Writing Historical Fantasy: Blending historical fiction with fantasy elements

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It has been far too long since I posted an update to my blog. A few months ago I spoke at a writers conference at JFK University and spoke on the challenges of writing historical fiction and fantasy.

The attendees were an enthusiastic group of writers who asked some insightful questions. My presentation was largely built on the handout I gave. I thought perhaps it might be helpful to other writers, so I am posting it here. If other bloggers would like to re-post, please do so. I only ask that you link to this as your source 

Writing Historical Fantasy: Blending historical fiction with fantasy elements

by

Linda C. McCabe, author of Quest of the Warrior Maiden

Differences between the genres of historic fiction, historic fantasy and fantasy novels:

Historic fiction is a story written about a real time and place in our history, with or without real historic figures and events. E.g. Philippa Gregory's novels about Tudor England vs. Erika Mailman's novel The Witch'sTrinity set in a fictional German village but painstakingly describes witch trials of the 16th century.

Historic fantasy is a novel about a real time and place in our history, with or without real historic figures and events along with magic and fantastic creatures. Examples are stories using Arthurian or Carolingian legends.

If a story about King Arthur doesn't use magic, it is historic fiction and not historic fantasy. An example of that is Persia Woolley's Guinevere trilogy.

Fantasy novels without being set in a real place and time in our history are not constrained to use the correct historical elements such as period armor, specific religious practices, etc. Examples are C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, and George R.R. Martin's Westeros. The challenges of writing in this genre is world building where you have to define the history, climates, locales, countries, religious rules, cultural practices, races of magical peoples, etc.

The primary goal of all writing is to create a compelling narrative. Every aspect of your writing should serve that primary goal.

Secondary goals include:

1. Historical accuracy for the time period

2. Devising a dramatic plot and memorable characters

Historical research:

1. Perform general research on the time period of your story before you start the creative writing process. (You can do outlines for your plot, but it would be better learning broad historical constructs before you write chapters worth of unusable text.)

2. Absorb the information. Go to a library and check out as many nonfiction books as you can find on your period. Browse the table of contents and read subjects that you think will be of interest/use. Follow footnotes, read bibliographies and find more titles. If your library doesn't have the new titles, request them through interlibrary loans. Books that are a treasure trove of information should be ones that you purchase for your own reference shelf at home.

3. During the writing process continually ask yourself about the various details in your story and do ad hoc research as necessary. E.g. Recently I have been reading up on Islamic burial practices including washing of the dead.

4. If possible, travel to the places you are writing about. Seek out the sites in your story and see where they are, what remains, and breathe in the locale. Become inspired.

5. Find experts on various aspects of your story who are willing to review passages for accuracy.

Including historical research in your narrative:

1. Remember the primary objective is to create a compelling narrative, and not to impress your readers with neat trivia you've discovered in your research.

2. Avoid data dumps where there are block paragraphs explaining arcane information. That is what nonfiction books are about. Instead weave the historical details into your narrative in descriptions and/or dialogue.

3. Use the details you learned about cultural practices, beliefs, gender roles, food, clothing styles and fabrics, architecture, weapons, technology, medical practices to give a richness to your narrative and to demonstrate how life during that time period is different than it is today.

4. Avoid using modern sensibilities regarding marriage, relationship, gender roles in previous centuries. Unless you are using time travel with modern people being transported back in time and this is to contrast the different mindsets.

5. Do not turn your average nobleman into a religious expert so that you can have exposition about the religious practices during the Middle Ages.

6. Describe the religious practices as how they were performed, but do not explain the theological reasoning behind them. Consider that most laypeople simply followed religious dictates without question.

7. Recognize and avoid including certain historical details from your research will be difficult for readers to follow and/or would derail your narrative. E.g. allowance for the consumption of beaver tails on fast days.

8. Be on the lookout for terms in your manuscript that would be inaccurate for the time period. Eliminate them when found. For example, clocks were not as commonplace as they are today and so you should not use the terms minutes or seconds. Instead use "a few moments later" or phrases to illustrate the amount of time passed. An example from my novel: "I have seen Rodomont use a woman in less time than it takes for a horse to pass water." It not only demonstrates a length of time, it also serves to reveal crudeness of the character who was speaking.

9. Try to create a different linguistic style for the period you are trying to evoke. Avoid slang. Consider using curses and swearing, rather than profanity as used in modern discourse.

Cursing: "May Mandricardo's manhood shrivel to match the size of his brain."

Swearing: "You must do my bidding, or I swear to make good on my promise to castrate you."

Profanity: "Are you a bastard son of a swineherd?"

10. Other details such as foods, flowers, etc. Verify that they were a) indigenous to that locale, b) in season c) have a symbolic meaning which agrees with its contextual usage (that's optional, but it adds an additional layer of meaning and depth to your writing.)

Balancing dramatic needs vs. historical accuracy

1. If there is a conflict between your dramatic needs and being historically accurate, remember your primary goal: create a compelling narrative. Boring your readers is the greatest sin of all. I choose to side with Drama and then include my dramatic choice in the author's notes to inform my readers that it was an informed decision and not one made of ignorance.

2. Bending of the historical record should be done as sparingly as possible and not for trivial items such as including foodstuffs, flora, or fauna that were from the Western hemisphere and not known to Europe in that time frame: potatoes, tomatoes, corn, sunflowers, tobacco.

Fantasy elements in historic fiction:

1. Build on existing mythology such as divination practices of scrying, runes, tea leaves, Tarot cards, etc., rather than simply creating new ones. Also knots to seal magical spells, braiding of hair, etc.

2. Symbolic usages of water, caves, labyrinths, etc., add strength to your narrative. E.g. River Lethe, Spring of Mnemosyne, Cave of Trophonius.

3. Include tension between magical and non-magical people. Are magical people thought of as trustworthy or colluding with Dark Evil Forces?

4. Invoke magic when the laws of physics or nature would otherwise be violated by your plot points, e.g. travelling on horseback a distance of four hundred miles in a single night.

5. Be creative when creating enchanted realms. For example, you can use unnatural lighting, heating, ventilation, etc., without much explanation as long as you specify it is unnatural.


http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2014/05/writing-historical-fantasy-blending.html

Where does history end and legend begin?

At what point does history end and legend begin? That's a question that I've been asking myself a lot this last month as my novel has the convergence of legends and an historical figure. I recently read the novel Labyrinth by Kate Mosse which dealt with the persecution of the Cathars in 13^th century France. After finishing the book, I went to the author's website and found her repeating a story that I had previously heard from Rick Steves, the travel writer, about Carcassonne.

The tale was of a lengthy siege (some versions suggesting it lasted upwards of five years) that was ended when the widow of the city's leader, a Saracen woman by the name Dame Carcas, used psychological warfare against their enemies. They supposedly fed grain to their last remaining pig, until it appeared nourished. Then they threw the fattened pig over the wall at the foot of the besieging army, hoping they would think that the people of Carcassonne must have a lot of food remaining inside and would not be surrendering anytime soon. Charlemagne reportedly ended the siege shortly thereafter.

Since starting this project, I have been researching the life of Charlemagne as well as the history and culture of Medieval Europe in the 8^th and 9^th centuries. I found nothing in the biographies of Charlemagne to suggest that he spent any time near Carcassonne, let alone a lengthy and unsuccessful siege of that fortified city.

I sent an email to Kate Mosse asking her if she could verify the story by citing a source. I told her that I thought it more likely that if there had been a siege of this nature, that King Charles the Great was not the leader of the army outside their gates. Rather that somewhere down the line, that the story was embellished by changing the identity of their enemy to someone of greater stature. There could be no worthier opponent than "The Father of Europe" who was crowned as Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. To have withstood an attack by Charlemagne would serve as a mark of distinction.

I was pleased when she wrote back quickly and confirmed my assumption that it was legend and not history. I don't know if the tale has any kernel of truth or not, I simply know that if those events happened – it wasn't Charlemagne at their gates.

That is the genesis of my discomfort with including such legends without disclaimers. If I didn't have a background knowledge in the history of Charlemagne, I might have thought that this story was factual rather than folklore.

People are more likely to absorb and believe information they read in historical novels as being factual than they are from reading history books, because readers are able to vicariously experience what life was like in the past in a manner you cannot when reading a scholarly historical monograph. People also tend to unquestioningly trust those who they believe to be a credible source of information. Mosse's historical novel boasted a review from Philippa Gregory saying it was "(d)eeply researched." I believe those things put together would tend to make the readers of her blog more likely than not to simply accept the story of Charlemagne's besieging Carcassonne as fact without question. They might then tend to repeat this story as interesting "trivia" to others, when instead it should be categorized alongside the anecdote of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree.

That is where I feel that writers need to show more care and responsibility to their readers. We not only should be careful of how we tell our story, our skillful use of language, syntax, punctuation, and sentence structure, but we should also be forthright about using items we know as having only tenuous connections with the truth.

I know I've fallen for Urban Legends in the past, and I appreciate those who run the website Snopes.com for helping me to quickly verify whether stories that sound "too good to be true" are real. I don't want someone to emphatically insist something as fact based on my writing, when it isn't, and for me to be the cause of their public humiliation when someone else proves them wrong.

I feel that part of my responsibility as a writer is to educate myself on any subject I write on and continually question my assumptions. Sometimes, due to plot necessity, I may have to use something that isn't historically accurate, but I plan on giving disclaimers to explain what the truth as I can discern it was and why I chose to include something that deviated from history.

In so doing, I will at least have made a good faith effort with my readers to allow them to discern between what is history and what is legend.

Linda