Writing Historical Fiction
Writing Historical Fiction.
Getting immersed in the culture and times of a historical period can involve a lot of exhausting research but also immense fun. It is literally stepping into history. The trick is to choose a time that really interests you. Where would you go if you could time travel? Choose your dream destination and time period. Start reading books and watching films about or set in this time and place. This immerses you in the setting.
Then stepping into history is fun. For me, I don’t really fancy the time before the nineteenth century, so I am not really a long-ago history person but a modern history person. Even modern history has a huge scope.
The time period 1800 onwards is my time. I have written a trilogy set 1900 to 1950 and a non fiction historical on nineteenth century women as well as two contemporary novels. Writing historical fiction started with my sister embracing Ancestry.com and finding a mass of information about our grandparents. Reluctantly I read this stuff when bored on a rainy week at a seaside holiday resort and found there were gaps and silences about my granny. Why did she do this or that? Like hop on a boat alone to go to Australia from London just a few months after the sinking of the Titanic? I mean there are icebergs in the Indian Ocean too. Why too are there no photos of her? This got me started.
A dalliance with ideas
This along with the ever-fascinating topic of the Titanic were enough to get me going. But I never planned a book, just a dalliance with ideas about my granny’s motivations long ago while I sat with pen poised on a rainy afternoon. Then the long sinuous arm of history grabbed me and sucked me down along the cob-webbed tunnels into the past, not so distant, but still a century ago. Off I went back to 1905 and my grandmother’s youth. She worked in a bakery in Hampstead Heath, London with an Elsie and a Johnny. This explained my mother’s name, Elsie and my uncle Johnny.
The family were musical. Great grandfather was a piano journeyman. This term is interesting. I thought it meant travelling men but the journey bit comes from the French word journee meaning a day’s work. But I think my great grandfather still went about the London
tuning pianos. At home his musically gifted older children gave lessons in the front parlour. Did they enjoy this, I wondered or was this child abuse? Then once I read more of my sister’s stuff, I discovered that the oldest brother just disappeared and never turned up later anywhere in any of the possible searches. And my sister is thorough. Before the days of digital searches, she used to write to the registries etc. Fifteen years of research and she’s still going.
Lots of kids back then
Stepping into history, I set about creating personalities and motivations for this family. There were ten children, three boys and seven girls! Whoa! in a three-bedroom house. How does that work? Lots of bed sharing, that’s how. Children slept three to a bed.
No privileges back then like your own room or ensuite. No, a chamber pot under the bed was the best you’d get. Long cotton night dresses for boys and girls and twisted rags in your hair for the girls to keep their curls. A lot has changed in a hundred years and not all for the good. Big families were often happy families, sharing what they had not wanting more.
Anyway, the rainy week passed, as Time so quickly does. By then I had quite a few jottings in my notebook. These exploded over five months of secretive feverish writing into 60,000 words. The family blossomed into a mostly fictitious family of characters with personalities and reasons for doing or not doing stuff. I imagined Granny and Grandpa meeting on the ship to Australia in 1912 and falling in love as they really did. That seemed possible as they arrived on the same ship and married later that year. Then voila, I had a story based on true events and people of the past, historical fiction.
Whispers through Time
Publishing? never occurred to me. I am a maths and science teacher, not an arty type. But my sister once presented with my story, thought otherwise. She sent my story off to four publishers. She was secretive about it. All four liked it and so we chose one in London. Austin Macauley. Maybe not the best choice in retrospect but we knew nothing about publishing back then in 2018. Whatever, they made me a lovely book and called it a debut novel. Sounds posh, heh. It had a title too. Whispers through Time.
The publisher saw potential whereas I thought been there done that. Why not keep writing? Do a sequel? Really? You want more of my crazy imaginings? You’re a natural, they said. Without such encouragement from them and my sister, Granny and Grandpa would have been left on the Sydney pier on arrival. But now they have marched through history to 1950. One book became two then three and now I have Sister’s Time Trilogy. I rewrote, recovered and retitled the first two and self-published them after getting my rights back from the publisher. You can do that.
Writing in a historical setting
The first novel’s story continued through WWI and the Spanish Flu coincidentally as Covid erupted exactly a century later. This strange occurrence helped me write about my family in Spanish Flu times. I felt immersed in history repeating itself. But of course, the Spanish Flu was a much more severe event than Covid. Those most likely to die were aged 20 to 40 not over 75 as for Covid. Also, there were no antibiotics to help with the deadly secondary lung infections. This flu killed millions just after the Great War had already killed as many. A true tragedy.
Writing historical fiction or any fiction is about immersing oneself in the place or time. It’s harder for historical though because we can’t time travel. That’s why reading and watching films works plus many hours down the rabbit hole of research. Reading letters people wrote in those times and diaries also adds to the experience. Museums can help you get acquainted with the aspects of everyday life back then. Having historical characters using everyday items of their times adds to the reality of the story as does the vocabulary, clothes, social restrictions and political events. You must get it right! Hence the research.
Last Time Forever
Last Time Forever my third historical completed the trilogy as it transports my fictional family through the interwar and World War II years up to 1950. What a turbulent life they had. Two world wars and a Great Depression. They were tough. But this last one has a surprise ending which I won’t tell you about because it’s a surprise! If you like history articles check out my blog on my website.
Joni Scott is an Australian author with five published novels; The trilogy, Sister’s Time Trilogy and contemporary novels The Last Hotel and Colour comes to Tangles. Read about her books on joniscottauthor.com.
Source:atlasobscura.com
