But when, exactly, is the past \u201chistorical?\u201d Celadon books suggests you give it a minimum of 50 years from your current time. That seems reasonable: 50 years puts you firmly in the time of your grandparents, which is when most people see a big difference in society and culture. You can go as far back as you wish but start at least 50 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing that makes historical fiction so popular and so believable is the setting. Historical fiction should be set in a real place and time, even if characters and parts of the setting are fictional. My two heroes, for example, live in the very real city of San Francisco, California in the very real time of the 1870s. Their house is fictional but would fit into the houses along that street at that time. I\u2019ve done a lot of research, so their home city is portrayed as it actually would have been then, to the best of my abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are six basic divisions of historical fiction:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

• Biographical \u2013 these stories tell the fictionalized account of a real person\u2019s life, or of a real group of people.<\/li>
• Historical Epics \u2013 a series of books that often span several eras.<\/li>
• Historical Adventure \u2013 in these books the protagonist goes on a journey or has a series of adventures before reaching his or her goal.<\/li>
• Historical Romance \u2013 the main focus of the book is the romance, but the story is set in the past.<\/li>
• Historical Mystery \u2013 the main focus of the book is the mystery, but the story is set in the past.<\/li>
• Historical Fantasy \u2013 the author changes certain facts from the past and keeps others the same, as in an alternate history or time travel story.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

  Historical fiction wasn\u2019t recognized as a literary genre until the early 1800s. One of the first popular books in this new category was Sir Walter Scott\u2019s Ivanhoe<\/em>, set during the Age of Chivalry. Nowadays, the 1960s qualify as \u201chistorical,\u201d so you\u2019ve got a lot of time to play with. Whether you write about mail order brides in the Old West or 12^{th<\/sup> Century nobility, if it\u2019s set in the past, it\u2019s historical fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n}

  In a 2015 article called \u201c7 Elements of Historical Fiction,\u201d M.K. Tod says that all fiction writers must consider seven critical elements \u2013 as well as bringing the past to life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Character: your characters must appear to be from the era you\u2019ve set them in, from their clothing to their mannerisms and beliefs. That means you need to do your research and find out how a peon would differ from a nobleman, or how a beggar would act as opposed to a shopkeeper.<\/li>
  • Dialogue: you shouldn\u2019t try to write exactly as those old writers did. Such language today is stultifying and quite difficult for your reader to wade through. Do sprinkle in words or phrases that get across the idea that they\u2019re really in your past world, though. One thing to be careful of is slang \u2013 it\u2019s changed greatly through the years and a word that means one thing today might have meant something completely different in the past.<\/li>
  • Setting: this means time and place and is the most essential part of a historical fiction writer\u2019s task. Your readers need to feel transported into the past within the first paragraph or two of your story. Do your research and find those little details that will create a vivid setting for your readers.<\/li>
  • Theme: your theme, too, must reflect the era in which you\u2019re writing. What does loyalty mean in 14^{th<\/sup> Century Japan as opposed to the modern era? How was coming of age different in your era?<\/li>}
  • Plot: your plot must rotate around actual historical events that would have taken place at that time. This is especially true if you\u2019re including an actual historical figure in your story.<\/li>
  • Conflict: your conflict must also reflect your chosen era. People often faced different sources of conflict in the past, and you must make sure that your conflict is reasonable for that place and time.<\/li>
  • World Building: as Harry Sidebottom (author of the Warrior of Rome<\/em> series) said, \u201cthe past is another country; they not only do things differently there, they think about things differently. When building your world for your readers, you need to think about such things as customs, social arrangements, family environment, government, politics, and physical geography.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Tod also gives a list of topics you should consider when doing your research: attitudes,\u00a0language and idiom, household matters, material culture,\u00a0everyday life, historical timelines, occupations, diversions,\u00a0regulations, vehicles, travel, food, clothing and fashion, manners\u00a0\u00a0and mannerisms, beliefs, morality, the mindset of the time,\u00a0politics, social attitudes, wars, revolutions, prominent people,\u00a0major events, news of the day, neighborhoods, gossip, scandals,\u00a0international trade, travel, how much things cost, worries and\u00a0cares, highways and byways, conveyances, landscape, sounds,\u00a0tastes, smells, class divisions, architecture, social preoccupations,\u00a0religious norms, cataclysmic events, legal system, laws,\u00a0regulations, weather, military organization, cooking, sex, death,\u00a0and disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What do you research for your stories?<\/p>\n

    \n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The technical definition of historical fiction is \u201ca literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting located in the past.\u201d That\u2019s pretty vague, but then again, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[470,5,989],"class_list":["post-2796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-onwriting","tag-historical-fiction","tag-writing","tag-writing-the-past","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jeshays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jeshays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jeshays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeshays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeshays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeshays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2797,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeshays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796\/revisions\/2797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jeshays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeshays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeshays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}