Susie Helme
The basics
Whether you’re writing about real historical characters or invented historical characters, your goal is still going to be the same as it is for all fiction writing. You need to address the elements: character, dialogue, setting, theme, plot, conflict, and world building.
The same questions apply here as for all fiction. You have a choice of plot structure, narrative structure, tense, viewpoint. Develop your characters’: aims and motivations, internal conflict and character growth.
The three most important ingredients for a compelling plot are: story question (which keeps the reader wondering, then is solved at the end), conflict, and stakes (what does your hero stand to lose/gain?).
You can also combine genres. Elaine writes ‘sci-fi about mediaeval peasants in space’. One of my clients (who is 14 yrs old) writes historical fantasy sci-fi about a ‘cat-girl’ who time-travels to save lives of children who are going to grow up to change the world.
Story concept
All of the below qualify as historical fiction:
- a fictionalised version of a true story
- a true story but with some creative license
- real events used as a backdrop to a mostly fictional story
- a true story used as inspiration for your fictional story (if the people are still alive, you might want to change some names like Rajes had to do in Banks of the River Thillai.)
According to Kindlepreneur, these are some common tropes in historical fiction:
- The feisty heroine who rebels against societal expectations
- The brooding hero scarred by war or loss
- Love triangles and forbidden romances
- Diaries, letters, and found documents framing the story
- Real historical figures making cameo appearances
- Political intrigue at royal courts or in seats of power
- Gritty descriptions of battles and warfare
- Incorporation of real historical events into the plot
- References to classic literature, philosophy, and art from the time period[1]
Research and footnotes
You need to do your research before you plot your story, because you’re somewhat boxed in by the constraints of history. One small detail can change everything. For example in my Dreaming of Jerusalem, I absolutely wanted Princess Theodora Kantakouzene and the abduction of her son Prince Halil to be in the story, but it actually happened 15 years after the period about which I was writing. So, I cheated, and just inserted a footnote about how the prince-abduction actually went down. Ideally, you don’t want to do this.
Many people say that fiction works should not have footnotes. The most accepted convention is to put comments about where you cheated on the known history in an appendix at the back. Personally, I use a lot of foreign words, which a lot of readers don’t like, so I translate them in footnotes.
You might want to leave footnotes in your manuscript. I took them out of The Lost Wisdom and was criticised for it in my review in HNR. But certainly, in your research phase, keep footnotes for your own purposes. You may discover more down the line as to whether a source is reputable or not. You may later remember something from that source which you neglected to write down. Decades ago, somewhere, in some source, I read that before Columbus there were, or there was a myth that there were, maps labelling the New World as ‘La Mérica’ and the Orient as ‘La Sérica’. But I have not since been able to find the source.
Switch back and forth between researching and writing. Research feeds into the writing. The writing inspires the research. Though left brain/right brain is a bit of a myth, you organise your outline using your mathematical logical left brain and write your impassioned dialogue from your emotional creative right brain. Whether there are ‘sides’ or not, different brain functions certainly feed into and inform other brain functions. Going back and forth between the planning and the creating makes for good structure and good writing.
Research checklist
You’re not going to use all of this—you’ll still have to ‘kill your darlings’—but whether or not you use these details in your text, ask these questions to immerse yourself fully in your period:
- What were the current events of the time? The political arguments? Which of them would your Protagonist have experienced? Had an opinion about?
- What were the prevailing attitudes toward women, marriage, child-rearing, homosexuality, religion?
- What was the social structure? How did classes interact? Did they have servants, slaves?
- What did they eat? When did they eat meals? Did they use cutlery?
- What did they wear?
- What currency did they use?
- How did they earn their living?
- What language did they speak?
- What scientific discoveries were the most talked about?
- What were current relations with other countries?
- Did they bathe?
- What was a typical day?
- What did their homes look like?
- How different was the lifestyle between the countryside and the city?
- What were the prevailing flora and fauna?
- How dangerous was it to leave home? Walk into town? Go on a journey?
- What were the available modes of transport and how much did they cost?
- What were the common diseases? How was the medical care?
- What level of education would your characters have had?
Making a Timeline of events that happened in history and events that happen fictionally to your character can be very useful.
Consult the experts
When possible, use primary resources. What did people of the time think?
I’m a big fan of Quora. It’s amazing how much time extremely qualified and knowledgeable people are willing to give for the sake of helping others. I try to ‘pay it forward’ and answer some questions myself.
For more scholarly stuff, there’s JSTOR and Academia.
Find yourself a professor or two to interview.
Read your ‘comps’
You should read and make a list of the novels about your place and period, as these could become your ‘comps’ at the publishing stage. If you nick ideas, facts or phrases from someone else, I think you ought to credit them in a footnote.
Consult the footnotes of history
You’ll have more leeway for invention if you choose characters that are not so famous. My favourite stories are those of the little people, who may have followed the big leaders about whom much is known and may have been there when big things happened.
Edward Marston writes mediaeval whodunnits about legal disputes coming up after the administration of the Domesday Book. The one I read was inspired, I think, by a minor note in the DB of a certain ‘Strang the Dane’ listed in the DB as a property owner dispossessed in 1066. What could be the story there? Marston is free to invent one.
Fact or myth
Personally, I love mythology and conspiracy theories, so I include a lot of stuff in my plots which are probably completely ahistorical. One of my sources on the Essenes for The Lost Wisdom was Delores Cannon, a ‘psychic’ who ‘channels’ John the Baptist. I consider a detail to be legitimate for my purposes if it is a fact that at some point somebody believed that detail. It is scientifically impossible that the child Jesus made clay pigeons to fly. Yet somebody wrote it in the Protoevangelicon, so I can use it.
Melanie Benjamin calls this blending of fact and fiction ‘blurred lines’.
It was reported that the nine knights who founded the Templars ‘were digging around underneath Solomon’s Stables’ in Jerusalem. What did they find? Who knows? Could have been the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, could have been the head of John the Baptist. They could have just been trying to improve their plumbing, but that’s no fun. So, ‘the Templars found the head of John the Baptist’ becomes a ‘fake news’ item which I can play with.
I also consider it legitimate to take a historical fact and make it more important than it actually was. For example, in The Lost Wisdom, ‘Kanna’im’ are said to be ‘a militant wing of the Essenes’. I just made that up, because I wanted my protagonist to become increasingly more radicalised and militant as she moved from place to place in her life. Actually, I believe Kanna’im was simply another generic epithet for zealots.
Follow your heart
Write about what you love, not what you think you ought to. History books want to write about the Ottoman administration system—was it ‘Oriental’ or was it ‘Turkic’ or was it ‘Byzantine’? Boring! I want to write about thrusting swords ‘into the blue sky to come out red’ with the blood of conquest, shouting ‘Allah-hu akbar’.
As you research, listen to your heart. Which details really grab you? Make a note of them.
Here are some suggestions from Kindlepreneur:
- Fascinating traditions, social conventions, or fashion trends
- Innovations and technologies specific to the era
- Notable events, battles, or political movements
- Interesting figures who make cameo appearances
- Delicious descriptions of meals or architecture[2]
Where to start
Start at the most exciting point, the point at which your protagonist’s status quo ends and her new possibilities begin. You can give us whatever backstory we need as we go along, and it’s most artful to give it just at the point when the reader needs to know it, and not before.
Lesley Downer, the author of The Shogun’s Queen, points out the importance of choosing a clear starting point. Her Timeline begins just at the most exciting point in Japanese history.
Settings and description
Settings and description are going to be more important in this genre than in some others. Describing the scene is how you get your reader ‘immersed’ in your world. However, you are writing a story, not a textbook. Show don’t Tell.
Instead of a big, long paragraph about how mediaeval swords were made, write a scene around a swordsmith at work.
In my Dreaming of Jerusalem, my protagonists discover that the Karasis are plotting treason when they discover a cache of Karasi arrows in a cave.
So, what did Karasi arrows look like? Nobody’s written it, and there are no Karasis alive now to ask, so I felt free to make it up. Turkish dramas portray Kayı arrows (whether historically accurate or not) with white fletchings, so I thought for Karasi arrows black would be a contrast. I selected the ‘black francolin’ from ‘Birds native to Turkey with black feathers’.
Thus, I spent an enjoyable few hours writing this phrase:
Black fletchings margined in white—wing feathers of the black francolin pheasant.
If possible, you should visit the places you write about. But I can’t walk too well. So, hey, you can use Google Earth Street Maps and look at the place from the sky. But actually visiting would give you the opportunity to get a feel for the genius loci and interview the locals.
Language
I think it’s fun to question what language people were speaking. In what language did Alexander speak to Roxana? Did they use an interpreter? You also have an opportunity here to have someone teaching things or teaching words to someone who is new to a language. In Dreaming, the protagonist doesn’t understand the word for ‘dubious’ in Turkish, and another character translates it for her into Greek (the language they have in common). This makes the word become important, and at some point later in the story, she mouths the word to her friend when they spot some ‘dubious’ thing going on.
You will certainly turn readers off if you write in Chaucerian English, but try to give a flavour of the antiqueness of your period in your dialogue, without resorting to easy cheats like ‘methinks’ and ‘forsooth’. Certainly avoid and words or phrases that immediately pop out as being modern. Suspension of disbelief is the aim. Ellis Peters of Brother Cadfael renown is a good model. Perfectly simple non-forsoothy language, yet nothing that comes out of Cadfael’s mouth makes you jump up and say ‘hey, a mediaeval Welsh monk would never have said that’.
The Showing and the Telling doesn’t have to be in your narrator’s voice. You can put it in the mouth of one of your characters. There’s that great line in Pirates of the Caribbean, when Captain Jack Sparrow says Elizabeth ‘is safe, just like I promised. She’s all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die for her, just like you promised’.
Travel and transportation and money
In my novels, people are usually travelling across the world to far-away lands, so they need money. (My protagonists usually have to be rich for some reason) What currency would they have used? Where and how did they change one currency to another? How much did things cost? The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World by G. E. M. de Ste. Croix has a phenomenal wealth of data on costs of things at which period in which parts of the world.
Verisimilitude
My favourite word is Verisimilitude. You needn’t be pedantic, but strive for accuracy and authenticity.
I want my readers to see everything through my protagonist’s eyes and think about things the way she would have thought about things. People in the past, in different countries had different knowledge, attitudes and beliefs.
Even one word can be anachronistic. Your 14th century French maiden is not going to think something is ‘cool’. https://books.google.com/ngrams is a tool you can use to see how frequently a certain word was used during a certain time period. https://www.etymonline.com can tell you the first time a certain word was used.
In historical fiction, the mundane can be interesting. In a contemporary novel, we might be bored by a detailed description of a family’s breakfast, yet a second century Jewish family in Alexandria—what did their breakfast look like? What did they eat? (day-old emmer bread and beer gruel) Where did the breakfast-eating take place?
I can easily get bogged down with my ‘darlings’. The biggest consideration should be: what are these juicy details meant to convey? The answer should not be: ‘look at these cool details I found’ (and I’m terrible at this). The point about the emmer crust and beer gruel detail is to introduce her and her husband and to Show that she considers her summons before ‘the master’ more important than having breakfast with her husband.
Don’t worry if you have to kill some darlings. Save them all into a ‘cool details I found’ file, and maybe someday you can use them in a short story.
Reedsy’s online tutor Shaelin Bishop advises to ‘fact check things you wouldn’t even think you need to fact check’.
Editing
As with all books, fiction or non-fiction, the last stage is editing. I insist that everyone needs a professional editor who is not your friend. Not just because that’s what I do for a living. I also hired a professional editor for my books. Want someone good? Then be prepared to pay for it. There’s no point in publishing if the end product is crap.
It’s going to be harder to ‘kill your darlings’ than with other genres. Find someone, or several someones, who knows about that period of history to beta-read and help you spot anachronisms.
This sounds terrible to admit but one of the things driving me to hurry up and get my novel published is that the longer I leave it, the more juicy historical details I’m going to be trying to cram in, the more ‘darling’-heavy it will be and the more unwieldy my wordcount.
[1] https://kindlepreneur.com/how-to-write-historical-fiction/
[2] https://kindlepreneur.com/how-to-write-historical-fiction/
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