Exploring Historical Fiction
In a sense, this is an oxymoron. How can anything historical be fiction? It contradicts each other. Ah, but it is not history that is fiction. It is fiction with an historical basis.
Setting
The historical aspect of a fiction novel comes in many forms. It can be in the setting alone. Where the story is located is crucial to an historical fiction novel.
Putting a story in Paris during the German occupation makes a story an historical story. It is set in the midst of an historical event.
The topic of the story could be something more modern in concern or focus as long as the setting is in some time in the past. If you write of a setting in World War I, the Civil War, Elizabethan England, South Africa during European colonization, or anything like that, you are writing an historical story. If the people are not historical….If the events are not historical, that is okay as long as the setting is set back in history. Then you still have an historical fiction story.
The setting is key.
People
Despite writing an historical book, the actual characters of the book do not have to be historical. It could a lord that never existed except in my own mind. But when I put him in Queen Elizabeth’s court which is a real historical time period, my…
