![]() ![]() The invention of radio? Henry Ford’s affordable and easy to produce Model T? Even the current president, the death of celebrities or leaders, major earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, might need to have a role. If one of the world wars breaks out during the novel, it should at least have a passing impact on the characters. Even if some of my characters are fictionalized, they need to be someone who could have genuinely existed in that world. If the main character in a historical fiction novel was a real person (in Desert Steve, he is), then I need to know as much as possible about their life: where they were born, who their parents were, the family of origin, where they traveled, how they looked, while also trying to glean what the person’s personality might have been like. The people that populate my novel are the most essential, of course. I needed to know what those places were like in the late 1800s and early 1900s, not today. The important places in the novel (e.g., Coffeyville in Kansas, the Palo Verde Valley in California and Arizona, the Sonoran Desert, the Colorado desert, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and, primary location for most of the novel, Desert Center in California (now a virtual ghost town). Soon, I had tens of thousands of words of notes on three major subjects: Still, when I began reading through old newspapers and magazines, it became clear that I had to learn a lot about the invention of cars, refrigeration, homesteads and farmsteads, old, western towns, and so on. ![]() My current novel (working title Desert Steve) takes place about 100 years ago instead of 2000, as with Onesimus. Historical novels that do not ring true are not good art. I would rather over-research than under-research. In fact, being trained as an academic researcher, my problem is knowing when researching and start writing). Likewise, I had to learn what skills people had, what the literacy levels were, how people wrote, traveled, what authorities were like…the list seemed endless. I had to learn the social structure, also far different from Western social structures today. Slavery in that world was quite different from slavery in the last 500 years, so there were numerous historical documents and academic papers to read. I already knew a lot about the Roman Empire, history, culture, and even slavery, but I didn’t know enough to write a novel that transported the reader back to that time and place. When I wrote my first historical fiction novel, Onesimus (about a slave in the first century Roman Empire), I performed years of research before beginning the first draft. The farther removed from the author’s own time, the more research is needed. It also requires a good working knowledge of historical events, cultural norms and issues, worldviews, technology, and so much more. Historical fiction typically requires far more research and attention to chronology than any other genre (although that depends on the narrative). It can be as simple as researching a location to make your scenes believable, or learning how to make pastry because the main character is a baker. Good research is part of writing any novel or short story. Researching and Writing Historical Fiction
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