How to Write Historical Fiction

5. Setting

How can you accurately represent a place that existed in the past? This is another question that can often stump first-time historical fiction writers. It is so important to use vivid sensory details and descriptions to immerse your readers in the historical setting you are writing. Writing a novel about an ancient civilization like Mesopotamia or ancient Athens, however, is difficult, considering the fact that time machines haven't been invented yet and you (most likely) don't have access to any living witnesses of those places. 

Fortunately, as writers, we have an abundance of different strategies we can use to familiarize ourselves with in order to accurately depict past places. In this chapter, I will discuss some of the ones that I've used. 

Visiting the region:

Of course, this strategy is not the most practical. In the time of COVID, travelling isn't very likely nor recommended. Even outside of the pandemic, travelling is expensive and often logistically impractical. But depending on the circumstance, travelling to the region that you are writing about is a fantastic way to gain information and learn more about the world that your characters lived in. If you live in the United States and live close to a battlefield that you want to depict in a scene of your Civil War novel, heading over to take a closer look is a good idea. 

Internet:

If travelling to the region you are writing about isn't an option, then a quick Google search of images and maps marking the area in question should suffice. Even though places will likely look vastly different from how they appeared years ago, they will likely bear the same features—including similar vegetation, geography, climate, and geology that you can use to write vivid sensory details. There are also virtual projects led by historians and other scholars to portray various places as they looked throughout history. When I was writing Daughters of the King, I found a virtual interactive portrayal of seventeenth-century Paris that was really helpful to look at. 

There are tons of talented individuals who help recreate historical worlds. I found walking tours on several internet blogs of seventeenth-century Paris, as well as other interactive maps. There are even interactive videos of ancient civilizations that you can look through when writing your story. Here are some more interactive videos I found that you can use if you end up writing about any of the following places! 

World War I trenches:

Ancient Egypt:

Ancient Roman City:

American Civil War:

For more recent times, you can find actual footage of historical places and interviews with eyewitness accounts of different places and events in history. If you're a visual person like me, it'll be easy to get lost in these countless videos of both recreated and captured historical moments! 

Historical Artefacts: 

Another great way to gain information about a historical region is through historical artefacts. Artefacts are objects of historical or archaeological interest, and give us information about the historical place being examined. Artefacts can include paintings, tools, jewelry, religious objects, currency, and other preserved objects. While these objects do not give explicit information about the region you are researching, they do provide insight into the culture and society surrounding the area.