How to Begin Historical Fiction

Jack Buie April 18, 2023

Writing historical fiction can be challenging, even for a seasoned writer. You have the usual things to worry about – planning, plotting, structure, character development, etc. – but on top of that, you also have to grapple with the in-depth research and get to grips with the key considerations around historical accuracy and authenticity. For a newcomer, it can seem a bit daunting. But it needn’t be. Historical Fiction is one of the most beautiful types of genres to me. It reminds us where we descend from. That is why I love it so much! Not only is it just interesting and cool, but the things that were invented, the discoveries made, the voyages taken, the uncharted lands. Its beautiful! I specialize in historical fiction as well. Now I don't paint myself as a man who knows everything about history, but I've studied enough of it to create some amazing stories. What important events occurred and transformed the world as we know today, and the fascinating people during different eras. There is all sorts of periods, adventures, stories, and amazing locations you can explore!

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Soft Victorian Piano

Step 1: Develop Your Story

One of the great things about writing historical fiction is that history is a wonderful source of inspiration. There are a few different approaches you can take to utilizing it:

1) Tell a fictionalized (but accurate) version of a true story. This includes biographical historical fiction, where the focus is on telling the story of someone’s life. I have decided to do this with a book in the process, The Captain and The Naturalist a tale of Captain Fitzroys HMS Beagle Voyage and life from 1827 to 1865 and his struggles with bipolar and depression disorder throughout. It is most accurate. It tells the life story of Finn Fitzroy and what he accomplished. Everyone in the book were real people at some point, but the dialogue, emotions and thoughts are fictional. Get it? The aim here is to explore the real events and characters of history with careful attention to accuracy. Of course, all or at least most of the dialogue will be fictional, and you may not know every detail of what happened, but the key is to create a story that accurately reflects what really happened as much as possible.

2) Tell a true story with some creative license. This doesn’t mean you can blatantly fabricate and falsify key elements of history, but it does mean you can draw on gaps in the historical record, subtext, and rumours in a way that a historian couldn’t. Just be honest with your reader in your historical note.

3) Use real events as the backdrop for your mostly fictional story. The aim here is slightly different. Yes, you’re basing the backdrop of your story on what really happened, but your core story is almost entirely fictional and will usually focus more on characters who are made up than renderings of real-life figures (though that’s not to say the story can’t have any real-life figures – it certainly can). You can give them your own personality. That is what I did with The Order. I created fictional characters surrounded by the backdrop of The Dutch and English War in the 1630s, which was a war that happened. All you have to do is experiment with it.

4) Use a true story as the inspiration for your fictional story. If you want to draw on the details of real events and people, but you feel your creative juices taking the story too far away from the real history, you might consider using history as inspiration for your story, rather than making it the story itself. This could involve basing a fictional character on a real person, for example, or taking inspiration from an interesting historical episode and replicating elements of it in your story. Or you can base your character off someone who existed and study the fire out of their life, just make sure it matches up with the information. Then you can weave certain events of your choosing. Just be careful to avoid basing your characters on people who are still living (for obvious legal reasons lol.)

Step 2: Setting and What Era

This is a pretty easy task. You need to figure out when you want to set your story. Do you want to write about the Golden Age of Sail about pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries? Do you want to travel to 1800s Victorian England? Dive into the 1016 crusades? Jump towards 1200s Scotland? Do you want it about the rule of Islam in the early 600s? Vikings? Ancient Eygpt or medieval times with knights and kings? The further back your story is set, the harder it will be to find any pertinent sources at all. But remember, you’re not a historian. It’s part of your craft to fill in the gaps with your imagination. You can do any time period you want! If something cannot be known, then so long as your interpretation feels plausible, it’s entirely legitimate to chart your own path. Just make sure you explain the gaps and how you filled them in your historical note.

Step 3: Where is it located?

Where do you want to place your story. You must think of when it's set, what century or year, and how it plays into your story. Is it set in the snow plains of the Arctic? The hot deserts of Arabia or the wet jungles of South America? Or simply in the United States or the forests and towns of France? Location is important, which will let you weave in not only your story but also being descriptive of the places you take your readers!

Step 4: Start the Hefty Research

As the concept begins to take shape in your mind, it’s best to start learning more about your period and the key events and figures that might feature in your story.

Your first steps should be to figure out what you need to know and compile a list of resources that can help you attain that knowledge.

Aim to strike a good balance between primary sources (i.e. first-hand accounts of the period in question) and secondary sources (i.e. sources written after the period that describe and analyse it). Primary sources can give you an authentic flavour of your chosen era, and they can help you to reproduce authentic voices in your story as well, to say nothing of their value in providing a deeper insight into historical events. But secondary sources are also vital for providing you with a wider perspective on those events.

When you’re doing your research, make sure you take plenty of notes, including recording where vital bits of information come from. Sources sometimes contain errors, so make sure you cross-reference them as much as possible. And check the provenance, too. The likely purpose of a source affects how we should read it, so pay close attention to who wrote it and why. There is a lot of fake facts and evidence out on the wide web with lies of historical accounts and figures so make sure its reliable. Victors tend too write history. You don't get both sides of the story typically, so be cautious when writing a story, if there a hero or victor.

Step 5: Strive for Accuracy and Authenticity

When people start thinking about how to write historical fiction, this is one of the areas that often comes to mind first – and for good reason. Historical fiction readers will primarily buy your book for two reasons: 1) because they’re looking for an absorbing, page-turning story, and 2) because they want to be immersed into a historical world that feels true to the period you’re writing about.

Your readers will expect you to accurately depict the details of every-day life as well as the wider political backdrop of your period. If there is one. Readers will also have expectations when it comes to the treatment of historical events and real figures of history. Most will tolerate a little creative license as long as you justify it in a good manner, but filling your novel with numerous egregious falsehoods about easily verifiable facts is likely to get you into trouble and annoy people that care about history. Historical fiction is a very specific taste. Not everyone likes it. Some people love history, some don't. Its normal. But I love history. I breath it like blood. I would give my life happily just live one single day in 1700s England and experience it.

You’ll also need to consider how people spoke and the common social conventions of your period. There’s little worse in a historical novel than a character speaking in modern slang or acting as if they’re in the 21st century. It's terrible and there are authors out there that have done this, it's completely disrespectful to the time and the craft and poor writing, let alone lazy. A little cavat, regardless of ones race, the era the character is in, or the story you are telling, it has to be accurate. Don't sugar coat it. Don't gloss over it. Don't change things that are valid history to suit your needs. You have a lot of think about. Other than when it's set, you have to take into account facts vs fiction. What was the fashion of the time? The language? How did people speak and what customs and cultures were present? What was invented at the time? What historical figures were alive? What was going on in the world? Who was King or Queen? These things are very important.

Step 6: Pick your Structure

Structure is the foundation of fiction writing, so choose yours carefully.

1) What plot structure do you want to use? One of the most popular options is the three-act structure, which divides your novel into three acts corresponding to the beginning (roughly the first 25 per cent), the middle (about 50 per cent), and the end (the final 25 per cent). But you don't have to follow that if you don't want. You book can be as long, contain acts or parts, as many as you want.

2) What narrative structure do you want to use? This can be broken down further. Do you want just one chronological timeline in your novel, or do you want multiple timelines that take place in different periods? Do you want just one narrative point-of-view, or do you want to make it a multiple point-of-view story? The more viewpoints, the more complex it gets, but you can do it.

3) Which viewpoint do you want to use? The main options are first-person (I said), third person limited (he/she said), and third person omniscient (still he/she said but with an omniscient narrator), basically someone in the background telling a tale.

4) Which tense do you want to use? In historical fiction, there are arguments for and against both past and present tense. Past tense feels more ‘historical’, but it also exacerbates the sense of a disconnect between the reader and the story. Present tense feels more ‘in the moment’, but it might jar with a story that’s so clearly set in the past. In the end, there’s no right or wrong answer; both are equally valid approaches with their own risks and benefits.

Step 7: Develop Your Characters

Rich, complex characters are vital for hooking your reader.

1) Aims and motivations.

Your characters should have aims that propel them forward, and motivations for wanting to achieve those aims. Without aims, your characters will come across as inert or directionless, and without motivations their aims will feel superficial and contrived. The two should always go hand in hand. If it's a real historical figure your writing about like Abraham Lincoln, BlackBeard, or Cesar, consider the things they did in their life. What achievements they accomplished.

2) Internal conflict.

Most stories involve a protagonist locked in conflict with an antagonist or fighting off some external threat. But, while external conflicts are essential for keeping the narrative going, internal conflicts are often what gives a story its emotional power. With internal conflict, your reader won’t just find themselves asking whether your characters are going to be able to overcome the external obstacles in front of them, they’ll also be forced to wonder what choices your characters are going to make. Are they going to do the right thing? Are they going to conquer their own demons? Will their own flaws prevent them from achieving the story goal? These questions will add an additional layer to your story. Consider what they failed at. What is their profession. How did they handle it?

3) Character growth.

Your characters must evolve and grow over the course of your story. If they don’t, they’ll come across as too rigid and predictable, and it’ll feel like the story hasn’t had enough of an impact on their lives. One way to show growth is to have them resolve their internal conflicts by the end or succumb to them. Alternatively, they could conquer a fear or overcome something that was holding them back. Or fall prey in the end to lead to a devilish conclusion.

Step 8: Outline that Basterd

If you’re a planner then outlining your novel should occupy an important place in the creative process, sitting between the first sparks of imagination that kick off your new idea and the invigorating process of writing your first draft.

Once you’ve picked your structure and your plot and characters have started to come together in your head, it’s time to put everything down on paper.

When you first start planning, the best approach is to start small. I suggest starting with a one sentence summary of your novel that captures the story question and features the main character, like the back of the book text. What is it about? When I begin a new story, I use a physical leather moleskin journal and jot down ideas I want to include. Then start adding more detail. A one paragraph summary should be next, including details of the antagonist and the key events. Obviously, you’re writing this for yourself, not as promotional material for your readers, so include everything – even the resolution. Next, try writing a one-page summary that expands on your paragraph. If you’re using the three-act structure, I recommend highlighting the key elements of it here (such as the end of each act).

Don’t overlook your characters. Include character profiles in your outline. Add some sections, such as character backgrounds, aims and motivations, and external/internal conflicts, that might be useful.

Step 9: Put Yourself in Their Shoes

This, of course, is a personal preference but when I write historical novels I immerse myself as much as I can in that time period. Depending on the time period your story is set in and who your character may be, I sometimes surround myself with things that would be present at that time.

Examples:

-I will read about that time period a lot

-I'll study and research about it

-I'll wear clothes from that era (If you have it available, just for goofs, or if you want)

- I'll listen to music from that time everytime I sit down to write it

-I'll try to eat foods or some type of formation that the person would have eaten at the time

-I'll practice mannerisms of the time

-I'll speak in the type of wording of how people might have talked during that time in a mirror or to a friend

-I'll try to drink what they drank (ale, wine, water, cider, coffee, tea)

-I'll look at antiques from the era

-I'll look at art from the era

-I'll think like they do

You don't have to go the full ten yards, or go that crazy, but it does help.

Step 10: Start Writing That Bad Boy

Once you have a clear plan and your research is sufficient to create a rich, historically authentic setting, it’s time to start writing. It’s usually best to start from the beginning, but if you find that hard initially, you could start somewhere else before going back to the beginning when you feel more confident.

I use Pages on my Mac laptop to write and sometimes I'll sketch short drafts with a literal quill and ink bottle in a journal, but its up to you whether you wanna use paper, pen, pencil, or a screen.

It’s often said that you need to write every day in order to finish a novel. That’s not necessarily true, but it is important to find a rhythm. Writing a novel takes time, patience, and discipline, so try and set a schedule and stick to it sir.