An Embarrassment of Riches: Writing Historical Fiction in the Age of Information Overload
Since we’re all writers here, let me start by putting things in grammatical terms: in the phrase “historical fiction,” “historical” is the adjective and “fiction” is the noun. Keeping that in mind puts the emphasis where it belongs and reminds us that history is fiction’s junior partner in this enterprise.
(Tips on Writing Authentic Scenes in Historical Fiction.)
That’s not to discount the role that historical facts play in constructing a story, establishing a convincing environment where that story can play out and bringing to life a cast of characters that are true to an earnest understanding of the people they represent. These are huge responsibilities and must not be taken lightly.
If fiction wants to navigate through the woods, it needs to follow the trail of breadcrumbs that history has left behind. Still, in the end, if fiction is to discover its own truths, it needs to wander off a little here and there.
It’s a question of proportion and focus.
In my own case, I have to fight hard against the impulse to become over-enchanted with research. There is no detail too small for me to fall in love with, no rabbit hole so insignificant that I will not wander into it given half a chance. That would mean slowed progress, lost narrative focus, and general ruin.
There are historical novelists out there who don’t have this problem, I understand, and in many cases their openness serves them well. But there are those who can’t resist the urge to install any interesting fact that they’ve unearthed into their work, no matter how tangential or downright irrelevant it may be, and the results are not pretty. A book written without the discipline of saying enough is enough now and then will feel lumpy and uneven, and won’t engage the reader half so much as it engaged the writer.
Better, I think, to set the stage in a more general and memorable way than to throw in everything you’ve learned. If a porter comes through a rail car at dusk and lights the lamps, leave it at that and let him go on about his business. We don’t need to know what fuel these particular lamps burn, or what metals they’re made of, or who manufactured them to begin with. What we need is to feel the warm glow of their light, and to see what that glow illuminates. Your readers must be brought into the scene, not given a history lesson.
It turns out, by the way, that even for readers who love researched detail above all else, too much specificity can backfire. A case in point: After the publication of my first novel, Finn, I got an email from a reader who objected to my having placed a derby hat on the head of some character or other. He explained that the derby was not popular in America until two or three years after the scene in question, and I suppose that doing so made him feel better.
The trick is always to maintain a light touch, gently guiding readers to see what you want them to see. Every sense is important, too. In my novel Marley, I invoked London in the early 1800s by the simplest means possible—fog, candlelight, church bells—and let the reader’s imagination fill in the rest. In my latest, The General and Julia, I relied on woodsmoke and fiddle music to invoke an army’s wilderness encampments. Consistency of observation helps reinforce the reader’s vision, too. Grant—and his friend Mark Twain—rarely appear in that book unaccompanied by their trademark cigars.
Check out Jon Clinch’s The General and Julia here:
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In other words, the construction of the vivid dream that is fiction depends more on skill and sensitivity than on unadorned knowledge. This applies to the overall project, as well, not just on a sentence-by-sentence basis. The actions in the book, for example, must be those that advance your story and clarify your meaning, not simply those things that happened. Truth is important—getting things right is crucial, playing fair with the facts is essential—but the mere fact that a thing is true does not give it a free ticket for this ride.
In the end, a historical novel has to be assembled in the same way that any other novel gets made. You’ll always bring your own understanding, your own point of view, your own sympathies to the work. That’s your assignment: to let your readers see the real world of the past in the way that only you—so far, anyway—have been able to imagine it. Leave the business of getting down exactly what happened to the historians. Your job is to raise the dead.