Characters are a vital part of any
story; so is credibility. To maintain your credibility, you – the
author – must do adequate research on topics in your story.
Research is especially important when your story is historical
fiction, especially for your characters. But researching this
information can be lengthy and time-consuming. This blog is here to
help shorten that time, by giving you important historical
information that you need to create your characters.
The Need for Credibility in
Historical Fiction
Many readers of historical fiction are
already familiar with history itself. These readers will be able to
tell if information in your story is inaccurate. Inaccurate
information can ruin a reader's experience, and even make it
difficult for them to keep reading. And if you lose readers, then
it's clear you have a major problem with your story. To avoid having
this sort of problem, it's better to do adequate research before
publishing.
Characters in Historical Fiction
A character's
environment has a huge impact on how their mindset - how they think,
feel, and act. To accurately portray a historical character, you need
to understand what life was like back then. Many historical sites give information on social, religious
and economic forces, but they don't have as many details on everyday
topics. Everyday topics, unfortunately, are a vital part of
understanding what life might be like for a historical character.
Creating Historical Characters
Historical
Information is out there. The goal of this blog is to gather it and
give it to you, for fast and easy reference. Each post will cover a
different time period, and give you details that will help you the
most in creating a believable historical character. Believable
characters make for believable stories.
This is an interesting topic, one that could perhaps benefit writers of genres other than historical fiction. In analyzing history for this purpose, writers are ultimately determining the physical and mental effects that various nonfictional external forces, whether social, political, or economic, have had on individuals.
ReplyDeleteWriters of fantasy and the like must often craft fictional external forces, using historical ones for inspiration. These authors can create more believable characters by studying the manner in which real individuals were affected by forces similar to those in the fictional work.
A story about an alien slave, for example, would likely be more compelling if the author was familiar with the details of various forms of real-world slavery.
This blog can benefit many writers. I can not say how many times I have come across a book and the facts were not accurate. This does cause me to put the book back down and move on to the next. Therefor, I do agree that accurately portraying a historic character is very important and I applaud you for picking this topic for your blog.
ReplyDelete