Rule #2: Dump the Ballast. In order to write
authentic historical fiction you must know a period of time well enough
to disappear daily through a wormhole to the past and arrive at the location
of your story. There you must understand the customs and use the manners
perfectly enough to be accepted by people walking the streets (if there are
streets) and to dress yourself, and make a living. This said, the major trick
of writing good historical fiction is not in compiling research
or knowing the details, but in knowing the details to leave out. Try to avoid
overwriting. Keep perspective on what will interest the reader. Historical
fiction writers tend to be overly conscientious and excited by minutia: if
you succumb to excess, and put in too much detail, then go back later and take
some of it out. Think of your novel as a boat that is about to sink from
having too much weight on board: some of the loved items will have to go. Toss
them over with impunity! Throw them out! If a rare, surprising statistic, or a
moving anecdote, or an obscure reference you saw to an interesting thing that
happened in the county adjacent to the one where your story takes place, does
not advance your plot or provide your reader with important information about
your characters, then it is irrelevant to your story and must go overboard. Keep in mind that the care, and time, it took to
assemble all that you have just thrown out has not been wasted. It was
necessary to gather these facts and assess their worth in order to know which
ones to save. PS. I'm guessing that Elizabeth is speaking directy to me here, as I have a tendency to collect odd facts. Yestrday on our travels, I met a cat with half a tail and learned she had survived Katrina. Further down the road, we saw a woman police office who carried bright pink handcuffs. How humiliating! Will I find a place for them in a future book? Maybe not, but . . . . |
