originally posted December 11, 2012
May 2021: reformatted; some links updated; text revised as needed
Those of you who have followed me for a time know that some of my favorite editorial projects are works of historical fiction; the truth is, historical fiction has been one of my favorite genres since I was in grade school. (Anyone remember the We Were There series?) Perhaps that’s why, during those projects, I’ve noted one challenge that continually plagues many of their writers—especially newer ones: “Exactly how much fiction is acceptable in historical fiction?” Even more seasoned writers have issues, but their challenges are more generally along the lines of, “When is fiction acceptable in historical fiction?” Either is a common problem.
Part of a recent interview with best-selling, award-winning author Hilary Mantel on NPR’s Fresh Air briefly addresses these two questions. (If you listen to the interview, which focuses on the two finished books in Mantel’s trilogy about Tudor England, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, her comments on writing historical fiction run from about about 16:18 to roughly 19:38.) Her answer is simple, yet complex.
I make up as little as possible. I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the background details and the biographies of the people involved . . . it’s really in the gaps, the erasures, that I think the novelist can best go to work . . .
She then steps into the topic that, in my mind, states the very purpose for writing historical fiction in the first place: to tell “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say—the part of the story that history books cannot easily convey; the part that relates why what happened, happened:
. . . inevitably in history, in any period, we know a lot about what happened, but we may be far hazier on why it happened. And there’s always the question: Why did it happen the way it did? Where was the turning point?
In other words, facts are facts, whether they involve a person or group of people, an act or event, or a time or place; but, the why and the how . . . now, that’s where the “story” in history comes in! At least, that’s my opinion.
So, now that you know one challenge of historical fiction (and a thought or two on how to meet it), get back to that draft!
Stephen, the-freelance-editor.com
editorial –at– Im Your Editor –dot– com
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image information: Featured image, via MrE’s History Emporium at TeachersPayTeachers.com—because “books NEVER tell the whole story of who, what, when, where, why, and how a story took place.”
