The Word Cloud

How true to fact does an author have to be in the writing of their work. Is it necessary to spend hours researching facts to 'prove' your work, or is it permissible to make up facts as you go along in order to provide a good read and hope to sell the work. Do we owe history total dedication to the efforts of our forebears or do we just have to pay lip service to it in an effort to make a quick buck? Comments please from any historical scribblers out there. Amara.

I personally reckon you need a lot of accuracy. If you say that a Russian peasant in 1922 was reduced to living on turnips and pine bark, then I think you need to know that there was a famine and that it did produce those results. In part, this is a question of satisfying your reader, but in larger part, I think it's because you will find the telling detail by searching for authenticity as far as you possibly can.

My first historical novel was written when the internet was still young & was hard to research. These days though, there's so much stuff out there, I don't think you;ve got much excuse for not getting those details nailed down.

But that's me. I am perfectionist and happy to admit it ... others may be less pedantic.

To me there is nothing worse that reading a novel that contains incorrect facts. It totally removes you from the story and stays with you even when you are several chapters on. A book I was really enjoying had the layout of Edinburgh completely wrong. I had to give up on the book.

If the reader knows the facts are wrong... but often they don't. And which facts do we care about? You can't move Manchester to be next to London, but nobody minds if you invent a village which is slightly vaguely placed on the map somewhere between Colchester and Chelmsford. So it's not as simple as that: there is a wholly tacit ethical system going on, agreed (you hope) between reader and writer, about what 'facts' are, in this context.

You have to most careful of the things you don't know you need to research. Don't make your medieval peasants eat potatoes, for instance (and yes, I did say that in a workshop and someone did say, 'Why not?')

From the process point of view, slavish adherence to your recently done research can turn your writing into one of those grim historical novels which are just history-writing lite, biography or military history with a few stilted conversations wedged into it. Please don't do it. On the other hand, people do read historical fiction partly as a way into worlds which are past, but did actually exist (it's the main way that hist fic is different from sf/f; otherwise they have a lot in common), and, as John Gardner puts it, trust the writer to 'deal honestly and responsibly with them'; when the writer gets the geography you know wrong, that trust is broken.

And what do you do if the facts won't suit your novelist's purposes anyway? For example, in my second novel, the real Elizabeth Woodville had seven sisters, most of whom were in waiting on her one time or another. But a) I could have spent years trying to find out which were with her when, instead of writing the novel, and still not succeeded since the record's very patchy, and b) even if I had, since they were all minor parts, none of them would have had space to be actual characters with a bit of life and character of their own. So I took one real sister, and used her every time, and lots of readers love her. I haven't the faintest idea if she really was at Court the times I put here there. But, equally, I haven't the faintest idea if she was really how I've written her...

And Elizabeth (the first one) was the most fantastic film, expressing the times in a way which, again, slavish adherence to the material facts - as opposed to the affective facts, which it handled triumphantly - wouldn't have allowed. I think it's extremely relevant to know that the directer hadn't heard of Queen Elizabeth when he was sent the script. I don't think a director brought up on English history would have dared. Though I still don't think anyone as clever and beautiful as her would have fallen for Joseph Fiennes...

The thing which gets me even crosser with bad hist fic is the writers who loveingly research every last button of the clothes, then use them to dress up wholly modern human beings. Getting the manners and morals right, what I call the facts of affect, is more important, fundamentally, than rigging your to'gallant sails the right way round. The latter will offend your naval historian readers, the former will be a bad book.

But facts of affect and, those of class, gender and race relationsare are harder to find out about, and even when you have, finding the right point between making your characters appealing and making them authentic in their attitudes, isn't easy.

Hi,
Strikes me that historical fiction is easier in a way than contemporary writing. The story arc is already there. The writer only has to make a character arc and slot it in. Superimpose detail of clothes and food and environment and then plot. But I think plot is the sticking point. If the timeline interferes with the plot I prefer to change the timeline, not hugely but enough to keep my characters from ageing ten years in one page. I'm afraid I think story is the important thing not nit-picking detail in the factual story arc. I don't know if anyone agrees/disagrees?
Fred

Fred, that's interesting, but I'm not sure in what way the story arc is already there - or are you talking specifically about the subset of historical fiction which uses real historical figures? In which case, it's sort-of there, but only because it's been shaped - made a story of - by historians before us, and the shape they put on it may not be the shape we want it to have.

Sure, it's history that is there for all to see. The characters are the invention of the fiction writer. You can take a backdrop of history and insert your character. That part is easy but what the character does to be interesting and compelling is what makes the book isn't it?
I just wanted to say I play with timelines otherwise my character does thing s when he is ten and he should be twenty!

Rose Tremain needed a crisis in the Danish monarchy for Music and Silence, but they thoughtlessly didn't have it till 20 years too late. So she just brought it forward.

Well? Was it a good story anyway?
-F

Fantastic story - one of my absolutely favourite hist fic writers, and one of her best. Her short fiction's well worth a look. On my real-historical-figures kick, there's one from the PoV of the French herald before and after Agincourt - so brilliantly written.

I also like the fact that she's honest about how little research she does and how much more important it is to get beyond it. Some hist fic writers, you'd think were trying to write a PhD. As the critic John Mullan says,

"As fiction usurps the province of biography, however, it risks condemning itself to a kind of triviality. The more it stacks up its evidence, its sources, its academic credentials, the more it confesses to a secondary status – something perhaps more entertaining than the truth, but something less than the truth too. "

Does anyone else think that the hospital scenes in Atonement, though brilliantly written because the man can't write a bad sentence, are truly awful in their info-dumpishness?

personally i love it when i'm reading an historical novel that makes me wonder, just how much of this is true? having said that, my favourite contemporary novel, sarah waters' fingersmith, simply dwells on a handful of fictional characters that are stuck into a 'real' timeframe. in this case, sarah is free to make up what she likes about the people, but she can't suddenly allow one of them to escape from capture on a hovercraft. but i think the beauty of the craft is in making it readable - let the author decide which strand to invent, and hope that s/he has done the decent thing re: details that may jolt the reader out of their 'suspension of disbelief'. i had some advice from a pro writer recently who also spends half her time reading new writers' work, and she told me how she'd been served with a novel about northern ireland and whilst reading it, was compelled to phone a friend and ask, is there, or has there ever been, a multi-story car park in lisburn? the answer was, absolutely not. this is the kind of error that should be avoided.

and in response to emma d's early point - "if the reader knows the facts are wrong - but often they don't" - my opinion on this is, if you write something that is wrong / untrue / plagiaristic then somebody will notice. it may only be one person, but that will be enough to rubbish your career and reputation, whoever you are

Yes, but what sort of wrong? For example, in A Secret Alchemy, it's historical fact that Elizabeth Woodville had seven sisters (I think it's seven, without checking) most of whom were in waiting as either maids or ladies on her at one time or another when she was queen - the usual arrangement was six months on, six months off. But to find out which were in waiting at any given time, when I was sometimes hard put to it to find out where Elizabeth herself was, would have taken months if not years in the public record office. And, more importantly, if it had been a different sister each time, in a minor role, in a single scene in a narrative which is only a third of a (longish) novel packed with characters (tho' I stripped out all I could), there would have been no room at all to develop any of them as a character: they would have been forgettable puppets. My solution was to pick one sister, and use her every time. I've no idea if she really was there in the scenes I took from the historical record, any more than I've any idea if she was actually the kind of person I made her again, I built her as a foil to Elizabeth. But as far as I'm concerned it's more important to make the novel work as a novel, which it wouldn't (always supposing I'd ever got it written) if I'd stuck to the historical 'facts'. Assorted historians and historians of medieval literature who've read it certainly didn't cavil...

"but that will be enough to rubbish your career and reputation, whoever you are"

I don't think that's entirely true. Yes, if you make your medieval knights appear in a helicopter. No, if you miss-rig a to'gallant in a way which makes absolutely no difference to the plot...

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Sorry, I realise I've made the same point further up the thread, but in less detail. Feel free to skip...

yes agreed, i should have said "could be" enough to ruin your career rather than "will be"; i had occasion to expose a biographer who'd cut corners in researching my family and i imagine she nearly choked on her cornflakes when her editor at bloomsbury rang her one morning to tell her she'd been rumbled. in that case i was the one person who noticed; as i said, it only takes one and if you do something really awful, i guarantee you a lone nutcase out there will know you've messed up.

but that's away from the point here. i think you did absolutely the right thing with your novel; there's no need to be meticuolous, especially when simply making up a character. i created a first person fictional character for my novel who was able to wander through history meeting my ancestors, and although i knew so much about them i was limited in what i found as to their personalities so was free to make most of it up, which was fun and the whole point of writing a novel, i think. and besides, nobody else could possible have disproved something that doesn't exist in historical records. public figures, on the other hand, are less pliable and if they have a lead role in your book you owe it to the reader to make their personality fit the evidence you've dug up about them.

but the main argument here, i think, is that important historical events that shaped our present should not be tampered with, and thus as a historical novelist you need to become, at least in small part, a historian as well. if you can't be bothered, or don't hink you'd enjoy the research, i think you're in the wrong genre.

Sorry Mark – for not responding. I have spent most of my spare time of late agent hunting...with the Writers & Artists Year Book propping up my elbow. In the Year Book, there is an article by Bernard Cornwall. In it, he says.

“...then having done the research, you must reject a great deal of it. There is a terrible impulse to put in everything, just to prove how much you know, but nothing kills an historical novel like long passages written straight from your notebooks. And sometimes you must reject the true history to make the story work...”

I agree. I didn’t a few months ago but I am now firmly of the opinion that the job of the novelist is to tell a story, to entertain. It is the job of the historian to recount facts and one or two of them have been know ‘pad’ with a little speculation here and there.

hi ralph, good to hear back from you at last, i kind of thought you'd started a row then disappeared off the face of the planet i'm fairly certain that bernard cornwell is referring to the old cliche "wear the research lightly" which is what i was advised to do by jenny newman of WW. what s/he means is that instead of becoming "history men / women" i.e. shoe-horning every accurate historical detail into your supposedly entertaining novel, you should research the period and subject's history thoroughly then "forget" most of it whilst drawing up your characters and their story arcs, after all it's their story right? then, let rip and write your story, knowing absolutely that their clothes and haircuts are correct as they walk into the appropriately-furnished room for the well-documented historical debate on whatever subject you have decided to place centrally to the plot. that's what is meant by "rejecting a great deal of it", i think, just be sure to remember the kind of thing your character would have eaten for breakfast etc and make sure it existed at the time! i.e.: i created a fictional character who could wander around my ancestors' lives and the story became her, and not necessarily that of my family or the events around them. this is essential; but i was able to decide which of the events etc in my research would affect her, and how they would affect her, then little else really mattered once i'd created a credible story arc for her

How do people feel about forewords/endnotes that give readers a sense of what's based on historical research? It's often the first thing I turn to, but I have a history Ph. D. and it's very hard to shak off all those academic bad habits ;-).

i've read every one of the flashman series, which i think is a superbly entertaining way to learn about history, for people who might otherwise be uninterested. but whereas at first i found myself checking every footnote as they arose and referring to the back of the novel, i soon found this irritating as it interrupted the flow of my reading experience. after two or three books i resorted to ignoring them all, then at the end of the book, i'd just skim over them to see which caught the eye, and in the end i decided that actually fraser was giving away all his research sources and demystifying the whole process. so, as brilliant as the flashman books are, i prefer leaving all that stuff out; after all, once you're being interviewed and signing books for your fans you're going to be asked all those "just how much was true" questions anyway

May I chip in here?
Clearly the story is paramount. As a novelist I want to engage readers in the lives of my characters. Providing my tale is consonant with historical fact (setting, tastes, key events, fashions, manners etc.) and not riddled with errors I generally feel that should suffice.
The best works in this genre that I have read have always left me wanting to go and do further reading around the subject in the history section of my local bookstore, but they should not be all about the history itself. I'm sure Cornwell's dictum is spot on.
Mahlerian

I like sharing historical facts with my readers; I see it as putting some value-added into the fiction. In my last novel (my first historical novel), I loaded the narrative with historical detail. At least one of my critics found this overwhelming; she said that I should have written a history book, rather than a novel. (History books don't make good movies! I protested.)

So, before starting my current novel (also a/an historical novel), I thought a good deal about how to combine a good story with plenty of wholesome historical detail. And so I decided to write a Flashman-style book, which is to say, one in which the author is merely the "editor" of a diary which he has come across; as editor, his main contribution is to insert footnotes in the text to facilitate the understanding of the modern reader.

I was particularly interested therefore in Mark's comment about reading the footnotes interrupting the narrative flow in the Flashman books. Strictly speaking, of course, these are endnotes, rather than footnotes (although Fraser does, additionally, sometimes throw in an odd footnote too). Like Mark, I would tend to leave the endnotes until I had reached the end of the book, then, if particularly interested, go back to the relevant point in the text. However, if the endnotes were footnotes instead, then I would feel compelled to read them as I went along. The interesting question for me then is: is the narrative flow interrupted (perhaps irritatingly) by having to read a footnote at the bottom of the page? Michael Crichton, in his "Eaters Of The Dead", uses footnotes rather than endnotes. In this case, I didn't find the footnotes distracting; on the contrary, they seemed to reinforce the authenticity of the narrative. (The fact that Crichton says that the footnotes, as well as the "bibliography" which he so helpfully provides, should be treated as fiction is a subject for another day!)

So, I'm sticking with footnotes until some editor convinces me that they should be endnotes (or dropped completely).

wow i thought this topic had closed; i've written almost a whole novel in the meantime!

historicals are primarily for people who are fascinated by history, i think; at least it's true in my case. but the history mustn't get in the way of the flow and if you allow it to dominate the plotline (as i used to) it can be a devil of a thing to get out of. even without such a strict background i find myself scribbling notes to remind myself to amend inconsistencies that are nothing to do with the history of it all.

re: endnotes / footnotes, either are distracting. i have none in my latest effort, and whilst flashy mightn't fit your average HF mold i still think he could have managed without.

i'm reading an excellent biog at the moment, actually it's a collection of the letters and diaries of the late great JG Farrell and i haven't referred to the back once, even though it's peppered with numbers (although in fairness this book does require knowledge of his earlier biog to be understood properly). i don't see what would be wrong with just leaving the notes at the end, chapter by chapter, and listing them page by page; if the reader's interested, s/he will flick to the back when ready and look for clarification. but far be it from me to suggest alterations to the time-honoured structure of academic works

I have just finished my first novel, set in the Napoleonic era. There are millions out there who think they know every last detail of this period so will never be totally satisfied.

We have to remember that fiction is a story set in the context of a period, no more, no less.

Get the little details right and let your imagination do the rest. Getting the mind-set right for the period and the atmosphere of a squallid city tenement or the smoke and stench of the dead on a battlefield is the most difficult bit. If the story excites the reader then they will overlook the fact that you got the number of buttons on an officer's tunic wrong.

yes agreed agent x. good summary. I mean, buttons on tunics are one thing but HF aside, the amount of mistakes in the da vinci code is inexcusable and personally i'd rather forego the money involved than write something so sloppy

I tend to tread a fairly relaxed line here, but mainly because some of my work is set 3000 years ago and there simply isn't sufficient (and consistent) documentary/physical evidence. Rather, I tend to pick up bits and pieces that are 'appropriate' and drop them in. For example, the traditional image of Christ being crucified bears little resemblance to what actually went on at the time, so does one focus on getting it 'right' or on not derailing the reader with an unexpected accuracy? It's a fun diversion for me, to be sure.