Historian? Novelist? Reader? Who should I go to for feedback? Our resident agony aunt tackles a common question for writers of historical fiction. Dear Dr Darwin I’ve got to the stage where I want feedback on my novel-in-progress, but I only know non-historical novelists, or non-novelist historians, or readers of historical fiction who don’t write […]
Back to the Past
Our guest this month, award-winning author Ally Sherrick, on the complexities of writing historical fiction for a young audience. I’ve been a time-traveller for as long as I can remember. If you set the dial for my own past, you’d find me weaving in and out of ancient stone circles, clambering up the towers of […]
The Story That Wouldn’t Let Me Go
Years ago, I worked as the features editor on a magazine. My job was to come up with ideas and find writers who wanted to tackle them. I remember thinking that my brain must be changing, the billions of neurons connecting in different ways, because I saw the whole world in terms of potential features. (I […]
A Step to Publication
As HWA team up with the Dorothy Dunnett Society to launch a brand new short story competition (Dorothy Dunnett pictured above), here’s Imogen Robertson on how competitions helped her get published. Have you heard that the Historical Writers’ Association are launching a new open short story competition for Historical Fiction with the Dorothy Dunnett Society this […]
Zounds! Whatevs! How can I find the right voice for my novel?
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 […]
A Place In History
Jane Harlond explores how real places inspire authors. There is a cave in Iceland that I will always remember. It is a place I have never been, but Karen Maitland took me there in Falcons of Fire and Ice and I have never been able to forget it. There is a valley full of butterflies […]
What’s in a Name?
Joanna Hickson looks at the naming of characters in historical fiction. Authors who write novels based around medieval royal England often have trouble identifying characters one from another, because the same names crop up time and time again in the family trees of the major dynasties. During the fifteenth century for instance the name Henry […]