Writing Historical Fiction That Rivals The Greats: Everything You Need To Know

Whether it is a hardboiled mystery, a pulse-stirring thriller, an extravagant literary opus, a historical epic, or a sci-fi fantasy, each type of fiction has its rules and caveats. Though not cast in stone, these offer writers a framework within which to work as they give free rein to the imagination. They help authors hit the right chords with readers and go on to achieve the sort of chartbuster success equated with the likes of Rowlings, Patterson, and Christie.

 If historical—or period—fiction is where your interests lie (and you've yet to pen your first novel), this piece should prepare you for that exciting journey into the past. Not only does it underscore the defining features of quality historical fiction, but it shows how historical verisimilitude can be achieved in narrative and dialogue.  

What Makes Great Historical Fiction

When you think of historical fiction that defines the genre, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, and Paul Scott's four novels about colonial India (commonly referred to as "The Raj Quartet") might come to mind.

These books offer the reader an immersive experience. They bring to life the periods in which their stories unfold by providing just enough historical background while shaping characters that reveal the mores and manners, the prejudices and attitudes of their time.

A good piece of historical fiction should serve as a time machine of sorts. It should propel the reader into a bygone age with descriptive narration, and then continue to sustain the excitement with dramatic storytelling. 

How To Work Your Magic & Nail Historical Fiction Writing

Well-written historical fiction is essentially illusory. Past worlds are re-created on the strength of good writing, imagination, and sound research, but first, the author must relocate to the imagined past and live it before inviting the reader to follow suit.  It's a daunting enterprise, but if the prospect is too exciting to ignore, here are pointers to help you write historical fiction that comes up to scratch.

Study Your History

Will your story be one of deprivation and survival during the Great Depression? Will it be a political yarn set in the Elizabethan Era? Or a thriller that plays out against the backdrop of the bloody French Revolution?

Once you've decided which period to base your novel on, read literature pertaining to it. Wikipedia is a good place to acquire historical background without breaking the bank. However, if you're considering long-term research and are willing to spend serious money, simply browse the online bookstores and fill your shopping cart. There's tons of literature—much of it lavishly illustrated—on the two world wars. Not to mention tomes covering the history of the Vikings, the Roosevelt years, historic battles, The Great Influenza, the Roman Empire, and the history of Britain and Ireland, to mention a few.

To experience a place and time at a deeper level, try accessing first-hand accounts by contemporaneous writers and historians—or even newspaper reports if they're available.

Present Life As It Was Lived

Knowing your history is one thing. But acquiring an understanding of how people lived, traveled, dressed, settled scores, and used language in a distant era will require you to reach beyond the academic history book.

 There are quite a few "everyday life" books worth checking out. Everyday Life Through the Ages from Reader's Digest is a comprehensive and fascinating account of the lifestyles of various peoples, beginning with the ancient Egyptians and concluding with the immigrants of North America. 

Daily Life in Medieval Europe by Jeffrey Singman, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life by Thomas J. Schlereth, Everyday Life in the Aztec World by Frances F. Berdan and Michael E. Smith, and Everyday Life in Traditional Japan by Charles J. Dunn and Laurence Broderick also offer intriguing insights into past lives.

Another way to view life through the eyes of people who lived in a particular time is to read their autobiographies.  The autobiography you choose would depend on the perspective you seek. The Memoirs of Casanova offers a close-up look at 18th century Italy and Europe from a commoner's point of view, while the autobiographies of Churchill, Nehru, and Mandela (to choose a few) provide diverse political perspectives from leadership positions.  

You will most likely read more research material than you will use. Make notes as you read, culling from the mass of information just what you need to enrich your storytelling. You could organise material under useful headings such as "modes of transportation," "foods," "clothes," "customs," "titles of government officials," "religious attitudes," "social structures," "race prejudices," and so on.

Get The Language Right

One of the most challenging aspects of writing historical fiction is using language that's true (to some extent) to the historical period being covered. As you will be addressing a modern audience, you will spell words as they are spelled today to ensure that your work is comprehensible and readable.  Where you must try for historical verisimilitude is in the aspect of expression.  Use era-specific diction and phrasing to "date" language and achieve the right flavour, but don't overdo it, and beware of words that have changed in meaning over time.  

To achieve a clearer understanding of how people expressed themselves in a particular period, get hold of the literature of that period: diaries, letters, speeches, eyewitness accounts, newspaper reports, documentaries, newsreel footage, and creative works like novels, plays, and poems. Historical periods closer to present times are easier to replicate in fiction because of the amount of available material (textual and pictorial) related to them. For instance, it would be easier to achieve a high level of historicity with a story about deprivation and despair during the Great Depression than one about knightly chivalry during the Middle Ages.

Another way to create the illusion of historical distance in your novel is to use stylised narration and dialogue, liberally peppered with period words and phrases.

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall is not written in Early Modern English, the language of the Tudor period in which the story is set. However, Mantel's narrative is polished and formal, and her characters are crafted well enough to define the socio-political climate of the time and drive the storyline of Thomas Cromwell's ascent to power in the court of King Henry VIII.

The television series Deadwood, which is about life in the eponymous South Dakota town, blends fact and fiction to present the old West in a way few westerns have done. But what about the language used? 

In an article for slate.com titled "Talk Pretty," Matt Feeney writes that the show's creator David Milch's attempt “to capture a sense of historical distance with the speech patterns of Deadwood succeeds marvellously, but not because the dialogue achieves true realism or gritty accuracy. Deadwood's characters don't talk quite like us, but neither do they talk like Dakota scalawags in 1876 probably talked. Instead, the show's fidelity to the idea that the past is a foreign country results in dialogue that is just slightly stilted and formal."

Getting the language right is a challenge, but try to strike a balance between lucid communication and historical accuracy. Too strict an adherence to period language will reduce readability and alienate your reader.

Don't Alter Or Ignore Facts

Unless you're writing an alternate history, you must weave your story within the framework of historical fact. In the television series Outlander, the Scots still lose the battle of Culloden (a historical fact) despite lead characters attempting to avoid that confrontation.  The film Braveheart, on the other hand, blithely ignores historical fact in its misrepresentation of William Wallace's character (among other things).  However, both film and television serials are packed with drama and emotional content and score high on the excitement index, as historical fiction should.

Hilary Mantel offers some advice on the matter of staying factually true when writing historical fiction. In an interview with Rob Attar (published on the HistoryExtra website) she says: "However much you learn, factually, there is plenty of scope for imagination. You are allowed to speculate and to fill gaps, as long as you do it plausibly. If you don't want to pay attention to plausibility, it is more honest to write some other kind of novel. The facts are not a constraint; they are your raw material and your source of inspiration."

Serve The Demands Of Fiction In General

Historical fiction is still fiction. To work, it must serve the demands of storytelling. That means having a strong plot and well-crafted characters, crises and conflict, a climax, and a conclusion. Use historical facts to add color and texture to your work, but use it judiciously.

 As Bernard Cornwell, a well-known author of historical fiction puts it: "Your job is not to educate readers on the finer points of Elizabethan diplomacy or Napoleonic warfare, your job is to divert and amuse people who have had a hard day at work. What will get you published? Not style, not research, but story. Once the story is right, everything else will follow."

 Writing historical fiction isn't an easy task, but its attraction lies precisely in the challenges it presents. If you're ready to plunge into the past, choose a period and dive right in. It's the closest you can get to time travel, and you'll find the trip endlessly fascinating.