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This week: On Historical Fiction Edited by: Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline  
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Writing historical fiction isn't easy. It can require a large amount of research, and if you want to stay relatively faithful to past events, you cannot simply allow your imagination to run wild. That does not mean, however, that writing a novel or short story of this nature is not worthwhile...
This week's Drama Newsletter, then, is all about historical fiction.
Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline |
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Recently, I’ve been rereading North and South, by John Jakes. It’s not a new novel – it was written in 1981 – and it makes me feel pretty old to think about that, because I still remember the TV series that was based on the novel. Google tells me that the TV series was on air in the late 80s and early 90s, and I’m not sure which run of it I saw, but yeah. Anyway, sometimes it’s nice to pick up a book you’ve read before, and reacquaint yourself with the characters and their story.
North and South is about two families whose lives become intertwined. The second-oldest sons both attend West Point Academy at the same time, and they strike up a solid friendship. The problem is that one son is from a family in North-America, and the other is from the South. Tensions are rising between the Northern and Southern states, and there is an increasing amount of talk about secession.
The novel, then, and the other two novels in the trilogy, are historical fiction. The author’s done a lot of research about the Civil War, and the events leading up to it. Not just the battles, but also the political landscape, the arguments on each side, the hopes and fears that people held. It can’t have been an easy task, but it works.
Setting your novel in the past will always have its benefits and its potential pitfalls. On the one hand, you’re likely to draw an audience who is interested in reading about a certain time period. Also, it gives you a solid foundation to work with. There is already a story there – it’s then a matter of slotting your characters into it and considering the parts that they will play, and how they will experience everything that happened. On the other hand, if you get things seriously wrong, your ready audience can turn into your ready critics. You cannot allow your imagination to run too wild – not if you want to remain somewhat faithful to history.
In addition, history is not always that straightforward to work with. You’d think it would be simple, as you have those dates and events, and to a certain extent that is true. But there tend to be set narratives, and those can require untangling. Humanity is complex.
That is where research enters the life of those who write historical fiction. John Jakes found, for example, that there were quite a few Southern people who were opposed to the horrors of slavery. Just as there were people in the North who did not want to welcome those who had escaped it. History is always multi-layered, just as today every nation, every region, every city, town and village is the home of people with different attitudes, different wishes, different dreams.
I’ve read other novels based on history. For example, I am very interested in the French Revolution and Napoleon. I like reading about medieval times. One thing I can recommend those who want to write about different times is to take a free course online. There are various platforms now where Universities offer short courses on a wide range of topics, including history. A couple of summers ago I did a course on the French Revolution from the University of Melbourne, right from my desk here in the UK, and I learned a few things that I didn’t know before. Just look for MOOCs, which stands for Massive Open Online Courses. Some run on a set timescale, but there are others that you can study at your own pace.
Writing historical fiction is difficult, but it can also be very rewarding. Your readers might well develop an interest in the time period you’ve written about. You might be able to offer a different insight, a different perspective that your readers hadn’t considered before. You might learn a lot yourself, when researching your story.
Whatever you do, I hope that you have a lot of fun, as that’s what writing’s all about. 
Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline
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Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
The Drama Newsletter Team
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Drama: April 12, 2017 Issue [#8235]
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