How To: Research Historical Fiction

Hey y'all! BJ back, this time with a help post.

My favorite genre, both to read and write, is historical fiction.

As a his-fic writer, I have to check and recheck facts and find those odd little details to make my setting seem real, be that setting in World War Two or in a made-up town in the Wild West.

This is my bullet point list of what I like to do to make the settings and characters come to life for both myself and any readers.

I'll be using a few of my own novels (specifically my WWII and Westerns) for examples here and there.

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1. What is it about the time period you'll be writing in that specially interests you?

For me, it's the people. I love reading firsthand accounts like Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place and Darlene Debler Rose's Evidence Unseen. Autobiographies and biographies can hold fascinating glimpses into what went on behind the scenes in otherwise difficult and niche areas to research. So most of my writing focuses on telling the stories and bringing to light the experiences of the real people through the lenses of fiction.

2. Firsthand accounts are your friends. 'Nuff said.

Okay maybe not enough, but I did ramble a little about firsthand accounts above, so I'll just repeat my main point from there. Autobiographies and biographies can hold fascinating glimpses into what went on behind the scenes in otherwise difficult and niche areas to research.

3. Read books set in that time, both fiction and nonfiction.

While for some, this might seem like it would make it harder to come up with "original" ideas, I'd like to remind you that every story under the sun has been told. Just not by you. Readers happily devour the same tropes over and over, because they work. All right, mini-ramble over, back to the point. I like to read books in my time period and take mental notes of what the authors do.

My favorite thing to keep an eye out for during these readings are suprising facts or things that sound like they're pulled from real history. I mentally note those and sometimes (being a history nerd) like to check them for myself later.

A lot of the time, published authors will have done the research for you. You can take their little-known facts down and use them in your own story if the opportunity arises.

if you can't use it, at least you learned something valuble to keep in mind as you write. Even if it's just that the Germans actually invented the first jet, in World War Two. (true fact, it was called the Messerschmitt Me 262 "Schwalbe" (meaning Swallow). Now you know.)

4. Check your facts with multiple sources, don't just take the first thing a search engine says

A few sources I like are The History Channel, firsthand accounts, collage lectures, autobiographies and biographies, andWikepedia source notes. And yes, sometimes I look online and check Wikepedia, but if I can't find it confirmed on two or three different sources, then I usually try to find a way around the need for the fact. I'd rather not have a fact used at all than knowingly have what might be a wrong one.

5. Check your libraries

I think at this point, you've probably figured out that not only have I spent a ridiculous amount of time over the years watching collage history lectures and reading history books for fun, I love reading, period. Enough said in all of my other points, go find those fiction and nonfiction books. :D

6. Visit museums and historical locations relevant to your time period, if possible. Reenactments are amazing as well.

Yes, you think you know what a spinning wheel looks like or what a musket sounds like or how miserable a straw matress might be. And maybe you do.

But it really drives it home the realism of the situations from them to walk through a historic replica and see the spinning wheel being used, or touch the straw mattress in the cabin and feel it scratch, or hear the muskets and cannon discharged and watch the smoke of the imitation battle. Or even to just see a real live person dressed in historical garb.

With that sort of firsthand experience in your head, you can come up with stronger, more detailed and realistic descriptions for your novel.

Also, reenactors are there because they love the history and wish to share it. Ask them about the jobs and occupations that they're reenacting. They'll most likely be very, very happy to provide you with details and things they've discovered for themselves.

7. Don't use words and sayings and references from the present.

No I'm not saying you need to run to find or buy a thesaurus, I'm saying your new Model T owning character probabably isn't going to be calling his new method of transport a car. More likely, he's going to call it an automobile, auto, or horseless carriage.

Even songs referenced can be important. I can't have my World War Two charrie whistling "The Cruel War" because it came out after the war, but I can have them whistling "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."

Small details like this can help make your story more realistic, interesting, and thereby easier for a reader to suspend their disbelief.

8. Use words and sayings and references from your time period.

Heh, you knew this was coming, didn't you?

Using sayings from the time period, even ones that are no longer "politically correct" can make a story more realistic. Yes, that Civil War plantation owner character might call a slave black, but more likely, they'll use a racial slur of the times. However, tread carefully with this one. I personally just avoid these or substitute a more polite term as I write, because the other words make me uncomfortable and I write for myself first. You know your comfort zone, and you know how realistic you want things to be.

Sayings are often a safe way to intersperse little bits of the time into a story, even if they can be viewed as cliches. For example, "Easy as shootin' fish in a barrel," is a very Western-sounding saying if you put it in the right context.

A book I recently acquired is "Dictionary of Word Origins" by John Atayo. It pretty much explains itself in the title, but so far it is very helpful for checking words and when they came into use, and what they were used for.

9. Context matters

Question: Would you call a man in medieval times Sir or Lord?

Well it would depend on his official social status and maybe about thirty-five other things. Check the context of your terms if you're unsure... and check them even if you are sure, because you might be wrong in your assumption that Sir and Lord were interchangable. Totally don't know that because of experience. Totally. (Okay, so it is experience. I'm not usually a medieval his-fic writer for a reason and I'm still not even sure I have the sir/lord thing straight. :P)

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All right, it appears that I am out of rambling ideas now. Hope this was at least slightly helpful, and I'll be appearing out of the silence with another random post sometime in the random future!

BJ, out.