…

…we don’t want to see it hanging out on display

Readers have to be given enough background knowledge to make sense of your story, and a certain amount of scene-setting is unavoidable. The tricky part is finding a way to do it without overwhelming readers who didn’t know before, or boring those who did.

Maps can be useful. Long explanations are rarely welcome. Having one character tell another what they should both already know isn’t credible. There are better ways.

Bernard Cornwell tackles this brilliantly at the start of Gallows Thief. Sir Henry Forrest, a respectable gentleman, is being given a tour of Newgate Prison by one of the turnkeys. As the turnkey takes pride in showing off the horrors of the place, we feel Sir Henry’s shock and disgust. We feel pity for the prisoners – and incidentally, we and Sir Henry learn a great deal of the history and layout of Newgate.

Finding your way into the world of the story

How do you get past the facts and into the imagination?

Surrounding yourself with photos is a great way to get ‘in the mood’. For years I didn’t have a room to write in, but a couple of cork boards covered in pictures came out from under the bed whenever there was a quiet moment.

Some people have a coin, a piece of old silk, or anything else tangible from the period they’re writing about.
Dressing up is fun. Wearing the sort of clothes your character might have worn may offer a whole new perspective, although you may want to warn your loved ones first.

Manda Scott ‘dreamed’ her bestselling ‘Boudica’ series. It’s not a shortcut, though – she also did plenty of solid research.

Finding your way into the scene

Sometimes it helps to think of a modern parallel to bring a situation alive. I found it hard to visualise my two bachelor medics sharing their lodgings until I realised that they weren’t living in a museum, they were living in the ancient equivalent of a student flat. (If you think this is unlikely, an acquaintance who helps to excavate a famous Roman fort assures me, “They were so messy! They just threw their rubbish everywhere!”)

So now you’re busily writing your novel. Here are a few of the questions and compromises you may come across:

Oh look! I’ve found out something interesting!

Sooner or later you may stumble across a fact so fascinating that it simply has to appear in your novel.
This is the time to take a deep breath and think carefully. If it really belongs there – great, in it goes. But does it? Does it move the story along, or are you having to fiddle with the plot to fit it in? Once you’ve spent time ramming it in, will you then have to waste more time editing it out again? Maybe it’s worth keeping for a more suitable occasion.

Then there’s the question of what everybody else believes is true about the past, even if it isn’t. I’m in a small minority of people who suspect that our ancestors weren’t much shorter than we are, and somewhere I have an article by a respectable bone specialist who thinks the same thing. However, one of the copy editor’s suggestions on the first book was that I shorten some of characters because they seemed inordinately huge.

He was right. A first novel probably wasn’t the place to show off that I’d read something interesting. Once you’re well established, however, that rule may change. Lindsey Davis has made something of a game of it – check out ‘historical errors’ and ‘deliberate insertions’ in the entertaining rants on her website.

Watch your language

No matter how you may love the middle ages, any urge to write your fourteenth-century dialogue in perfect Chaucerian English needs to be suppressed – at least if you ever hope to snare a mainstream publisher. You may know that a wang-tooth is a molar, but most readers won’t. Nor will they want to bother looking it up like I just have.

The challenge, if your characters would have spoken a fore-runner of English, is to make the dialogue sound authentic whilst making it comprehensible. It’s worth taking a look at your favourite authors and analysing how they do it.

Inappropriate similes may have to be kept under control, too. Ancient characters couldn’t ‘pocket’ money. Neither could they button their lips, or zip down to the Forum for the shopping.

Oh dear, that’s not very nice

Another balance to be struck is that between authenticity and modern sensitivities. An ancient Roman is not going to suggest abolishing the slave trade any more than a Victorian patriarch would tell his tired servants to put their feet up while he and the mistress do the laundry.

On the other hand, if your Roman hero regularly beats his slaves and your patriarch makes money out of sending small boys up chimneys, modern readers may not want to spend long in their company. Whatever you think of the less palatable views of our ancestors, it’s worth thinking about how you are going to present them.

Writers make things up

We’re writing fiction. We are allowed to invent.

Nobody knows the details of how a Roman Army hospital was run. (If you do, where were you when I needed you?) When it became obvious that some background was needed in my first book, I took what we already know about Roman army administration – i.e. there was lots of it, and they were very fond of lists – and invented something that suited the story.

Again, it’s a matter of personal judgement. Or perhaps something else is going on? Many writers have the bizarre experience of inventing something and then finding out afterwards that it’s true.

Almost the Last Word

Historical novelists frequently add an Author’s Note. This is a chance to point interested readers to places where they can find out more. It’s sometimes used to help separate fact from fiction, to explain the writer’s choices between competing theories of history, or to acknowledge where they’ve deliberately changed something. It’s also frequently the place where an anxious author says something along the lines of: Dear reader, I’ve done my best with the research, but please be gentle with me….

And mostly, thank goodness, they are.

Why we came here in the first place

We don’t read novels to learn facts, although we may pick up some in passing. We read novels for a chance to live in other people’s lives. I’ll finish with the mention of Rosemary Sutcliff, who was one of the great storytellers of her generation. When asked about the rare occasions when she had to decide between historical accuracy and a good story, she said she chose the story. Her The Eagle of the Ninth series is still in print, and there are people who grew up to be historians or archaeologists today because they fell in love with the past through her books. That’s the best legacy any historical novelist can hope for.

Resources:

The Historical Novel Society – to find like-minded souls and read reviews of all the latest historical fiction.

Here’s the full interview with Rosemary Sutcliff.

Excellent advice from Bernard Cornwell on his website.

This post is copyright RS Downie, 2009. No reproduction of this material is permissible without the author’s permission.

Related posts:

1. Writing historical fiction 1 – creating your historical world
2. Writing historical fiction 2 – doing the research
3. Writing historical crime novels – interview with R.S. Downie

You can’t please all of the people…

Here’s a confession: the earliest edition of my first book contained a wrong Latin ending. I only found this out when it was firmly and very publicly corrected by a reviewer in a national newspaper. It was a small thing – just two letters – but as he said, it cast doubt on the rest of the research. He said nice things as well, and later chose the book as one of his top thrillers for Christmas, but at the time I barely noticed the positive points. I was mortified. I felt I’d let everyone down. I lay awake fantasising about recalling all the copies so I could set fire to them and then fling myself on the pyre.

So I’m hardly in a position to criticise the apocryphal author who put the words, ‘Hi honey, fix yourself a sandwich!’ into the mouth of Mary Queen of Scots. The point is, if you’re inaccurate enough to jolt a reader out of the story, then you’ve failed.

Nobody’s right all the time – and a surprising amount of knowledge is soon out of date – but a reader who has taken the trouble to pick up the book wants to enjoy it. I think we have a duty to try and get things as accurate as we can.

Is there a ‘right’ way to research a novel?

Firstly – a word of reassurance. ‘Research,’ in this context, just means ‘finding things out’. You do not need to be an academic: ordinary people can do it, albeit often more slowly than somebody who already knows where to go. Different writers work in different ways. Apparently some of them even hate doing research, but if you’re reading this, that’s unlikely to be your problem.

Some advise that you should write the story first and then do the research. Others suggest finding out the basics, then writing the first draft and going back to check the details later. This is something you’ll probably have to do anyway, since often what you need to know won’t be clear until you’re well into the story.

Personally I like to visit the location and read background material for several months whilst sketching out rough ideas. I then resolve to concentrate on writing, but am frequently sidetracked, because…

Research can be more fun than writing

I should know. I signed up for a brief archaeology evening course ten years ago and now spend a substantial part of every summer scrabbling around in mud with a trowel. It’s enormous fun and inspiring in that you do get a sense of the physical past, but it’s not the most efficient way to learn and does eat into the writing time.

Here are some better (and worse) ideas to try. Most of my experience is with the 2nd century, so if you have any more suggestions, please chip in.

Some Good Places to find things out:

• The location. Usually requires several visits, especially if it’s in a nice place.
• The library – the best books will have lists of further reading at the back, and libraries can get hold of almost anything for a small fee. Try the children’s reference section, too – children want to know sensible things, like what people ate.
• The internet (but see ‘not so good’ below). Check out your library website. Most public library tickets give access to swathes of online reference material for free, including…
• …old newspapers
• Archives – again, try the local reference library for sources.
• Museums, restored period homes etc.
• People who were there (if there are any left)
• Contemporary literature, paintings, recipes, music, dance – what were people enjoying at the time?
• Maps – old and new, because rivers change course, and coastlines shift …
• Specialist groups and local history societies
• Re-enactment – this can include both public events and private experiments with WOAD in the kitchen
• Ask an expert – more below.

And some not so good…

• Other novels
• Wikipedia – always cross-check! Links to sources are often useful, though.
• Memories of school - what you think you remember!
• The internet. Anyone can set up a website. Enthusiasm and confidence don’t always mean accuracy

Asking the experts

Some people – especially crime writers, it seems – are adept at finding specialists who can help them get their facts straight. Others of us research our unpublished novels without talking to anybody because we are too embarrassed. (Though I really thought I’d got that Latin ending confirmed…)

Armed with a publishing contract, I’ve since plucked up the courage to consult some experts and one or two others have got in touch. All have been both kind and helpful, but do bear in mind that some people receive a lot of requests. Guy de la Bedoyere makes some good points about this on his website – which, incidentally, is an excellent source of information on Roman Britain.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if you do find a helpful contact, do what homework you can beforehand. Having some background knowledge will help you to both focus your questions and understand the answers. If the person has written a book about their subject, it’s courteous to have read it beforehand – but don’t pretend you have if you haven’t. It shows. And finally – take notes, or write everything up straight afterwards.

The camera never forgets

A good camera is essential for those of us with the memory span of a gnat. It can also save a lot of time. Provided the staff don’t object, taking photos of those long information panels in museums means you can read them at your leisure on the computer.

Sooner or later, though, you have to put the research aside and write the story. In the last post in this series, we’ll be looking at how fact and fiction work together – and I’ll be explaining why research is like underwear.

This post is copyright RS Downie, 2009. No reproduction of this material is permissible without the author’s permission.

Related posts:

1. Writing historical fiction 1 – creating your historical world
2. Writing historical fiction 3 – using fact in fiction
3. Writing historical crime novels – interview with R.S. Downie

Twenty years ago I knew nothing at all about historical fiction except that some of the novels I’d enjoyed had been set in the past. I’ve learned a great deal since then, mostly from other writers and sometimes from my own mistakes. I still have much to learn and frequently don’t practise what I preach – but if you too are fascinated by the past and want to set your story there, I hope you’ll find some useful pointers in this series of articles. If you have anything to add or questions to ask, feel free to post your comments below.

Historical fiction – where is it?

Despite there being a Historical Fiction Society, there’s no Historical Fiction section in my local library. Instead, Society members’ novels are nestling in amongst Romance, Action and Adventure, General Fiction, Crime, Fantasy and Horror. If there were such a shelf as ‘Literature’ – which there isn’t – there would be plenty there, too.

Setting your novel in the past doesn’t determine what kind of book it will be, nor who might want to read it. All the usual wise advice about novel-writing – which you can find elsewhere, some of it in The Crafty Writer Bookshop – will still apply. As ever, much can be learned from reading widely, including reading outside your own genre. There are, though, some points that will be particularly relevant to ‘historicals’, whatever kind of tale you are telling.

Know where you’re taking your reader

Screenwriting guru Robert McKee (author of Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting) tells his students that it’s essential to know the world of your story. This applies whatever you’re writing, but especially in a novel where you want to take a reader to a place that’s deliberately distant from your own.

What does your world smell like? Feel like? Taste of? Who’s in charge? How do people earn their living?

You may need to do less homework for a light romance than for a novel about the battle of Waterloo, but you will have to do some. (I’m not insulting romance writers here, but assuming romance readers are less likely to care about the finer points of weapon design.) Most of what you know may never appear on the page, but it will underpin whatever you choose to reveal to your readers. This has two benefits – firstly, the more you know, the wider and more original your choices will be.

Secondly – it will help to ‘ground’ your story on a convincing base. For example, if your characters are travelling on horseback, there will have to be arrangements in place to care for the horses. We don’t need to see this happen. We don’t even need to be told that it’s happening. But you can’t send characters galloping from Dover to Hadrian’s Wall in an afternoon. Oh, wait a minute – you can if you’re Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. But that was light entertainment, and unless you’ve got Kevin Costner and Alan Rickman up your sleeve, it’s best to stick to what’s possible.

The point is, the more confident you are about how things work in the world you’re creating for your readers, the more comfortably you and they will be able to move around in it.

If you don’t know, don’t fret

You can worry too much about all this. Someone – if anybody can remember who, please say so – once bemoaned the difficulty of getting his characters in and out of rooms if he didn’t know what the door handles were like. This is not a problem for me: I have pictures of Roman door handles. (Yes, it is sad.) But I’ve wasted inordinate amounts of time wondering whether to put sheets on ancient beds.

In retrospect, this was more about avoiding writing than doing it. If you wait until you know everything, you will never write the novel. If you’ve tried to find out and can’t, it’s best to move on. Often the answer – or an unexpected solution – will pop up when you’re not looking for it.

Leave space for the reader

To sum up, the writer needs to know enough, but not too much. Even in the ‘real’ world none of us takes the time to notice everything, and we’re telling stories here, not writing textbooks. Try sketching in some details and letting the reader’s imagination do the rest.

Here’s an example, chosen for practical reasons rather than literary ones (i.e. I own the copyright).

Ruso was still pondering the body in the mortuary as he walked out of the East Gate of the fort. He was barely aware of his progress until he was abruptly recalled to his surroundings by a shout of ‘Get up!’ from further along the street. A man with a large belly was glaring at a grimy figure lying across the pavement just past the fruit stall. A woman with a shopping-basket put down the pear she was examining and turned to see what was going on.

The man repeated the order to get up. The woman stared down at the figure and began to gabble in some British dialect. The only word Ruso could make out was, ‘water’.

‘Burn some feathers under her nose,’ suggested the stallholder, bending down to retrieve a couple of apples that had tumbled off the edge of his display.

Ruso veered into the street to avoid the commotion and narrowly missed a pile of animal droppings. He frowned. He must try to concentrate on what he was doing. He had come out for a walk because he was unable to sleep. Now he was walking, he was having trouble staying awake.
(Chapter 2, Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls, published in the USA as ‘Medicus’)

In this scene I used small details that might trigger the reader’s memories of familiar street markets. I then tried to put in other material that would distance the scene from a modern experience. The woman begins to ‘gabble in some British dialect’ which the lead character, who isn’t a local, can’t understand. There are animal droppings in the street. Somebody recommends a cure that, to us, sounds quite bizarre. I also hoped that the way the sick woman is treated would imply a harsher society than our own, and raise tension as the reader wonders what’s going to happen to her and whether the lead character (who we know by now is a medic) is going to do anything about it. Some writers would use far more period detail. The choice is yours.

In the next post I’ll be thinking some more about research. In the meantime, next time you pick up a novel, you might like to ask yourself how the writer has created their world and why you believe in it – or why you don’t.

This post is copyright RS Downie, 2009. No reproduction of this material is permissible without the author’s permission.

Related posts:

1. Writing historical fiction 2 – doing the research
2. Writing historical fiction 3 – using fact in fiction
3. Writing historical crime novels – interview with R.S. Downie

TCW: You won the Fay Weldon section of the BBC’s End of Story competition in 2004. Would you say this was your major break?

RSD: It was a huge stroke of luck. It was what spurred me on to finish the book, although not in the way you might expect. The BBC were thinking about making a follow-up, so they interviewed the winners about their writing plans. Somewhat desperate, I blathered on about a Roman novel I’d started. ‘Great,’ they said as they packed the gear away, ‘We’ll come and see you in three or four months to find out how it’s going.’

What I hadn’t dared tell them was that in the long gap between sending off the competition entry and finding out the results, I’d decided to give up writing. The novel was hopelessly stuck – but if I didn’t do something with it before they came back, I’d have to admit how useless I was on national television. So I dredged it up and for the next three or four months, I wrote like crazy. By the time I realised the BBC had changed their minds and weren’t coming at all, I was three quarters of the way through.
 
TCW: So Ruso wasn’t written before you entered the comp?

RSD: Not really. I had completed a couple of other novels which weren’t very good. Some of the early ‘Ruso’ material was created for a Historical Novel Society competition to write the first three chapters of a historical romance. I didn’t have anything suitable, so I drew out two characters from the backstory of one of the failed novels. On reflection, they were always more interesting anyway.  The ‘start’ was printed in the magazine and I was a bit taken aback when people seemed to think it was worth finishing.
 
TCW: Did you have an agent at this time?

RSD: An agent got in touch when she read it and, bless her, she stuck with me over many unproductive years until I finally finished something saleable.

TCW: Would you advise writers to enter competitions? What are the benefits?

RSD: Definitely! Working to a deadline and a specific word count is a good discipline. The occasional win of either money or kudos helps to convince your family that you aren’t just hiding behind the computer to avoid the washing up. Even if you don’t win, the worst you usually get is a long silence. Very rarely do you hear the depressing thud of a rejected manuscript on the doormat.

TCW: Did Penguin approach you or did you approach them?

RSD: I’m a complete wimp and rarely approach anybody. No, the good folk at the agency did all the selling. The people who say you have to be brave and tough to be a writer obviously haven’t met me.
 
TCW: Was Ruso always going to be a series?

RSD: No! I couldn’t imagine getting one book finished and published, let alone several.
 
TCW: Why historical fiction?

RSD: I did History to A level but it  never occurred to me to base any fiction in that period (1815 to 1939). Oh, apart from one very bad Western. I don’t know where it is and with luck nobody will find it in a drawer after I’m dead.

I wasn’t grabbed by the past till much later, when we took the children to Hadrian’s Wall. The discovery that Roman soldiers weren’t allowed to marry, but they were allowed to have relationships with local women, sparked all sorts of questions for me. What happened to the women if the men were moved on? What about the children? My parents are of the generation that can remember the GI’s being here in the War, and there seemed to be lots of parallels.
 
TCW: Was your decision to do a Roman detective novel based on market awareness or was it simply something you wanted to do?

RSD: I wanted to do something set in Roman Britain, using the tension between the occupiers and occupied. To be honest, I had no clue at the time what would sell or what other people were writing.

Later on, of course, I discovered that Lindsey Davis had been writing a fabulous Roman detective for years (the Falco series) and there were several others. Then, having half-produced a love story, I was firmly told that my novel had to have a crime in it. I thought very hard about that one, partly because other people were doing it and partly because crime wasn’t something I would naturally have chosen to write about. However, it seems to have worked. Having a mystery to solve helps to ground the plot and curtail its tendencies to meander about.

TCW: How important would you say market awareness is to as yet unpublished writers?

RSD: I know you’re supposed to study the market, but I think it’s crucial to fall in love with your subject first, because it will be renting a room in your head for months or probably years to come. I’m lucky in that both the Romans and Crime seem to have had a long spell in the sun recently. I managed to miss the Gladiator boat completely, so I was very surprised when my own novel sold several years later.

Maybe you do have to be a bit clued in, though. I work in a library, so I have some idea of what’s being read, and I do love to wander round bookshops (whilst trying to restrain the urge to see if they’ve got Ruso). From this I conclude that you’d have trouble selling a Western right now – but if it was utterly brilliant, who knows?

TCW: The Ruso novels are historical crime fiction. How important is it to have an awareness of the appropriate genre conventions when writing?

RSD: You probably need to know them even if you don’t intend to adhere to them. I’ve suggested having the bad guy get away with it or the good guy commit the murder for a change, but so far this hasn’t met with resounding enthusiasm from editors and agents. On reflection, I can see why. I think if you want to do that sort of thing you have to be either very well established or you have to decide to call it ‘literary fiction’.
 
TCW: What would you say about the statement: ‘If history doesn’t serve the story, change the history’?

RSD: There’s not much known about Britain during the period in which I write, but I do try and construct the stories around the documents and the archaeology we have. I think I’d say be very, very careful. It worked for Gladiator, but for people who knew that the Emperor Commodus didn’t die that way, the end must have been seriously strange.

Besides, sometimes when a story doesn’t go the way you want it to, facing the problem head on means that a new and better idea will emerge to solve it. On the other hand, I think you do have to choose what to use and what to leave out. The truth is invariably complex, and rarely leads towards the sort of satisfying conclusion you want for the end of a novel.
 
TCW: I’ve read many historical novels that are weighed down by too much historical detail. How do you achieve a balance between plot and background?

RSD: Hm, so have I! Perhaps coming to Roman Britain from a position of total ignorance wasn’t entirely the disadvantage that it seemed. I try not to use words that I wouldn’t have understood when I started. I don’t want people to have to pause during a chase scene while they try and remember what a Praetorium is.

I guess I try to give a few details that offer a flavour of a background and set the reader’s imagination working, rather than going into lots of description, because it’s boring to read and frankly, it’s boring to write, too. But I never really know whether the balance is right. Something what seems fine when you write it can look terrible the next day.
 
TCW: By the end of the novel, it’s clear that you are making parallels between ancient and modern sex trafficking. As a writer, do you believe it’s appropriate to impose modern morality onto a historical period? Why or why not?

RSD: That would be like going to somewhere that has an exotic cuisine and insisting on eating your own tinned soup, wouldn’t it? Obviously there are plenty of things about the past that we find unacceptable (witch trials, bear-baiting, hanging a child for stealing a sheep, etc.), but that’s part of its fascination.

I try not to put 21st Century views in the mouths of 2nd Century characters. But of course we all write from our own perspective and we don’t necessarily see the distortions we make. Fortunately not many people are offended by Romans who make racist remarks about the Ancient Greeks. I do slip in the occasional anachronistic joke, but I’m not sure if anybody notices. There’s a medic in the second book who’s heard that you can cure people’s problems just by talking to them – but as Ruso points out, that’s nonsense.

The sex trafficking thing interested me because there’s evidence that although abolishing slavery would have been unthinkable, the Romans were constantly tinkering with the system to make it more humane. One of the adaptations made by Hadrian (who was in power during the time I’m writing about) was to restrict the rights of an owner to sell a slave to a pimp or to a gladiator trainer unless they had been shown to deserve it. If Hadrian were around today he’d have no time for sex traffickers either.
 
TCW: How does this affect your characterisation and plotting?

RSD: I suspect most historical novelists reach some sort of compromise whereby the worst tendencies of the past tend to be displayed by minor characters while the hero looks good by comparison – less misogynist, racist, violent, cruel to animals or whatever.

My lead character is an Army doctor so he’s usually trying to stitch up the wounds rather than inflict them. If I’d given him the job of being the man who trains lions to eat Christians, I’d have had a worse problem. But of course he does have to face the ruthlessness of his age, and when violence erupts between the British and the Roman Army, both he and his British partner Tilla have to face up to the cruelties that their comrades are prepared to inflict. Both sides, of course, think they’re ‘right’, which provides for the sort of tension that writers love to play with.

TCW: How many more Ruso books will be in the series?

RSD: There are contracts in place for four. I’m currently proof-reading the third and writing the fourth. After that, it’s up to the publishers!

Well we’ve enjoyed having Ruth here so much that we’ve invited her to do a ‘how to’ series on writing historical fiction in April. So sign up to our RSS feed to keep informed. In the meantime, she’s offering Crafty readers an opportunity to buy a limited number of signed hardback copies of the first Ruso book at paperback prices.  Contact her via her website for further details.

Related posts:

1. Writing historical fiction 2 – doing the research
2. Writing historical fiction 1 – creating your historical world
3. Writing historical fiction 3 – using fact in fiction

Whose story is it?

The most marketable and interesting form of written history, is history about people. Your research will have unearthed many potential ‘characters’. Which ones are you going to feature in your story? Articles are best written when focusing on a single ‘protagonist’ or a small group. In a book you can deal with more characters, but they need to be linked. There are a number of questions that you can ask that are used by fiction writers to develop a character. By adopting this approach you will help to bring your personalities to life and to present them in a lively, readable historical narrative.

Who is your protagonist?

This may be an individual, a family, a group, a community, a class or a nation. It could also be an institution and the people associated with it. One of my students has written the narrative history of his local bowling club and hopes to get it published as a booklet. In his ’story’ the bowling club itself is the main character and the people who drift in and out of it the supporting cast. Rian Malan’s family history My Traitor’s Heart, which is a lens on South African white guilt, has his whole family (and by association, all white South Africans) as the protagonist. If a Pirate I Must Be by Richard Sanders, has the infamous pirate of the Caribbean, Bartholomew Roberts as his protagonist.

What is their goal?

Rian Malan, as the central character in his own book, wants to come to terms with his family’s racist past and find a place in the ‘new’ South Africa. Bartholomew Roberts wants fame and fortune and to avoid getting caught. These are goals that drive our historical characters in their real lives but also give their stories forward momentum on the page. If I were to write the life story of my grandma Betty Veitch, her central goal would be to shake off her parents’ working class mantle and find respect as an independent business woman.  What is your central character (or protagonist’s) goal?

How do they achieve it?

What steps did they take to achieve their goal? Remember, a main character who takes destiny in their own hands is far more compelling than one who is simply swept along by historical fate. Even if they are swept along, how did they attempt to navigate their way? Even if they never achieve their goal, their attempts to do so will drive your historical narrative forward.

What or who stands in their way?

In fiction this would be the ‘antagonist’. This does not have to be a person. Circumstances, in and out of your main character’s control, may block their efforts to achieve their goal. In writing my family history, my grandma’s marriage to my grandfather, a man beset with illness who died in his 40s, became an inadverdent ‘obstacle’ to her goal. How did she deal with it?

How are they affected by historical events?

On the broader stage of history and society, what events impacted, positively or negatively on your main character and the pursuit of their goal? Again, with my grandmother, the Second World War affected her pursuit of a business career.

How do they change historical events (if at all)?

My grandmother did not change or have an impact on historical events, but your main character (person, community, institution etc) might have. If so, how?

What is their legacy?

How was the world changed by your character living in it? The world may be as small as your family or as big as the earth. The fact that you are writing about this person suggests that a legacy has been left. What is it?

• A fond memory?
• An inspiration?
• A change in circumstance?
• A change in perspective?
• A change in legislation?
• Or simply a regret?

Join us next time for tips on using timelines to structure your historical narrative.

Related posts:

1. Writing history for the commercial market – 1: finding the social context
2. Tolkien history resource
3. Writing historical fiction – reviews and links