In Love with the Past: The Challenges of Historical Fiction

Judging by the list of Emmy nominations, Americans appear to be in love with the past. 2011   has been a ripe season for popular shows exuding nostalgia for the not-so-perfect Twentieth Century. The recent past is also the favorite setting of present bestselling historical fiction. Why is historical fiction  (and drama) still alive and well when is much more difficult to read  and to create than other genres?

Historical fiction is an umbrella term that shelters several subgenres such as historical mysteries, historical romances (what in my day were known as bodice-rippers), inspirational period pieces, and nostalgia yarns. It even encompasses the fantastic, whether it´s alternative history, historical fantasy, steampunk, time travel stories a la Outlander or paranormal romances. The genre’s possibilities are eternal.

True historical fiction applies to novels dealing with actual historical facts and real people as dramatic personae. Examples of historical fiction are Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl, Robert Graves’ I Claudius, and, in terms of current television shows, Emmy winning nominee Boardwalk Empire that deals with a historical person, Enoch “Nucky” Thompson (Steve Buscemi) and his part in the politics and rise of organized crime in Atlantic City.

Then there are those novels set in specific epochs, but telling the adventures of fictional characters such as the New York Times Bestsellers Rules of Civility and Sarah Gruen´s Water for Elephants both set in the Depression Era. Another series in the Emmy list is Downton Abbey, which takes place in the years preceding World War I, and it could be described as a period piece, or as it is known in film’s lingo, a “customer.”

Finally there is nostalgia or vintage, evocations of a recent past, one that is familiar to the reader or to his parents’ generation. The Fifties, Sixties and Seventies are the fashionable vintage area to explore, attested by the success of series like Mad Men and novels like Kathryn Socket´s The Help that takes place in the South, at the onset of The Civil Rights Movement.

Since the past is a rich field for harvesting fiction, it surprised me that thrillers and fantasy have eclipsed historical novels at the New York Time Bestsellers lists.  Taking into consideration that such lists are poor barometers to measure the genre´s popularity, I preferred to check Amazon and Barnes & Nobles’ category lists. 

Going over the top twentieth most popular items in historical fiction, I expected to find historical romance galore and plenty of medieval sagas a la Ken Follet. Surprisingly, the only material of that sort was precisely Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, which still enjoys an enviable enduring popularity.

The Middle-Ages might not be the favorite time period for contemporary novelists, but Twentieth Century is. More than half of those top sellers took place in a recent past and some dealt with the Second World War. About six years, ago when I began my first novel, I was strongly advised not to tackle that era. Expert  voices at sites dispensing advice to novice writers told me that writing about 30’s, 40’s, and particularly about the global conflict that took place in those days, was ill-advised and “unfashionable.”

Now, the three titles within the New York Times List are set in those despised decades. There is The Paris Wife (Paris in the 20’s), Civility Rules (1938 New York), and War and Honor which is an actual World War II novel. Other war novels doing well in category lists are Tatiana de Rosay’s Holocaust fable Sarah’s Key and Amazon Bestseller War Brides. I wonder what changed. Why is it trendy now to write about the first half of the Twentieth Century? Why is recent history much more fascinating than ancient eras? 

As a history buff I would like to see more historical fiction in display, but I can understand why not many would care to tackle the genre. Writing historical fiction demands careful but time-consuming research. Not only do authors have to learn dates, statistics, and proper names, they also have to delve with the daily life their character might experience. What they ate? What did they wear? Most novelists in the field become amateur social historians, and so do their readers. One of the critiques befalling historical novels is that they end up being “disguised textbooks.”

Often, I meet people who shun period pieces with excuses such as “I know so little about that period, I can’t follow the plot” or “I get confused with all the historical details.” Others, like yours truly, thrive in learning historical facts through an entertainment medium. In fact, one of the few reasons why I would throw away a book might be its historical inaccuracy.

Much more difficult that the research process is trying to create characters living in a time alien to us. How did they think? What moved them? What were their values and concerns? And that is where historical fiction and drama tend to fail. Most serious historical fiction authors will run into two ominous characters: Mr. Political Correctness and Madame Modern Sensibility. On encountering them, the author is forced to make a choice on how to portray the past and its inhabitants.

There are three unofficial schools that guide the historical fiction novelist in this quandary. One advises to depict yesteryear as much worse than today, an emphasis on our ancestors’ barbaric ways and primitive mentalities as if to make the reader think he is fortunate to lie in such progressive times like the third Millennium. Then there is nostalgic fondness: to describe days gone by as in Don Quixote’s Golden Age monologue, a lost magical world when everything was better and nicer than today. Finally, is the easiest and most common approach: show the past as a mirror of the present. People have always thought and acted as we do, they just dressed differently and were much more backwards (technologically speaking) than us.

As only a witness could testify of how a historical period really was, all three approaches are legitimate. That doesn’t stop us purists from clenching our teeth when reading hidden current agendas behind a harmless historical tale or glancing through stories that are so anachronistic in language and mentality that characters appear to be attending a costume party.

I have to say that I love research and find tremendous pleasure in reconstructing lost worlds, but is that reason enough to write a historical novel? So I ask those who dare to evoke the past in writing. Why do you do it? What made you select a particular period for your tale’s setting? What is the biggest challenge in writing historical fiction?

We have received the Liebster Award!

I am honored to be the recipient of the Liebster  Award, but I feel I should share it with my Sisters since this is a  "choral" blog. composed by four musketeers.
http://belledamesansmerci.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/leibster-award/

I am very grateful to Elizabeth Anne Mitchell for selecting me and for having such a magical blog that I encourage everyone to visit.
http://lapidaryprose.wordpress.com/

The Woes of Word Counts

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

  ~William Strunk, Jr.

The dreaded red pen

Being concise is difficult; so difficult many writers won’t do it unless forced. Most of us regard the red pen with fear and loathing. We don’t want to edit, we don’t want to cut. So why do we have to? We love words. Why can’t we write as many of them as we want?

The simplest reason is that the publishing industry clearly demands it. The magic number is 100,000. You can’t go over that word count for a novel without severely hampering your chances of getting published. (In some genres, it’s even less.) To be honest, I don’t really understand why this is. Maybe one of our readers in the publishing industry can explain it. In a recent informal, completely nonscientific survey, the majority of my friends said they prefer long books: the longer, the better. They like getting lost in another world. We can all think of a dozen bestselling exceptions to the 100,000 rule: War & Peace. Pillars of the Earth. Gone with the Wind. Harry Potter. According to this guy, all modern books (all!) are too long. So we may be forgiven for feeling sniffy when agents tell us to keep our submissions short.

Doubles as a doorstop

One thing to keep in mind is that the demand for succinctness seems to apply primarily to unpublished writers. The Deathly Hallows is 759 pages, but The Sorcerer’s Stone is only 309. Rowling was probably forced to be more terse than she wanted with that first novel: once she established herself as a bestselling author, she was allowed to indulge. It is also true that some debut novels are massive: Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl’s first novel, is 514 pages long — which translates to about 200,000 words. We look at her, cross our envious arms over our chests, and think, well if she can do it …

But the most salient truth here is this: many literary agents really do reject on word-count alone, and it’s never a good idea for a novice to assume she’s the next Marisha Pessl. Getting published is hard enough. To ignore the word-count guideline is to run a marathon with one leg hobbled.

Not an ideal way to enter a marathon

Another reason to write shorter is that it will force you to write better. “The only art is to omit,” said Robert Louis Stevenson. “If there is anywhere a thing said in two sentences that could have been as clearly and engagingly said in one, then it’s amateur work.” When I write freelance articles, I’m usually required to write no more than 800 words. My notes and interview transcripts run thousands of words, and it all seems important.

This is going to hurt

But I have to be economical: if I don’t slice those words, my editor will, and I’d rather be the one holding the scalpel. This forced concision means I have to think hard about word choice. Not only word by word, but paragraph by paragraph. Some passages, especially descriptive ones, add nothing substantive. They’re decorative, and when you’re on a word budget, decoration is the first thing to go.

Not everyone, of course, is inclined to write long. Last summer I took a writing class with a woman struggling to complete a middle-grade book. She’d been told she needed to add about 2,000 words to get it to the “right” word count for that genre, and she was devastated. “I don’t know if I can do that,” she said, mournfully regarding the pages in her hands. I was puzzled: for one thing, 2,000 words doesn’t seem like that much. For another thing: think of the chances she had to develop character! To wax eloquent with a scene description! To throw in some snappy dialogue! But for some writers, reaching the word-count minimum is the trick. (That magic number, if you’re wondering, is 50K for mainstream adult fiction; 30K for middle-grade.)

What about you? Do you feel hampered by industry’s word-count limits, or do you find the guidelines helpful? Do you wonder, especially with the growing popularity of e-readers, if this limitation is becoming irrelevant? Have you been told by an agent or editor you need to cut — and if so, how did it affect your story?

 Too many notes, Herr Mozart