Deborah Swift's Blog, page 33

Fascinating old words for the historical novelist: ‘posnet’.

Whilst investigating something else entirely, I came upon an article in our local paper about the ‘Carnforth Posnet’. This apparently was a rare bronze vessel dating from medieval times. Amazing what sidetracks I end up on, when I get to our local library’s archives. (Side plea – save our local libraries!) This particular object was […]

Historical Fiction – Deadly Sin 3 – Stuck in the Past

Excess Verbiage When I was growing up I read classic fiction such as Dickens, The Brontes, Dumas, and Blackmore. These were my formative influences, and nuances of their language still make their way into my books. This is both an advantage, and a disadvantage. On the one hand, I’m hugely grateful for the vocabulary I […]

Gilded Leather Glitz – 17th Century wallpaper

If you were an important personage in 17th Century��Antwerp, your house would be furnished with��gilded leather wallpaper, a status symbol of the rich merchant. Inevitably this fashion spread to England. On a visit to The Hague, I took this picture in the Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague (left), but there are also good examples in the […]

Second of my historical fiction deadly sins – Purple Prose

Description Over-writing. It’s a sin! Historical fiction demands that we paint a vivid picture of the past. To do this, we have to tell our story, describe a world, and still bring the novel in at a reasonable length. Unnecessary adverbs and adjectives must be the first to be axed, (though now I have got […]

Sugar – The favourite ‘nip’ of the Tudors and Stuarts

Sugar became enormously popular in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was sold in loaves and wrapped in blue paper (patented 1666) to make it appear whiter. A sugar loaf could be from 8″ to nearly 3 feet tall, but the smaller the loaf, the higher the quality and the price. Loaves were cut into […]

Subtlety and Melodrama in Historical Fiction

Many of my books are set in the English Civil war, a time of high tempers, and of settling disputes by the sword. Writers of historical fiction find they are often writing against backgrounds of high tension. So with all the fighting, blood, gore, deaths and subsequent tears, how do you avoid sentimentality and melodrama? […]

The strengths of a first historical novel #histfic

Before I came to write my first historical novel,��The Lady’s Slipper, most of my writing was contemporary. I read a lot of contemporary fiction as well as historical fiction. A few years ago I would have been surprised to find I had produced a historical novel. So why write one? The answer is that it […]

Forged in Ice – what inspired my new Viking Saga by Ken Hagan

  Today I welcome Ken Hagan to tell us what inspired his new novel, the first in a Viking Trilogy. Ken: My thanks to Deborah for inviting me as guest author.�� Forged in Ice is set in 960AD. It tells the story of a boy and his family who leave the Norse Kingdom to live […]

Historical Fiction – The Power of Then, and the Power of Now

All historical fiction readers understand the power of Then. The lure of an unknown time or place which is only unknown because it happened to take place before we were born. Unlike fantasy, this is an unfamiliar world which, if we took them back far enough, our own flesh and blood ancestors would be able […]

Spinning a Tale – writing and weaving

The language of story is peppered with references to the craft of spinning. We ‘spin a yarn’, and ‘weave’ a tale. The art of ‘fabric’ation has very deep roots as one of the earliest forms of creation. Spindles and spinning are also built into our mythology and folklore. Who can forget childhood tales of Rumplestiltskin […]