How to Write Historical Fiction: Ten Tips to Get You Started

Choose your subject

If your idea for a historical novel concerns a real person or people, think about how much research will be needed in order for you to be able to write a book you’re happy with. Some historical figures have a vast pool of primary sources and secondary scholarship connected to them; on others, there is a smaller pool of existing knowledge. Every writer is different, but I found it helpful, when I was writing my debut novel on the witchfinder Matthew Hopkins, that the amount of history available about him felt manageable. Not every writer can afford to spend ten years in an archive!

If you can, get on the ground

Visit the location in which your story is set, and don’t be too purposeful: build in some time for wandering. An old map can help visualise past land uses, and it doesn’t even need to exactly match your period setting – if you’re writing about the deep past, any map that takes you back before major roads and railways can be helpful. Check out places that will have changed little since the period of your story – in England, the churchyard is often a good place to start. See what the common surnames are, what colour the soil is, what you notice about the view, what streets are called and why. A location visit is also a helpful chance to visit the nearest bookshop for a sweep of the local history section and a first chat with the booksellers, who may be important champions for you if your book is published.

Let the facts guide you

As you start to look at books, articles or archival sources, keep an open mind: write down whatever’s interesting and let your thinking about the story be led in that way. Sometimes, we can have an idea for something we want to happen, and end up researching in order to find ‘proof’ that it could have happened. The proof is rarely found, and seeking it just leads to frustration, worry and a closed mind. If you stay with interesting pieces of truth about the period, it’s easier to find solutions that feel true to that time – and easier to keep an open enough mind to invent, where you want to.

Don’t let the present bully the past

Whether you’re writing about real people or just a real period of history, try to enter into the complexity of the past. Be wary of trying to simplify it, or inject into it what you wish was true. Of course we use historical fiction partly as a way of talking about the world we live in now, but be cautious of all easy answers. When I published my first novel, for example, I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people about seventeenth century witch trials. Many of those I spoke to generally preferred to think of witchfinders as wholly evil, and identified themselves intensely with the ‘witches’, people they saw as wholly innocent and innately magical. Of course, it goes without saying that witch trials were terrible acts of cruelty and violence (it’s always interesting to me that we prefer to think of ourselves as the descendants of witches, when it’s just as likely that our ancestors were witchfinders or their enablers). But the truth about the trials is complex. After my research, it seemed to me as though the victims of witch trials were sometimes women suffering poor mental health or poverty, sometimes women who were simply outspoken, sometimes women who were difficult neighbours – in other words, a complicatedly human mix. As for witchfinders, while sadism and misogyny undoubtedly formed parts of their motivation, they had earnest religious motivations, too, which are more difficult for many people to comprehend nowadays. In other words: the truth was complicated! As historical fiction writers, it’s our job to help our readers come to some sort of accommodation with this kind of complexity.

Let attention guide detail

As you start to write, think about building the historical world for your reader through the eyes of your narrator (if you’re writing in first person) or point of view character/s (if you’re writing in third). If you’re unsure how to choose which details of setting to include and which to leave out, think about what material, social or political details your narrator/character would notice. What would be beautiful or awkward or important or worrying or new to them?

Listen for it

A good grasp of voices that feel true to your period is key for writing historical fiction dialogue (and narration, if you have a characterised narrator); voices that feel historical without sounding self-consciously ‘ye olde’. You can get a good sense of how ordinary people might have spoken to each other by looking at personal writings – letters, or diary entries, which are often available as anthologies. For more recent periods of history, oral histories can be an incredible resource. Be more cautious with letting more formal kinds of writing (newspaper articles, sermons, trial transcripts etc) shape your characters’ ordinary speech. As today, people would always have spoken or written differently in formal or professional contexts than the way they would at home.

Stop researching

The sense of being overwhelmed by the amount you could research, or anxious about how much is ‘enough’, is common for historical fiction writers. As I said earlier, the level of possible overwhelm can depend a bit on your chosen period or subject, but with every book I’ve written I’ve felt a bit intimidated by the amount that was available to read, and unsure at times what to prioritise. There is no magic answer to this. One friend who is a historical novelist decided that he was only going to read ‘one book per topic’: so, one book on society in his chosen period, one book on politics, one book on folklore, etc. I was both amused and frightened by the boldness of this approach! But I could see how freeing it was for him – and what resulted was a brilliant novel. My only advice is: when you can imagine your setting, your people and your scenes enough to write, stop researching. The feeling that if you read just one more book you’ll ‘get’ or unlock some magic new understanding will never leave you. So just stop.

Read Wolf Hall

The next tip contains a Wolf Hall spoiler so if you haven’t yet read it, skip ahead – or even better, read it!

Step into the gaps

Be prepared, when you’re writing about a real figure from history, to make things up. You will very likely need to do this in order to make a story containing satisfying relationships: it’s a rare historical figure for whom there’s a complete and detailed record of their personal and emotional life. Of course, it’s good to think about the ethics of inventing things about real people. I once abandoned a novel, for instance, because I realised that in order to make my plot function, I would need a character to be evil when there was no historical evidence that he was so. I didn’t feel it was right to make that kind of change – so I wrote a different book. But I do think it can often be completely justified to invent even quite big events. I often think of Hilary Mantel in Wolf Hall having Thomas Cromwell sleep with his late wife’s sister. There’s no evidence (that I know of!) that Cromwell did this in real life. But as an act, it contains a truth that speaks back to the rest of the book (putting Cromwell in a special position to relate to how King Henry might be feeling, involved as he is with both Anne Boleyn and her sister Mary). More than this, it contains an emotional truth, about how after sudden trauma (the shockingly swift death of Cromwell’s wife) we can reach for comfort and familiarity and closeness. I think the invention is justified and useful to the book: don’t be afraid to invent events, particularly personal events – even big ones – where they feel right in this kind of way.

Keep your eye on causation

It’s good to remember that historical fiction is fiction; a historical novel is a novel, just like any other. To make sense of and draw meaning from a story, the reader needs to be able to see cause and effect happening as events unfold. Sometimes, when we’re writing about history, it can be tempting to rush towards big events that we know really took place. Take your time, and make sure that the causation which takes you towards your ending is watertight and emotionally real. The big event will wait for you!

 Join Beth Underdown for Writing Historical Fiction – an intensive twelve-week course where you’ll learn everything you need to write and pitch a successful historical novel. Find out more here.