Sneak Peek: How to research historical fiction

Here is a sneak peek behind the scenes of how I research and prepare to write an historical fiction novel.

Researching and Writing Historical Fiction

Good research is part of writing any novel or short story. 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.

Historical fiction typically requires far more research and attention to chronology than any other genre (although that depends on the narrative). It also requires a good working knowledge of historical events, cultural norms and issues, worldviews, technology, and so much more. The farther removed from the author’s own time, the more research is needed.

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. 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. Slavery in that world was quite different from slavery in the last 500 years, so there were numerous historical documents and academic papers to read.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 had to learn the social structure, also far different from Western social structures today.

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. In fact, being trained as an academic researcher, my problem is knowing when researching and start writing). I would rather over-research than under-research. Historical novels that do not ring true are not good art.

Historical Fiction Research needs

My current novel (working title Desert Steve) takes place about 100 years ago instead of 2000, as with Onesimus. That makes it a little easier. 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.

Soon, I had tens of thousands of words of notes on three major subjects:

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). I needed to know what those places were like in the late 1800s and early 1900s, not today.

The people that populate my novel are the most essential, of course. 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. Even if some of my characters are fictionalized, they need to be someone who could have genuinely existed in that world.

World events matter as well. If one of the world wars breaks out during the novel, it should at least have a passing impact on the characters. 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. I needed to know about them because they couldn’t play a role to make the novel more realistic.

What’s more, each of these major subject areas have many sub categories: climate, flora and fauna, roads, electricity, and cultural aspects of each location. How did people back then speak? What’s the slang? What did they think was important? How did men and women interact? What was considered appropriate and inappropriate?

I’ve only touched on the surface, but it shows that a good historical fiction novel requires an incredible amount of research. As I write each scene, I want all the relevant research available to me.

Aeon Timeline for Writing Historical Fiction

It’s a tall task, but I found an excellent app to track historical information. It’s called Aeon Timeline, a feature-rich chronology tool. (It’s not only intended for writers, but for attorneys for case chronology, historians looking for understanding and connections, app developers for product timelines, anyone who needs project management.)

The app allows me to input every character, assign them a role, birth and death dates, connections with other characters, pictures, motivations, goals, characteristics, and so much more. It also allows me to assign locations, with a good bit of meta-data as well.

The timeline itself has a few different ways of viewing the timeline. Important to me are the typical timeline view of bars events. I can zoom in and out of periods of time to see the flow of the narrative and connections.

For writers, the narrative view is a nice touch. Here, I can arrange all my events in order of my chapters and scenes (in case the novel has flashbacks or flash forwards). Clicking on any scene opens up a window with summary, descriptions, characters, location(s), start and end date, and much more.

Essential to me, Aeon Timeline syncs with my writing app, Ulysses. Each scene in Ulysses is attached to the scene in Aeon Timeline. Whatever metadata I want synced appears as notes connected to each sheet in Ulysses: start date, and date, participants, location, summary, etc.

As I begin a scene, I know the start and end dates, and who is in the scene with age, location, and connections. I can glance at the timeline view to see world events at the time, plus the relationship to other events before and after the scene.

Summary

Aeon Timeline and Ulysses have iPad versions as well, for when I am on the go (or just prefer to work while sitting poolside or traveling. (Ulysses also has an iPhone version, so I can even work while standing in lines.)

There is far more, but this gives you a good idea of how I go about doing my best to ensure that my novels feel as much like traveling back in time as possible. That, in turn, should make my characters seem far more genuine and relatable, making a better and ore entertaining experience for the reader. And they will learn some history as a bonus!