Writing about specific historical events (fiction)

[ModoReese]

Hi all,

Please forgive my ignorance - I'm running with an idea in my head and will likely ask some stupid questions. ;-)

What are the legalities of taking a historical event and approaching it from a fictional point of view?

There was a natural disaster in this area over 100 years ago. It's unique, but not well known outside the area. It's still very physically jarring to see. A lot has been written about it from a purely analytical point of view - but not much about the people - about what happened to people. There are plenty of personal stories tied to this event - seemingly insignificant decisions that made the difference between life and death, heroic actions, and amazing achievements.

I'd have to fill in a lot of gaps, and personalize people involved. This is where the fictionalization comes in.... is this kosher? I'd possibly need to fill in conversations, personalities, motivations... there was no human fault to this event, so there's little risk of "blame".

Any advice? If I'm way off base, and this is a truly basic question, I'd also like to request some good examples of historical fiction so I may read how to do this effectively.

I've been fascinated by this event since I was a young girl.... but always felt the story wasn't told. I can't believe I only realized today that maybe I can be the one to tell it!

Thank you!

Michelle

[pdr]

Write it your way.
Make it fiction and weave those life stories together through the disaster.

If you have made it clearly fiction with changed names and appearances, maybe even making some of the real females male and vice versa then there is little chance of legal problems. You are telling a story a very rich one it sounds like.

I'm not a legal expert - we need to get Jaws down here to give you a legal expert's explanation - but this is what most of us who write historical novels do. We are inspired by some event and the people involved because we see it as special. So we write it our way as best we can and hope for a publisher to like it too!

[Puma]

One of the problems of totally fictionalizing characters in a documented event is that sometimes the stories that need to be told are tied to real characters - and it would be evident who they really were without much digging. I ran into that problem with a novel I've been working on - and finally decided to chance it and use the real people's names. My story is older than yours (about two hundred years) so there are several more intervening generations. An heir could probably sue me for telling his g-g-g-g + however many more grandfather's story - but I also think it would be possible for the same heir to sue me if I told the grandfather's story and used a fictional name. It's sort of a tight rope. I decided to tell it like it was - if any publishers/agents are interested in my novel, they will know what the real legal issues are. And, if I can't find a market, I can always print the book myself and sell it locally to the heirs etc. Puma

[ModoReese]

Well, you have both given me good insight, thank you. Fictionalizing the people and place too much is difficult because the locale is very related to the event and can't just be dropped anywhere in the world. Hence, 90 per cent of the people would also be recognized.

I think the resounding thought here is to write it anyway. If it can't be "sold", so be it. It's kind of an either/or as I see it anyway - it's a relatively local unknown event that happened over 100 years ago. This will either work for me, or against me as either only the locals care (small community), or it's so unique it could generate real interest. But this is all something I can worry about *after* it's written. :D

This has also made me wonder if perhaps there isn't a little more out there about some of the individuals. Someone must have followed up to see what happened to them - there must have been newspaper interviews at the time.

Descendants are something else I never gave a lot of thought to. They are scattered far and wide and I don't hear a lot about descendants of the survivors.

This has given me a lot more to think about than just legalities. ;) But I'm glad, it's making me more excited about writing this....

Michelle

[dclary]

I just watched Flyboys. It starts with "Based on the true story" or whatever, and everything after that is completely made up, with the two exceptions that yes, there actually was a WWI and that there was a corps of American pilots fighting in it.

I think there's even some leeway to fictionalize events that are very well known and documented. Braveheart did this.

[Puma]

Hi Michelle - my story doesn't have any life threatening major event (well, the War of 1812) but there is a lot of interest and historical information that isn't well known. Because I used real people, I researched their origins and also what happened to them after the story concludes and put that information in an epilogue. That way it's very obvious that certain characters were the start of certain family lines and it's also possible to see where they originated. So aside from the story, the book is also a reference work.

I used real events to the extent I could and tied them together with fictional stories - clearing fields, digging wells, hunting, etc. the types of things that were happening and wouldn't be documented. With the exception of one line, all my dialogue is fiction, but it wasn't too hard to come up with reasonable dialogue about things that were happening.

I haven't done any real querying yet - in the process of another go through inspired by the people on here who've commented on a couple things I needed to fix - so I don't really know if there's a market for this type of thing - but I feel it was a story well worth writing. I'm happy I did it even if it does end up being only "of local interest." Puma

[historian]

Does it have to be fiction? You seem to have all the details so no need to make things up.

historian

[ModoReese]

I have the details of what happened, but not the details of what people did, or what made them do what they did. A group of individuals saved themselves from certain death, and were led by two or three members of the group, but I have no way to know how it transpired, what was said, what the mood was like. I have no idea if the individuals were leaders before the disaster happened, or if the stepped up in a time of need.

This is how I'd like to personalize what happened. Really capture the time and era and the people who lived through this.

The discussion here has made me realize I don't know as much as I thought I did - and a lot more research is required. More individual information might be out there. The tough part is, this was a small group of people who would have moved on in relative anonymity soon after.

I also wonder what ancestors would think. This isn't a well-known event that you could insert fictional characters into. There were very specific people involved. To fictionalize the names, that might be more offensive in the long run.

Do all ideas seem so good until you realize you have no idea where to start? :D

Michelle

[Puma]

This was a hundred years ago? It's not impossible that stories about what happened might have been handed down in the families of the participants or in families of those who knew the participants. At least that's an angle you ought to try to investigate. I'd suggest starting by trying to find out what happened to the people involved afterward - did they stay in the area, did they move on, are there any records of them? You might want to look at some of the genealogy websites (start with Rootsweb Worldconnect and then try the LDS as an alternative). I've also been amazed what I can find by just using Google - but be sure to put the name of the person you're looking for in quotes - that limits it to just that combination. Puma

[pdr]

Is it fiction you want to write or non-fiction, Michelle?

If it is fiction then writers can use real events and real people to write about real events but have a fictional character who tells the story.

Bernard Cornwall writes about the Peninsular Wars, Napoleon and Wellington, uses real events, but his main character is his creation, a soldier, Richard Sharpe, who rises through the ranks to be a Major at the Battle of Waterloo in the 14th (I think) book in the series. Very good read the series is too.

If you want to write fiction you could easily have fictional characters scattered amongst the real names who tell your story for you.

[robeiae]

This was a hundred years ago? It's not impossible that stories about what happened might have been handed down in the families of the participants or in families of those who knew the participants. At least that's an angle you ought to try to investigate. I'd suggest starting by trying to find out what happened to the people involved afterward - did they stay in the area, did they move on, are there any records of them? You might want to look at some of the genealogy websites (start with Rootsweb Worldconnect and then try the LDS as an alternative). I've also been amazed what I can find by just using Google - but be sure to put the name of the person you're looking for in quotes - that limits it to just that combination. PumaGood advice, imo. I would suggest moving on this as far as possible with non-fiction in mind. If the event is very unusual, I would guess that basing your work on as much reality as possible will make it more appealing. Often, the effort of researching something like this through oral traditions leads to surprsingly fruitful things; someone whose great-grandpa was there might have gotten the 'whole story' and is just waiting to spill it to someone. It takes work, that's for sure.

Also, there are someone excellent books out there about doing oral history research. I'll post 'em when I get home and can check my shelves.

And once you have all the info you can get, you might find that only a minimum amount of fictionalization is needed to flesh the story out. There is an excellent book called Wittgenstein's Poker (http://www.amazon.com/Wittgensteins-Poker-Ten-Minute-Argument-Philosophers/dp/0066212448) that tells a tale about less than certain events (about an argument between two philosophers: Wittgenstein and Karl Popper), but does so in a most effective manner--never crossing the line into fiction but still being a great tale, at least imo.

[pdr]

Have you read Matthew Pearl's 'The Dante Club' or 'The Poe Shadow'? He also takes real events and makes a novel out of them.

[Histry Nerd]

Modo -

Check out Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, or Gods and Generals by his son Jeff. Both are Civil War novels, and both books take actual historical figures through the actual events they lived, fictionalizing things like thoughts, conversations, and mundane activities like gardening or traveling. To the best of my knowledge no one has tried to sue them for their portrayals of their characters' motivations or actions. Of course, father and son both come across as sympathetic to both sides, and more interested in helping the reader live the story than in depicting a good guy-bad guy conflict.

If you are considering using the real historical actors, it won't hurt you to see how the Shaaras did it.

HN

[ModoReese]

Is it fiction you want to write or non-fiction, Michelle?



That's exactly what I'm trying to hammer out. I would like to make it as non-fiction as possible. I would love to keep everything authentic to the real story as possible and flush the individuals out through as much fact as possible. I'm just not sure that information exists. I'm not sure where the line is drawn. How much leeway do I have, for example, to create conversations between people that there are no ways of verifying? I don't have a lot of room to create a fictional character alongside the real ones - I think it would be distracting and pull people out of the story.

[ModoReese]

And once you have all the info you can get, you might find that only a minimum amount of fictionalization is needed to flesh the story out. There is an excellent book called Wittgenstein's Poker (http://www.amazon.com/Wittgensteins-Poker-Ten-Minute-Argument-Philosophers/dp/0066212448) that tells a tale about less than certain events (about an argument between two philosophers: Wittgenstein and Karl Popper), but does so in a most effective manner--never crossing the line into fiction but still being a great tale, at least imo.

THANK YOU!! This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for - to see how other authors have handled it in the past.

Thanks to everyone for all of your suggestions and the book titles. My next step beyond reading some of these books is to research the most "notable" people like I would my own ancestors. I think I've been wrong in assuming there might not be more info out there about key individuals.

:e2tomato:

Michelle

[Puma]

Hi Modo - I've been through a little bit of this before on these boards on my WIP. The consensus was that my book has to be fiction because I don't know what the characters really said and created my own dialogue. If I were to convert it to non-fiction, I'd have to take out the story and just use the absolute facts - all as author's narration. There were also discussions of creative non-fiction and alternative non-fiction at about the same time - some may be here in the historical thread, but I think some of them may also be in the writing novels section or in the non-fiction sections. PDR and a few others might remember where they were.

As I said, I'm still working on my WIP but what I have done is put in a foreword that says that the events were real and the people were real people with a disclaimer of sorts about any possible misrepresentation of the people's characters. None of my people are ones that have been written about in history books - they were just settlers to a section of Ohio but some of them had had brushes with greatness or had brushes with greatness after they were in Ohio - their stories are not recorded as a complete package anywhere. I have about five fictional characters in my book.

In my opinion, writing something like this is a good thing. The major players from the time period have been extensively written about - but what about the common people? I think a number of readers would be interested in reading a book like mine (at least I hope so). My primary beta reader told me she wished history books would have been written like my novel because she would have learned a lot more. So go for it and good luck with your venture. Puma

[army_grunt13]

I think there's even some leeway to fictionalize events that are very well known and documented. Braveheart did this.

I'm not a big fan of Braveheart, namely because I am actually a direct descendant of Edward I (no, I'm not kidding), and I was appauled at the complete lack of any historical value to this film. Mel Gibson's next (and equally lacking in historic value) movie was "The Patriot," which made me think, "Does Mel just hate the Brits?" To his credit, I thought historically that "The Passion of Christ" was phenominal, as was "We Were Soldiers." Lt General Hal Moore (who wrote the book and was portrayed by Gibson in the movie) gave an emotional speech that is on the special features of the DVD. He states, "They finally did a movie about Vietnam and got it right!" Whether you've seen the movie or not, I highly recommend reading the book!

Back to the original point, what the threadstarter is talking about is exactly what I am doing in my own books. When speaking of genre, I always tell people that my books are "Historical Fiction, based on actual events." In my series, "Soldier of Rome," I had to make up most of the main characters, simply because as common Legionaries, history has forgotten them as individuals and as men. All the major events in my books, however, did actually happen, even if I did have to take some literary license in light of insufficient detail in places. I even went so far as to change some events in my book when I later did some further research and discovered that I had my facts wrong.

[Cathy C]

My first novel (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1890437840/ref=cm_arms_pdp_dp/104-6397054-4513560?ie=UTF8)was a fictional account of a real event, so I know first hand what you're going through. In my case, it was a real race between two railroads to reach a single spot. Whoever failed was going to go bankrupt. So, as you might guess, there were plenty of underhanded (but disavowed) attempts to stop the other company from succeeding. There were also all of the things that occur in that REAL period--ranch owners shooting at the rail workers, landslides, explosions. Plenty of book fodder.

I did the following steps to make sure I kept it both historically accurate and entertaining.

1. I created several fictional characters--one in in a high enough position of authority that he could interact with all of the "movers and shakers" of the industry, one in "middle management" in a different location, and one that was a day to day working stiff. That was my creative license, and even the historians understood there was no other way to handle it--mostly because the events were scattered among several locations in a time with little communication.

2. I researched the archives of both companies, read the journals of middle managers and the pay rolls. I pulled the occasional real event into the plot. One example was a notation about a railroad worker who was being transferred to the nearest city to have an injury looked at by a company doctor. That means little today, but back then, it had to be something BIG for the company to make that effort. So, I moved to #3.

3. I looked through local newpaper accounts of the event. Just like today, they focused on the "big" happenings--deaths, explosions, injuries. It was the biggest thing to hit the area in years, so reporters swarmed the site. There were actually two full time people assigned to the event by the newspaper. I was able to backtrack a few months on the injured man and discovered that his hand had been crushed by a hammer while pounding spikes. OUCH! So, that gave me the man's name, and allowed me to create a potential crew for the man to be on. I created a fictional guy who was his team mate (so the one who wielded the hammer.) Naturally, he was being eaten alive by guilt and probably drank too much.

4. I also contacted the local historical society and discovered that there were books already written about the subject years ago, so I researched them too. I also did "side research." Since it was a railroad, I figured there might be some books about the nearby road into town and was right. There was a history of the interstate that replaced the road, and a few tidbits in there dealt with the railroad construction and how it sped up tourism and increased highway funding in the area.

5. I found in those books photographs that were taken by a very famous photographer DURING construction. A trip to the library earned me the right to publish the historic photographs in the text (after signing an agreement and paying a small fee.) They really add to the story, because you can look at the photos and imagine the events. Once I found those, I backtracked in the book to add in the photographer taking the shots. The upper management guy was annoyed by the fuss. It was just another job, after all, and the photographers were in the way.

6. The photographs led me to OTHER photographs of "stupid people tricks." Like today, the owners decided to capitalize on the novelty of construction, but in a very stupid way. They allowed TOURISTS to visit the construction site--at one point thirteen traincars full of them! :eek: It would be like a construction site with little kids climbing on the bulldozers. So, that was a scene, too.

7. The newspaper accounts also led to scenes in the book. If someone died in the newspaper, they died in the book. I retyped the news accounts and got permission from the successor to the newspaper (which was still in business) to publish them. The originals were too fragile to copy, or I would have done that. But the typed versions worked better, actually, because I could use ellipses to remove text that wasn't necessary to know. By using the newspaper and inserting it in the book, I didn't have to focus on the events of THAT person's life, so I didn't have to worry about offending his memory. I could focus instead on the attempts to save him, or mourning his loss. Most everyone on a big job has friends. Not every friend winds up in the record books. That can all be fictionalized without impacting the truth. One was a drowning where the guy was joking around in the river, diving for rocks his buddies threw. He disappeared underwater (according to the newspaper) and never was found. It was a VERY fast river, and they looked for over a day to find him. I added a scene with my main character diving into the river to find him and nearly being swept away himself. They get him out safely and he's taken to dry and warm up while the search party starts. That sort of thing.

8. I added in a bibliography/suggested reading section at the end. That satisfied historians of the event that I used accepted accounts of the event and they gave it their blessing, including a cover quote from a leading railroad historian.

So, it can be done quite easily--using the "friend of a friend" theory. Make your character best buddies with the real movers and shakers, and you'll be fine.

Oh, and another book you might want to look at is "Fire in the Hole" (http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Womens-West-Sybil-Downing/dp/0870815156/sr=8-19/qid=1160315131/ref=sr_1_19/104-6397054-4513560?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Sybil Downing. She did a great job of introducing a fictional character into a real event--the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, where the United Mine Workers fought a bloody battle with mine owners and the Colorado Militia during a strike. Terrific story, and very gripping.

My goal was to make it a critical success, even if it never became a commercial one. And I succeeded. It won an award for best historic chronicle, has gotten rave reviews from railroad magazines and historians. But it will probably never sell through the first printing. It's just too much of a niche market. Le sigh...

But it can be done quite easily, without stepping on legal toes. And it can be entertaining to boot. So have fun! :)

[EngineerTiger]

Telling history from a fictional character's point of view and including real people has been a device of historical novelists for generations (take a look at Thomas Costain's THE BLACK ROSE or the DARKNESS AND THE DAWN. Keep in mind that historical figures are public domain if they are in history books, newspapers of the period, etc.

Living people are a different area since, unless you are extremely careful, you could open yourself to a libel suit.

[Cav Guy]

It's very common to take historical events and turn them into fiction. Fred Chiaventone has done so with the Fetterman Fight in 1866 and The Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, and both were stellar books (IMO, anyhow). The late Terry Johnston did this for his entire Plainsman series, including some historical mistakes, and Matt Braun has really turned to this in his later novels. In case you haven't guessed, this is becoming a common trend in the Western.

On the whole there's nothing wrong with doing it, so long as you keep your fictionalized characters true to the motivations and behaviors (as near as can be determined) of their historical counterparts. You wander from this guideline at your own risk, since history types are everywhere and many may be very knowledgeable about the period or event you're writing about (and rest assured that no matter how obscure your event might be, there is SOMEONE out there who is an "expert" on it and will go after your facts).

[Evaine]

George MacDonald Fraser blended historical fact and fiction very well in his Flashman series. This is a series of novels with footnotes! In each case, Fraser found an incident in which there was an unknown person mentioned in the historical accounts, and Flashy became that person (sometimes in disguise).
It must have taken a huge amount of research.

[BruceJ]

Modo,

Don't know if you're still checking this thread, but I've done the same thing, only rather than calling it "historical fiction" I call it "creative non-fiction". That allows for the historical veracity of the event, but allows you to be creative in filling in characters and plot to mold the story. I guess the potential pitfall is in your readers not knowing where to separate truth from fiction--but that's their responsibility! (Unless, of course, you deliberately mislead them, but I don't think you have that in mind.) ;-)