I want to write Historical fiction. What do I need to know.

angeliz2k

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Immersion. I think there is much to be said about immersing yourself in one period and knowing it inside out. Your writing just flows and all the little details come out naturally without it being an info dump.

Antebellum/Civil War South happens to be my specialty. I've been obsessed with it since I was a child. My focus is generally social history and women's history. Something very important to consider while researching this period is bias. A lot of researchers really harp on the slavery thing, and as such, don't give the south a fair shake. Catherine Clinton writes excellent Antebellum women's history, but has a rather unfair slant against the South. So take everything into context.

My self-published attempt is romantic historical fiction set in during the Civil War, but I put a great deal of time setting the scene and being accurate. Historical figures make appearances, etc. I try to visualize myself in the particular time and go from there. I actually was a Civil War re-enactor in college, so that helped tremendously in the visualization (plus I learned little details like split crotch drawers as Orianna2000 mentioned). I'm now writing in the 18th century and consequently decide to take up Revolutionary War re-enacting.

Something to consider though: the reason I'm self published is that after multiple requests for fulls and partials, the consensus from the agents was that the Civil War is not the popular time period in HF right now. For every Antebellum set novel you see published, you'll see ten European set historicals, and the Civil War era novels that are being published seem to feature real historical characters as protagonists. So if mass publication is your goal, you might want to investigate other time periods you find interesting.

Good luck!

That worries me ever so slightly--but isn't surprising. I noticed a pretty big difference between querying my French-Revolution WIP and my Antebellum South WIP. I'm still hoping an agent thinks it's worth taking on. I know the Civil War is pretty saturated but hope the Antebellum period is attractive for some of the reasons the Civil War is but interesting because it's slightly different.

Also, oldhouse, I've been thinking of getting involved in reenactment, but I don't really know where to get started!
 

greendragon

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Research is fun! I learned all sorts of new things after starting to write my first HF book. Like how the trains didn't make it quite to Ohio in 1846, and I had to figure out another way to get my heroine to New York for her trip to Ireland!
 

kelliewallace

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Research, research and more research. Google and the lovely people on here are your friends. My latest book on submission is based during the London blitz so I had to do a lot of research before I began writing. It's paid off because I've been told my book is heavy in detail. That's what you want. Just research.
 

autumnleaf

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My problem was knowing when to stop researching and start writing. At some stage you have to decide that you are comfortable enough in your time period to put the research aside.

You'll still have questions that only occur while you are writing. My approach is to leave a note for myself, e.g. "He wore his best linen shirt and breeches of the finest [material?]", so I can fill in the blanks later.
 
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Sword&Shield

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the reason I'm self published is that after multiple requests for fulls and partials, the consensus from the agents was that the Civil War is not the popular time period in HF right now.

Makes me wonder what is. Specifically, what is popular that isn't historical romance. :)
 

gothicangel

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Makes me wonder what is. Specifically, what is popular that isn't historical romance. :)

Political fiction in Tudor England seems to be doing quite well, as well as military based fiction set in The War of the Roses and Ancient Rome, seems to be doing quite well. :tongue
 

Deb Kinnard

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I wouldn't really take "____ isn't popular right now" too much to heart. All the time I've been writing medievals, I've been told that "medieval is dead." And yet mine sell, and continue to do, and those of my pals who write in this era. I've also heard randomly over the years about the death of mystery, chick lit, Biblical-era fic, contemporaries, paranormal...you name it. Yet most of these settings seem to continue to sell.

I'm all in favor of immersion. My era of choice is medieval Britain, and I'm afraid I know details that terrify most of my fam/friends. That said, it does help inform what I'm writing, and getting the details right is such fun. Plus, sometimes a reviewer picks up an "authentic detail" and that's twice the fun!
 

CWatts

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Yeah, after out discussion of the popularity (or lack thereof) of Civil War fiction, I managed to get an agent for my antebellum novel, so maybe there's hope for that era (and any era!) after all.

I wonder if the 150th anniversary created some burnout on the Civil War? I'd wanted to finish my Reconstruction novel by the anniversary of when it starts (which passed back in March) but I've been distracted by my 1870s NYC novel. Granted that one has some Civil War backstory, but it's also focused on class instead of race and maybe it's something of my comfort level -- maybe because of Ferguson & the ongoing police outrages*, maybe because I'm ready to process stuff from the Great Recession into my historical fiction?

I worry that once I've researched a period for almost long enough to write authoritatively, I start to get bored. Does anyone else have this problem?

(*Interestingly, other backstory in the current WIP involves people being summarily executed, so stuff's always percolating...)
 
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chaneyk06

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I can't imagine how hard it must have been to write historical fiction pre-Google. (Note: I am not as young as that statement makes me sound!)

I found it worked best for me to just go ahead and start working on the story, and whenever I needed a detail, I'd stop and Google it. Sometimes that led me down the rabbit hole of research, but it didn't derail the writing process that much because it got me excited to keep building out the story in a world that I found increasingly fascinating.

Doing it that way worked for me because the research fed off of the writing and vice versa, so I didn't get bored or antsy with either. But it may be too back-and-forth a process for a writer who really needs to concentrate.
 

Deb Kinnard

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I've been writing medievals since I had to use oak-gall ink and a goose feather. Well, almost. I have an obscenely large collection of reference books, and in my youth I nagged my public library until they fleshed out their medieval collection to my (almost) satisfaction. They used to tremble when they saw me coming.
 

Chessiejenna

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This may sound silly, and it most likely is, but I have found in my research that paintings are amazing . . . and newspaper articles from that period! Just to see the styling, the small objects they find important enough to hold for HOURS and HOURS on end, even the colors - it all sets me in that period.

And of course, the newspaper articles are obvious in their usefulness.