There is the term “historical fiction,” and I think we can all agree that it is a work of fiction (that is, imagination) based on historical fact. But historical fiction covers an unusually wide range of literary work. There can be novels such as my Midnight Magic, which, while ostensibly set in Renaissance Italy (Naples) is rather like a costume drama that takes general modes of thought from the time, but has virtually no historical fact. Then there are books like my Iron Thunder, in which I tried to replicate a deeply researched reality, so that even the boy protagonist was a real person.
There is, of course, a wide middle ground, in which a writer such as me tries to capture the historical reality, and then inserts manifestly fictional characters (Sophia’s War and City of Orphans).
I just finished a new work of historical fiction. It was a challenge because the historical moment, which all agree happened, is usually (if then) hardly more than an anecdotal footnote. While I tried to stick to the facts, virtually everything else is invented by me—because no one knows what really occurred.
At the conclusion of the tale, I have a commoner and a king (both historically real people) engage in a vital conversation, in which the king says something that I hope effectively sums up what the whole book is about.
My editor says, “But the real king would never say that.”
My reply, “I agree. But this is a work of fiction, and my book needs him to say that.”
In short, historical fiction is fiction. That’s a fact.
3 thoughts on “Historical Fiction”
I’ve thought a lot the last few years about the range of historical fiction, from “history light”, where an author writes about an era with no specific events or historical figures (I’m thinking of my May B.) to the sort where an author must get permission from a family/historical society to write about a particular person (like Maud, a 2017 novel based on the life of L.M. Montgomery).
While I can’t personally imagine taking on the latter, I’m so glad others are willing, so I can read their work!
When will the historical fiction book come out?
Two works of Historical fiction will be out next year:
The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts. Algonquin. May 2017
The Player King. Simon & Schuster, Oct 2017.