Historical Fiction and Nonfiction

“History repeats itself.” A phrase we hear more often than not. That’s why history is so important to humanity. Unlike most other stories, historical stories carry their own weight of importance and significance. Thus, it also carries with it more responsibility for writers. Facts, events and even characters can take on a whole new level of research. Let’s see what is necessary and important when deciding to take on a historical story:

Tips for Writing Historical Non-fiction:

1. Do your research. It’s one thing to write a story about yourself, but a whole new animal to write something that needs to be true about someone else. Just because they say it happened to them doesn’t always mean that’s true. Our minds forget details and make up details.
2. Find the story. People love stories. Folk tales, parables, riveting page turners. All of them have a story that can be followed by the reader.
3. Facts are essential but not the full picture. People can write facts all day, but that won’t intrigue many readers. Readers need something they can relate to – a person, an event, a lifestyle, something! Make sure facts are being presented correctly, but that the story has more to offer than just facts.
4. Invite the reader in. Whether you’re putting together a manual or writing about historical events or people, the reader is always to take the journey with you. Use questions, interesting facts, fun twists to a story or other fun things.

 
Tips for Writing Historical Fiction:

1. Keep it real. Historical fiction is generally easier to do because there is less research involved most of the time, but it still needs to be accurate. Just like Napoleon wouldn’t have had a digital watch (Yes, this is an extreme example), don’t let your characters get swooped up in modern, or not so modern, technology for the time period.
2. Time period and location are everything. The time and the place of your story is the most important aspect to historical fiction. With these chosen, you can begin constructing the rest of your story around them. These two are the only two things that must remain consistent throughout the whole book (unless you have historical characters that must remain true to their personas from history).
3. Characters and details. Your characters must interact with your details in history. A female character struggling to get her family out of Germany during World War 2 may hear radio news in the background about Stalin or Hitler invading another country. This type of scenario ties in the historical event with the nonfictional character.
4. Nothing will ever be perfect. Don’t stress some minute detail about whether Hitler told jokes at his meetings or whether Pocahontas and her father, Powhatan, had deep meaningful talks. This is all left to the imagination. If it’s in writing, make sure it’s accurate. Research multiple sources and make sure the facts you use line up with those sources.
5. Bottom line. You can’t satisfy everyone and everyone, ironically, will have different opinions about the gray areas in history that weren’t written down. Just make sure you have fun in the process of writing historical fiction and don’t let people get you down!  

For someone who loves history, researching the time period, characters and any other factual information may be one of the most fun tasks at hand. For those of us who aren’t as keen on history because of poor teachers presenting just the facts with no emotion or excitement, we need people with stories that both teach and entertain. So, whether you’re writing true historical events and lending yourself just to research or whether you’re wanting to spice up a good story among those events, historical writing is as much a love of readers as any other genre. So, get to writing your historical adventure – real or fictitious!

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