Dear Dr Darwin My characters don’t think they sound historical, but their present-day isn’t my present-day: they are Other to us. If I make them sound like 21st century people then the novel will just be like a modern film in pretty period costumes, but if I try to write the novel as it would […]
I know what story I want to tell; how do I tell it?
Dear Dr Darwin, I’ve found a gripping set of historical events that I want to build a novel round, and before you start shaking your Tudor bonnet, it’s not because I have a non-fiction agenda: this is a glorious concatenation of politics, faith, personalities, clothes, weapons and all the other things that make historical fiction […]
The need to fact-check is strangling my creative mind!
Dear Dr Darwin, I know we have to get the facts right, or risk the reader not buying into their side of the contract of fiction, but I do get so fed up with having to fact-check the whole time. When I sit down to write, I have stacks of books and files of images, […]
How do I find imaginative space between what I know of the facts?
Dear Dr Darwin You’ve talked elsewhere about finding the “white space between the facts” on which we can write, and I think I’ve found a time and place – the run-up to Waterloo – which gives me (just about) enough white space for fiction. But I’m finding it very hard to write anything on those […]
Writing About Writing
Emma Darwin ponders the challenges of writing her new guide to historical fiction. I’ve been known to argue that writing historical fiction is the ultimate challenge for a novelist, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that when John Murray Learning commissioned me to write Get Started in Writing Historical Fiction for their Teach Yourself imprint, […]
I’ve fallen in love with a real historical character: how do I start writing the novel?
Dear Dr Darwin, I’ve been writing short stories and contemporary-set fiction for years, but recently I fell madly in love with a real historical character: a fascinating, forceful, charming person, Jocelyn, who was deeply involved in the big dramas of the day. I know I want to write a novel, not a biography, and I’ve […]
How to make us believe your bucklers are swashing and your Tyrian is truly purple
Dear Dr Darwin, You keep saying “make it vivid and convincing”, but how do I do that? When I put in lots of detail my writers’ circle say it slows up the story; when I cut it back they say they don’t believe in the places. When I make my characters act/think/react differently from how […]
I’m beginning to wish my novel was set in Salford in 2015
Dear Dr Darwin, I’m writing a novel set in medieval Mallorca, and I’m a draft-by-the-seat-of-my-pants writer, not a planner. My business partner says it’s inefficient to do the research until I’ve written my first draft and know what I need. My critiquing partner says it’s asking for trouble to do the writing first and leave […]