First time writing historical fiction

@epicaddie2 Fun! Tons of research (I hate research!!). Tons of outlining (I hate outlining!!). And a lot of plotting. Does that help?

JK. HF is fun. It’s not as bad as I made out above. Don’t get scared off by my representation of my pet genre. XD It is a lot different from Fantasy though. Number one: you’re not creating a world. Depending on the story, there is extensive research that has to be done. Number two: You will probably get lost in your story if you don’t outline. Just a brief outline will do, though. And plotting is important too. I’m still learning, but this is the bulk of what I’ve learned so far. Hope this helps!

@epicaddie2 Sure! I’m glad that I was finally of use to someone. 😛 (Hear that @shannon?)

@shannon I’m pretty sure you meant “panster.” Riiiight?

@epicaddie2, I almost forgot to tag someone else who, I believe, writes historical fiction also.

@seekjustice, Addie needs some help, do you have any tips for her?

@epicaddie2 Yay! you’ve decided to write some HF!! *dances around the room*.

historical fiction is really cool, but it takes a lot of work, so it’s not for the faint of heart.

However, don’t be discouraged! I write a lot of HF so i’ll give you a few of my humble tips.

#1. Read good historical fiction! if you want to learn about writing historical fiction read good HF or books written in the past. I recommend Rosemary Sutcliff, Victor Hugo, Jane Austen, etc.

#2 Do research! As boring as it sounds, you need to research. that’s actually one of my favourite parts, I tend to go overboard though. Don’t just throw yourself into it though, start basic and narrow it down. I like to start with the junior nonfiction you can find at the library, because it’s very basic and then you can dig deeper into things that are important to your story.

#3 make it a good story! This should go for granted though, but often people just disguise a history text book as a story. It really annoys me.

#4 but don’t sacrifice historical accuracy! if you’re writing historical, you need to make it, well, historical, but I find a lot of books (especially *cough* historical romances) blithely sacrifice accuracy for the story, just because they’re too lazy to make accuracy and storytelling work together.

I know that seems like a lot, but if you have anymore questions let me know! I love talking about history.

@epicaddie2 No problem! I’m sure you will have lots of fun w/ that genre!

@epicaddie2 You don’t have to do this, but if you want to write a really in-depth historical fiction story, I’ve read that you don’t want to just read about the time period, but you want to read in the time period. Read the books that were famous at the time, preserved letters from the time period, newspaper articles, etc.