Why bother writing historical fiction: part 2 - by Rowena House

Back in February 2020, I asked here on ABBA why one bothers to write historical fiction. As I take a deep breath before embarking on the development edit of a first draft that took more than five years to research, plan, replan (a thousand times) and write, I’m still asking that question.

Back in 2020, I wondered aloud: ‘What is so important about this particular story that makes it worthwhile to spend years of one’s “wild and precious life” re-imagining the past?’

My answer today, ‘Sadly, old girl, I doubt it was worthwhile, but it got you through a difficult time. And having got this far, damn well finish the thing.’  

I’m going to dig out Hilary Mantel’s 2017 BBC Reith Lectures to see if she can re-inspire me having enthused in 2020 about ‘a mystical quality about her reasoning, a deep, personal connection with her resurrected dead; they speak to her across the centuries; she is comfortable in their company.’

Me, I get infuriated by the gross stupidity of the people who inspired my main characters. How could they have believed in witchcraft to the extent they hanged people for it? I often have to stop reading history books otherwise I’d jack the whole thing in.

[I’m writing a story based on a witch trial pamphlet for readers who don’t know. It’s blooming depressing, tbh. Anyhow...]

On the upside, I still like the contribution from Ronan Bennett, author of Havoc, in its Third Year, to the Writer’s & Artists Yearbook’s anthology of historical authors talking about their work. He quotes the 1st Duke of Newcastle telling his pupil, the future King Charles II: ‘What you read, I would have it history so that you might compare the dead with the living; for the same humours is now as was then, there is no alteration but in names.’

I must quote that in the PhD commentary on my novel which I’ve just abandoned – yet again. 

I also find comfort in Bennett’s observation that, ‘The best fiction prompts self-interrogation. Historical fiction can bring us up with a jolt, like an eerie deja-vu. This is what I tell myself. I hope it’s true.’

I hope so, too.

In the same Writers’ & Artists’ guide, Michael Faber identified a subset of novelists who explore a ‘specific clutch of themes and human conflicts, and … realises that a particular era, which happens to be in the past, is right for this story.’ Novelists of this type ‘don’t have to worry as much about over-employment of research. You’ll be so preoccupied with characterisation and getting to the heart of human complexity that you’re unlikely to get distracted by crinolines or flintlock pistols.’

Back then, I thought Faber freed me from Mantel’s edict that you can only start to write an authentic historical novel after you’ve plumbed every depth of your period and know it off by heart. Being rather obsessive, however, I forgot all about Faber's advice and plumbed the depths of early modern English history for five years, and still do not know the period off by heart and doubt I ever will.

As for research being ‘fun and exciting, with the weave of half-told history unravelling before your eyes and myths presented as fact disintegrating along the way’. What tosh, Ro! The research became a miserable journey into sad lives controlled by irrational toffs. If there is ever a next time, chose your subject more wisely, girl.

On the other hand, I was right about research being ‘an iterative process, a conversation between the story as you first imagine it and the credible details (AKA facts to the unwary) which modify or overthrow these expectations.’

What I didn’t expect was the way in which the physical process of typing changed the story. How I would plan a scene only to find it simply didn’t come out that way. Something else happened altogether that felt more plausible. Thus I kept replanning, changing direction to match what was rather than what had been imagined. In this, George Saunders’ description of steering a great ship across an ocean was much closer to what happened with Draft 1 than anything I’ve read elsewhere,

Turns out, even an obsessive planner can turn into a pantster on the page.

So, yes, I have constructed a story out of the ‘published pamphlet, lavish in its details of events.’ I even find what I created plausible, despite the events it describes being ‘preposterous to our modern mind’. They were also preposterous to other people at the time. So my protagonist was probably writing BS even then.

Re-reading my 2020 notebooks is also an eye-opener. While the storytelling theory I was taking notes about is still interesting and relevant, virtually nothing in terms of plot has survived the years. I over-plotted massively. It would have been a trilogy if not longer.

Fortunately, Draft 1 does answer my main 2020 question: ‘Why did my protagonist write his pamphlet?’ But not, for the sake of length or relevance, ‘Why did people believe him – or pretend they did?’ The first question proved complex enough for 77,000 words.

As for my final question to myself in that ABBA blog long, long ago – Why are false narratives so compelling throughout time? – I still have no idea. I guess they just are. We haven’t changed in that respect. If anything, dipping in and out of Twitter/X, makes me lose whatever faith I might have had that critical thinking will solve anything.

Hey, ho.

@HouseRowena on X

Rowena House Author on Facebook.