How to use History to Strengthen Your Novel

By Daisy Torres  

*A sparkling whirlwind of words appears before you. Majestic music seems to come from the whirlwind. The winds cease and you see me, crunching away on a bag of potato chips.*

Oh -- hi there! I wasn’t expecting you so soon. *Potato chips disappear. Magically.*

So you want to get better at writing Fantasy, huh? Join the club. Seriously -- here’s a sign-up sheet. *sign-up sheet suddenly appears before you*

Fantasy, as fun as it may be, is a frustrating genre! There are so many things you have to think through. So many magic systems to make sense of. So many dragon species to imagine!

With Fantasy being so complex, how do we write something complex and believable? 

Let’s start, shall we? *I offer you a magical potato chip. You eat it, since apparently your parents didn’t teach you not to take food from strangers, and you are transported to a magical world.*

A Fictional Land With Factional People

Welcome to my imagination, where coral reefs are not aquatic, pigs fly regularly, and clapping can result in a spontaneous, choreographed dance number.

Have you heard the news from around here lately? That’s fine, I didn’t expect you to. Few people know what’s going on during their first trip. Let me break it down for you real quick.

The ‘Helmenans’ are a group of people from the North who were taken over by a man who hates my people -- the ‘Pyramite’ Tribe. This man, who goes by the name of Villain, has been killing anyone belonging to my tribe, no matter their gender or age. 

Many people have gone on the run from Villain, with many taking refuge in the lands of the South. However, not everyone could uproot their family like that, and nearly two million people have died.

See a theme here? I borrowed my world’s history from real life -- the persecution of the German Jews during the 1940s, to be exact. It’s easy to write what we know about, so why not apply this same logic to history, be it Fiction or Fact?

Make it Make Sense

Although it would be so much easier to pick an interesting coincidence in history and write about it happening in another world, we can’t always do that. 

It’s important to remember that we need to be careful when using past events. If something seems too outlandish, your readers won’t know that this random, hard-to-believe event actually happened. They’ll just think you weren’t that good at plotting, which could make you look bad.

Keep it realistic. Even if some giant karate dude really did get beat up by a squirrel, no reader would seriously believe that. Show that the squirrel had to recruit a pack of other squirrels before it could attack the giant karate dude.

Getting Creative

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

~ Ecclesiastes 1:9

‘History repeats itself’ is a common phrase that often rings true, which is why it is important to remember our past. The past trains us so that we can reach for a better future.

Our past can be reflected in other worlds as well. We can take old war tactics, old characters, old stories, and turn them into something new -- something fantastic. If we want to, we can even change the outcome! History is an amazing way of strengthening our story’s background, and it takes little imagination for those of you who have a hard time thinking of fictional events.

Personally, I like to dig into lesser-known stories from the past. Sometimes, that includes history from other cultures! One story that comes to mind is the Chinese Military Officer Yang Xiu, who was so good at guessing and decoding things, that he was able to decode his Emperor’s top-secret plans because he was eating a bowl of chicken ribs. 

That’s right; chicken ribs. 

The event was almost humorous -- if it didn’t cost Yang Xiu his life. You see, he had a careless mouth and told the Emperor’s servants his (the Emperor's) plans, which ended up being Yang Xiu’s downfall. He was executed for his deadly skill of decoding.

There were many incidents where Yang Xiu’s incredible wit and intelligence was able to decode even the most troublesome messages, but if anyone could do it, it was him.

If I wanted to make this story feel more ‘realistic’ (Remember, we still have to make sure it all makes sense) I might try explaining why he was so intelligent, what tipped him off about the Emperor’s plans, and exploring his genius-yet-fatally-flawed-personality. Maybe, in 

this fantastic retelling, I could even change the outcome. 

What if Yang Xiu saved the Emperor’s life and was rewarded, instead of killed? What if his reward was the Emperor’s daughter? That in itself is an entirely new plot, spun directly from history.

What I love so much about borrowing stories from actual events is the ability to mix and match. When we write, our power is limitless! Anything becomes possible. Why not mash old stories (or folklore!) together to create totally new, never-before-heard-of events! 

Get creative. Even if you dedicated the rest of your life to reading every bit of history from all over the world, there’s no way you could ever cover it all, so there’s bound to be something new that no one has ever written about before!

Borrowing Military Tactics

I have always struggled with writing realistic, well-thought-out battles. However, if we look at history, we can see things that worked, failed, and glean our military-building skills from that!

One of my all-time favorite tactics that actually happened was when the Americans dropped matchbooks over enemy lines with instructions on how to fake being sick written on the backs of every matchbook.

Many of the German soldiers didn’t want to be there, so a good amount of them followed the matchbook’s instructions and faked an illness. Unfortunately for them, the Germans had so many of their soldiers dropping out, that the German Officers banned any ‘sick’ soldiers from being quarantined. This made them spread real diseases to the other soldiers, which actually got them all sick.

Psychological warfare is great, isn’t it?

From ‘the Trojan Horse’ to the ‘Matchbook Trick’, imaginative Military tactics have been used all throughout history to fool -- or be fooled by -- the enemy. With the internet at our fingertips, it is now easier than ever before to research interesting events in history and put them to good use!

And you know what? History doesn’t have to only apply to the battlefield.

Looking to historical figures for fictional characters.

Maybe you’re writing romance. Maybe you need a good mystery. No matter what you’re writing, real life can help you!

Maybe Annie Oakley isn’t a sharpshooter from the wild west, but a legendary archer from the medieval times who was raised by elves.

Perhaps Joan of Arc is a Science Fiction character from the future, who realises that something is wrong and uses God’s instruction to lead her to a grand victory in a battle in the stars, only to be executed by her own ruler.

The pages of time are filled with the ink of souls that pique our interest and nourish our need for adventure! 

One of the most intriguing female historical figures (to me, anyway) was a woman known as the ‘Eastern Mata Hari’. After the Second Sino-Japanese war, ‘Xianyu’ (later known as ‘Yoshiko Kawashima’) was captured by the Chinese, where she was tried and executed as a traitorous spy.

Xianyu’s story is much more detailed and interesting than simply her trial and death. After the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1912, Xianyu was given up for adoption in 1915 at the age of eight to her father's friend, Naniwa Kawashima, a Japanese espionage agent and mercenary adventurer. Pretty cool, right? Wrong. Her stepfather was horrible to her, resulting in a lot of her life decisions.

Her stepfather changed Xianyu’s name to "Yoshiko Kawashima" and took her back to Tokyo, Japan to be raised in the Kawashima family house. Kawashima was sent to school in Tokyo for an education that included judo and fencing.

Kawashima went through some pretty rough stuff in her life, and later decided to conceal her identity by dressing up as a man, where she used her ability to ‘blend in’ to collect information from all sorts of people. Because of this skill, she became a spy for Japan (even though she was Chinese -- and a member of the royal family) 

Long story short, she played a large part in the history of both China and Japan, and was overall a pretty interesting person. Sadly, although she was once well-known throughout Japan as a hero, she often critiqued the Japanese Military, and was forced to be forgotten from the public as a result.

After the end of the war, on 11 November 1945, a news agency reported that "a long sought-for beauty in male costume was arrested in Beijing China by counter-intelligence officers." She was arrested, tried, and later on, killed.

History is like a pallet of paint ready for the artist’s disposal. Some stories, like this one, are painted with deep dark hues of blue and black and grey. Others are bright -- cheerful yellows and laughing pinks. It’s up to us to decide what colors to use. 

But what if Kawashima’s story wasn’t real? What if she wasn’t human, but an altogether new race, invented by your mind? What if she faked her death -- leaped into another world or flew off on a dragon. There are countless ways that we can use her story to strengthen our own spies and characters.

Uncovering Patterns in History

No event is entirely new. We’ve had worldwide pandemics before. We’ve had children who had to deal with the loss of a parent before. We’ve gone through famines, wars, slavery, and anything else we now deal with before. This means that we can often use history as a map to navigate uncertain times, which is a great help when it comes to writing about things we’ve never experienced. Not only can history guide our writing, it can guide us.

--However, for us writers, using something to guide ‘ourselves’ also means guiding our 872 characters, even if we haven’t written them yet. *awkward cough*

Through history, we writers can learn of the life and death of humans, creatures, nations, societies, and much, much more. History shows us how an event might turn out without guessing! Has your character lost their home? Have they been left helpless while an evil tyrant took over their kingdom? Looking to our past shows us what key patterns are happening now, so that we can avoid (or copy) our past, even if it’s for fictional purposes.

But guess what? History isn’t just for the nerds -- I mean, unless you call having non-existent conversations with your 872 characters so you can earn a living off of your imagination ‘nerdy’ -- it’s for any person who has ever walked the face of this planet. History has the power to not only change real life, but to change the fictional, as well. It can make our writing so much more immersive, believable, and developed.

Now go forth, Writers! Vanquish your character’s enemies and write your epic sagas. Oh -- and let me know in the comments who your favorite historical figures are, or what the most intriguing historical event was to you!