10 rules for writing historical fiction
1. Your story is its own world; it doesn’t need to RECREATE a real-life world from the past. Remember the word “fiction” is the term historical fiction. Give yourself permission to play around with that! As Caitlin Horrocks has said, “The house can be a skewed, even surreal version of historical fact, but as long as the reader agrees to take up residence there, that structure and the people inside it can come alive.”
2. Pay as much attention to the landscape your character inhabits as you do to the character.
Make sure every detail counts, but avoid “painting a portrait” of a character at the expense of the world surrounding them. A world rich in context—politics, geography, economics—gives us reasons for the characters’ behavior(s) without requiring a psychological diagnosis. A person functioning in a Communist dictatorship has real reasons for avoiding loud verbal dissent that has nothing to do with their very real introversion. Spread the wealth; paint the landscape, not just the portrait.
3. At the same time, take your character’s point of view seriously.
Would they notice the smoke in 19th century London, the raw sewage running down dirt streets in Delhi? If not, then please have a very good reason to draw OUR attention to those details.
4. The same goes for introducing characters to get the reader up to speed on events up to the present moment.
It’s boring and cheesy, and most of all, unnecessary. Show your world and its history through the eyes of your characters rather than through extended exposition, whether it’s delivered in the voice of the omniscient narrator or an old retainer explaining to a new maid why to NOT EVER go to the attic at Thornfield.
5. Don’t overexplain
We all want to know the “why” behind a character’s words and actions, never mind whether it’s a made-up character or a real historical figure. In fact, I’d argue that we want to know why MORE when it’s a historical character. Because why would we be reading about this person who really existed if not to understand why they did what they did or why their actions were important.
But resist the impulse to tie any character’s actions up in a nice neat bow. After all, messiness is the REAL human condition, is it not?
6. Don’t rely solely on events to move your story. Dare to include Interior monologues, memories, flashbacks or flash forwards, imagined dialogues, poetry, journal entries (to name a few possibilities) to illuminate your characters. Flesh them out rather than the “plot” or sequence of events.
7. Relax your grip on the dialogue. You might be tempted to go full Shakespeare or Dickens, eschew contractions and fill your character’s mouths with flowery dialogue that we moderns associate with times gone by. But the way of speaking you choose has to show something very specific and necessary about the characters. As David Milch said about the TV series Deadwood, the language was “so soaked with obscenity as to bleach out the expectation that civility could be expected to govern in any given scene.” The language signaled the lawlessness of the community. So write your dialogue with care, but don’t rely on it to build your entire world. Focus it on something specific.
8. That goes for spelling too.
Telegraphing your historical period by imitating its spelling just makes you look excessively nerdy. Defoe and Austen and Jonson spelled the way they did because very few people even knew how to write, so the rules had not been created yet. It was the Wild West as far as written language went, but just as we no longer settle quarrels at high noon with revolvers, inserting “period” spelling only serves to distract your reader from your story. Their mind will go down that rabbit hole, and do you want to risk that they never come back?
9. Too much detail is just that: too much
Resist the impulse to show off your research skills by including extraneous details: is it important that Diana’s gown is made of lutestring? Will we readers even know what that is? As much as I love Patrick O’Brian’s writing, even he was occasionally guilty of inserting a period detail that wasn’t strictly necessary. Again, don’t intentionally distract your reader with shiny objects!
10. Don’t forget that, as Paraic O’Donnell says, historical fiction is still contemporary fiction.
“We do not unearth cities but remake them; do not raise the dead but summon in their place the newly living.”