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Today I was thinking about historical fiction. I think about historical fiction a great deal, even though most of my fiction is rather a-historical. I was going to state the obvious and say "This is because historians think of historical fiction" but it would be a lie and I'm sworn to honesty this week.
The real reason I'm thinking about historical fiction today, is that Felicity Pulman is starting a new book in her Janna Mysteries series. This made me think about the different processes writers go through to find the right level of historical accuracy for their books. The right level is different for different writers – as writers we create our won universes and tell the stories we need to tell and just how close our history is to the real past depends on those universes and those stories and maybe just a bit on our personalities. Felicity works hard at her accuracy. So do Elizabeth Chadwick, Brian Wainwright, Sharon Kay Penman, Sharan Newman and quite a few others. If I was terribly egalitarian, I would give you a list of writers who don't work so hard, but I'd rather focus on writers whose work I admire. Because my doctorate was in the Middle Ages, I know most about how writers use the Middle Ages. Some writers have pet historians, for instance. I'm a pet historian at times. I love being a pet historian – it means I get to put my money where my mouth is and actively help prevent writers distorting history rather than simply complaining about it. Other writers have expert friends who field occasional questions, but mostly are well on their way to be expert in their field. Read a few pages of either of these groups of writers and the sense of place and time will drag you in and keep you spellbound. Some writers go as far as to get higher degrees. A doctorate itself isn't any evidence of a writers' accuracy. I know of writers whose sense of history was so keen that they decided to formalise it with a doctorate. One the other hand, there's a particular writer whose qualifications are as superb as their history is laughable. Writers with doctorates need to be judged by their novels, not their academic qualifications. I have one, and I put inaccuracies in my work intentionally. My excuse is that I'm not actually writing historical novels, but the truth is that I need those untruths to separate my understanding of the past from my understanding of telling stories. I don't know what reasons the others with doctorates have for wildly inventive Medieval England or Renaissance France. The thing I've noticed over the last few years of working with writers and writing myself and dealing with history and workshops and the whole tiny universe that is the writing world is that the game is changing. The writers who don't understand their settings are losing popularity. Those who have a deep understanding and do solid research and translate that into stories that come to life: these are the writers who readers talk about, more and more. |
