I love the writing community, especially historical authors who are willing to share their experiences with aspiring authors. When I first put out the request to answer some of my questions, I was hopeful that at least one author would respond. I guess I severely underestimated my fellow historical writers!
Since I couldn’t fit everything into my first two posts, I thought I’d compile the answers into a third post so that you, my writer friend, will get the most out of these articles.
Historical authors Danielle Grandinetti, Dana McNeely, Jen Turano, Crystal Caudill, Stephanie Daniels, Emily Wright, Betty Woods and E.V. Sparrow answered my call and graciously provided the following answers to my questions. So without further ado, here is advice to help you along in your historical writing journey.
Advice From Historical Authors
How does historical writing differ from other genres you’ve written?
BETTY: Historical writing takes more research. Small details to make your characters, setting or plot real take more time to find than similar details for a contemporary.
DANIELLE: What I love about writing historical fiction is the ability to include danger alongside that sweet romance. My (contemporary) romantic suspense is, perhaps, more tame than other traditional romantic suspense authors and setting it in a different time period allows me the space to do so.
STEPHANIE: I’ve only published historical fiction but in other works of progress I’ve tried outside of the genre, I’d say research and word choice are probably the greatest differences. A historical fiction writer will want to be mindful of not using terms that would only be used in a contemporary setting. Modern slang should be avoided. Even the sentence structure will feel a little different in a historical compared to some other genres.
EMILY: To me, historical fiction is like coming home. I absolutely love history and have the desire to share my passion with others so that they can also understand my belief that we all have something valuable to learn from history. Sometimes, people see history as boring and a collection of “a bunch of dead guys with funny-looking beards.” I want to break that stereotype and show that people from history were just as real as we are, that they went through the same trials, fears, hopes, and dreams that we experience today. After all, “there is nothing new under the sun.”
E.V.: After I outlined my debut novel, the obvious issue became the hours and months of research required. When I’ve written more contemporary short stories, they didn’t require as much research.
What are the essential historical elements needed to create your story?
DANIELLE: One aspect about writing historical fiction that I love is how a time period (I write Depression-era romance) is a living, breathing setting. Putting my characters in 1933 America, at the heart of the Great Depression, gives them more to wrestle with than the dangers they face or the romance they’re avoiding. It layers the story. This is what I love about reading historical fiction, too. Elements that create that reader experience include housing, food, occupation, gender roles, and word choices – those provide the framework around which to build your story.
DANA: As with any novel, one needs characters with goals, conflicts, and motivations; a rich setting; and a plot that shows characters in action – and they must change. But what’s different about Biblical Fiction, is I start with the biblical narrative first, arrange it in chronological order, and decide what portion I want to build upon for this book. I create one or more fictional characters who interact with the biblical characters. Additionally, because I’m writing a series, I bring some characters from the previous book into the current one. Readers want to hear from favorite characters again! Another difference is, after I build a structure around the biblical history, I weave in secular history of ancient cultures, everyday life, and geography. In my current book I needed to research warfare, weapons, archery, and golden eagles.
JEN: Any writer delving into the world of historical fiction needs to have a grasp of the era in which they’re going to set their novel. Know the customs of the day, the mannerisms, the settings, the architecture. Be familiar with the language of the time but know that you need to write dialogue in a way that readers will enjoy following, but avoiding words that weren’t around during your time period. Also familiarize yourself with transportation – what type of carriage would have been appropriate – did they have access to trains or elevated railroads? Small details will enhance your story and give readers a taste of the times.
E.V.: Authenticity for the reader and a fantastic novel requires an accuracy with beliefs, settings, communities, culture, family, jobs, transportation, and so on.
EMILY: In a historical fiction novel, every detail has to be researched in order for the reader to be immersed in the time period. In my Trials of the Heart series, which takes place during the Civil War and the beginning of the Reconstruction Era, painstaking research had to be done. For accuracy, I had to include details of troop movements, battles, and life on the home front. What food did the soldiers eat? What gear did they carry? What clothing did men and women wear in the 1860s? What was society like, and what were the societal norms? Another example would be that, in the third installment of the series, I had to research 1860s wedding traditions, which are starkly different from what we know in our modern world. Speech patterns also have to be accurate, making the characters believable within the era in which they live. For a historical novel, details such as these cannot be made up.
Where do aspiring authors start their research?
STEPHANIE: I don’t know that there is any one way to go about this. I like to start generally and narrow my scope. Wikipedia is a great resource to get general knowledge (let me stress that I always consult other resources that confirms any information I find there—I prefer 2-3 other sources that say the same thing), but I like it mostly for the bibliographic section. If I really want to glean from whatever topic I’m reading, then I find what books are cited in the article and go find those (if I can). The library (even the online catalogue) is a nice jumping off point. If you have a historical event that you know has been written about a lot, then it’s usually easy to search for books about that in the catalogue. And once I’ve read those, I use the bibliographies of those books to find out even more. Once I’m settled on an event or era, I start to consult primary resources such as history books written during the years I plan to write about, journals and diaries written by people of that time, newspapers during that time period, maps close to that era, and if possible reading literature written during (not just about) that era.
E.V.: God blessed me with my family’s penchant for being “pack rats” as we say. We don’t use the word “hoarders” because we believe we’re not quite up to that level. I began with totes full of letters, documents, and stacks of photos. I’m grateful for those personal pieces.
CRYSTAL: I always recommend starting broad. If you know what time period you want, start looking at the big-picture items so you can get a feel for what your character’s world looked like. Then as you narrow down your topic and story focus, your research will narrow. Don’t get hung up in the nit-picky details of what color bricks were on the building unless it becomes a necessary detail. It’s way too easy to go down time-consuming rabbit holes because let’s be honest, there are SO many fascinating things in history. So in short, start broad and move narrower.
BETTY: I like historical sites, local museums for in person research. Read diaries or letters from your time period. Online, go to state historical organizations. Start googling key words for what you need. Children’s historical sites can have simplified small details the other sites don’t mention.
What’s one piece of advice you wish you knew at the beginning of your historical writing journey?
JEN: I think the best piece of advice I can give is that you need to choose an era you absolutely love because, if you’re successful with finding a reader base, and a publishing house, you’ll be writing in that era for a very long time. Readers know me as ‘The Gilded Girl.’ That means they expect my books to be set during that time and would probably be disappointed if I suddenly did an about-face and started writing Regency.
E.V.: It’s not a project you can rush. For years, I was a muralist, and my medium was acrylic. I loved it for its quick-drying power and knew I couldn’t mess it up after two-minutes of dry time. I was accustomed to work, then move on. Not so with historical fiction. Big adjustment. I edited, cut, added facts—good grief, for several months! It is not an acrylic medium.
STEPHANIE: I love research. But there is a point where the writing keeps being delayed because of needing to know that “one more thing”. While I don’t always think this is a terrible thing, it can slow progress of actually writing the story. Because at the heart of any novel is the story. The joy of historical fiction is that the plot can be inspired from the research uncovered. Incorporating those details can make the story come to life. It took a while for me to learn not to slow down the story by dropping in facts just because I thought they were neat. They should feel organic and necessary to the characters’ lives.
EMILY: A piece of advice I wish I knew when I began my journey would honestly be the marketing aspect of writing and publishing. I learned that a historical fiction writer has a very specific audience to target, which makes it both harder and easier. I had to learn how to find writing communities for historical fiction and how to better organize my website. I found out that readers of historical fiction like to know facts about the actual historical events surrounding the novel, which is why I made a “What’s the Real History?” section on my website. This section includes pictures, etc. that help readers better visualize the setting and perhaps instill a desire for them to want to conduct research of their own.
Connect With These Authors Online
I want to thank these fabulous authors for sharing their wisdom, and for their patience as it took me much longer to pull together these articles than originally planned!
I hope these three articles (Part One, Part Two) have answered some questions you have about starting or polishing your historical manuscript.
Want to read what these authors are writing? Click on their names below to go directly to their websites.