How accurate is too accurate?

[Emily]

Do any of you run into this problem a lot? You sit down to write historical fiction, but can't find the balance between the historical part and the fiction part. It's been quite frustrating for me. I always feel bad putting words in people's mouths, so to speak, but I also feel bad being so accurate that the book is dull (I've witnessed both ends of the spectrum in other writing, and despise them both). What do you folks think is the proper balance?

[Linda]

What I do there is create a heroine who is fictional and plunge her into historical situations such as (most recently) the sinking of the Lusitania. The history is in the background, and she can react to it. I pick historical incidents where there's lots of action (though I do let minor characters who were real people on the sinking ship say their real lines) so I hope it's not dull.

[Sophia]

It's been a long time since I tried to write something that was truly historically accurate, but I'm currently in the research phase for a civil war novel. I'm trying to keep the history as a background, but I do have one historical character that will be popping up. I'm limiting most of her dialogue to things that she's recorded saying either in her own writing or in speaking engagements.

[Linda]

I don't think it matters whether your historical character speaks historically accurate lines or fictional ones. What matters is what is going on in the background while the character is talking. Is it an abolitionist meeting where people are making speeches or is it a battle scene with guns, smoke, and action? In other words, is there any suspense?

[Malcolm]

Emily, you have raised such an interesting point. I think you have a choice. Either your novel is historically accurate and revealing, but driven by fictional characters in which real people appear only as hearsay, as in Gone With The Wind. Or it is peopled with real characters into whose mouths you do put words, but these are based upon careful research about how they thought, spoke and reacted, so as to make history come alive and your interpretation of it credible. For example Michael Shaara's Killer Angels.

You can mix both but you have to be aware of the writing discipline of each part for it to hang together.

[Som]

Hey..
Think you must convey the essence of their spoken dialect, anthropologically and culturally accurate. Historical fiction is where, you give life to a character in that constant surrounding depicting singular human condition pertaining to that timeline.

As, for proper balance, think you gotta stick to the historically elements and atmosphere (accurate by let's say 80%) and as for the characters, reflect their soul to those elements.

Create historical scenarios (in parts), study the humanism and condition of that era, assess the possibilities of evolving your characters by the fragment assemblage.

Then again, it depends on what sub-genre of historical fiction you're opting for..cultural, mystery/thriller, magical realism, romance etc, then accuracy and abundance of historical elements would differ significantly. Viz: For cultural-historical fiction, there's more involvement of social/cultural history and psychological anthropology, with character(s)..

[Emily]

Thanks everyone for the feedback! I think I'll stick to the real characters being "hearsay," but keep the events real. For my current work, I'm putting fictional characters into the first modern Olympic games of 1896. So the standings will be real, but you won't know anything about Spiridon Louis except for the fact that he won the marathon. Does that make sense?

[Malcolm]

Yes Emily, that makes perfect sense! Good luck with the book. You have chosen an original setting and deserve success.

[Sophia]

Emily wrote: "Do any of you run into this problem a lot? You sit down to write historical fiction, but can't find the balance between the historical part and the fiction part. It's been quite frustrating for m..."

I have such a hard time with this I haven't written historical fiction in years. I get WAY too obsessed with accuracy to allow my story to develop in a healthy way. My solution has been to create fantasy settings based on history (most recently the interwar period in Europe and America). The trouble with that is I recently read about Order Castles in Nazi Germany. I was so shocked that something like that really existed (Google them; it's very "Hunger Games"). I've thought about how I could write about them--if I put them in a fantasy setting, I think a lot of the punch goes out of the reality of them. Readers would simply think, "Wow, this fantasy setting is a little over the top." In a historical novel, people would think, "No way! This really happened?" And maybe they'd look it up and see that yes, it really did. So that seems way preferable. But I know myself. If I try to write a story that is actually set in the Third Reich, I will get lost down a rabbit hole of research that I will never find my way out of!

[Patrick]

I think it is a tough line to walk.

First of all, the story needs to work as a story. Being historically accurate won't save a bad story. But you have to get the details right, within reason.

I think you need to do the research and make sure you don't contradict the history, but I like to pick a protagonist who is tangential to events, not central. And if you are telling it from the point of view of a fictional character, well, everybody sees things a bit differently, so that can forgive a lot of little
issues people may have.

Never be totally wrong. Vague is better than wrong. If you aren't sure what gun Jesse James used, just say "his pistol" not "his Colt Army Model 1860" because some reader who has an encyclopedic knowledge of Jesse James will cry foul and tell you he used a different gun.

[D.J.]

I can only agree with everyone who says it's a hard balance to strike. Emily, you didn't say what the historical setting you're using is. I find that the better known a historical event or character is, the more difficult it is to strike the balance. Known historical facts add authenticity to a story, but they also constrain what can happen. On the other hand, next to nothing is known about the vast majority of people who have ever lived so fiction has a lot more freedom among the great unknown than among the great and good. To put it another way, a story about the Unknown Soldier has a lot more scope than a story about his general.
What I've been trying to do recently is to place my lead characters and their stories on the periphery of major events, so the event fixes the time and place for the reader but is not the main subject of the story. Whether that's a good idea or not remains to be seen!

[K.P.]

I enjoy historical fiction and historical fantasy. yeah, getting bogged in research can be a total pain, but the reward (a good story) is what matters. bascially you're following some dude/lady and their expierences while stuff (history) happens around them. they're only concerned in the *now* not realizing how epic these events are. just roll with it. it's not like folks run into famous people every day.

Like one time i met this dude named Tyler Perry after getting dragged to see one of his plays that was premiering in my hood. I didn't know the dude from a can of paint. I thought his show was meh. But he was a writer and I asked tons of questions and got some good advice because I wanted to better my craft and I wondered how he got as far as he did. Then next thing I know, he blows up big. (Yeah, he was *that* Tyler Perry). So in a way, I somehow stumbled into meeting someone who's relatively important and had no idea. Your characters are the same way. They don't know the folks they're around are huge deals, or if an event is happening, it's just a crisis, not knowing it'll be in the history books for ages (like Titanic - it was supposed to be another ship for a cruise, right?) or just some festival or something (like wattstax or woodstock).

Don't stress too hard and let the story flow. We're invested in your character's expierences, not the history. if we want a shite tonne of history, we'd crack open a history book :D

[Shaila]

I think that historical accuracy is important in a book, but the world should not have to in-your-face. "Prisoner of Night and Fog" by Anne Blankman is an example of this. The story centers on the events and people in the time right before World War II in Germany, but the plot is not just focused on the history. The story is told through the perspective of a fictional niece of Hitler. This helps keep the story more relatable and gives it the ability to be creative without seeming to inaccurate. Y. S. Lee, the Author of The Agency series writes about Victorian England from the perspective of a female mixed-race spy. Lee has credentials on the history of the time period she writes about. She uses history as a background and motivational tool for her characters, but by writing from the perspective of a somewhat-outcast, she helps keep the story more relatable and doesn't just bog it down with historical references. In "A Mad, Wicked Folly" by Sharon Biggs Waller, the history provides the basis of many of the secondary characters' personalities and viewpoints, but the views of the main character are more her own and the reader sees the story through her rebellious POV. Good books often have strong, memorable and relatable main characters with more modern ideas and challenges explained by the environment and historical events dictated by the setting.

[Emily]

Thanks everyone! The gist of what you are all saying is what I do have to concern myself with - writing a good story. So, my plan is to do broad research, write the story, and then worry about nit-picky accuracy later.

[Melissa]

Historical accuracy is important, but considering you're writing historical fiction, it's okay if a good chunk of the book is made up.