Aline Soules

Poet and Fiction Writer

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Why Historical Fiction? Part II

In Part I, I addressed the issue of “truth” in historical fiction, focusing on facts and bias.  I promised to address the “emotional truth” of historical fiction in Part II.  

Emotional truth is about feelings which may or may not have anything to do with actual facts.  An author attempts to convey how characters “felt” about their time and the facts, the research, provides the context for those feelings, whether those feelings relate to the character’s family, historical events, or the character’s philosophical beliefs.  

And that’s the key. How characters face the challenges of their own time and how they feel as they wrestle with ethical dilemmas and make decisions help us to understand issues of our own time.  The distance of history and the mask of fiction enable us to draw parallels to our own time and consider our problems through a new lens.  That’s the joy of both the “history” and the “fiction” aspects of this genre of writing.  

Growing up, I devoured historical fiction.  I read works by Jean Fritz, the American children’s writer of biography and history, and learned about the founding fathers of this country.  As a teenager, I read the historical novels of Jean Plaidy (real name, Eleanor Alice Hibbert) and remember particularly her novels about the Tudor period.  I loved the intrigue and the romance, no matter how badly it ended up.

Now, I read historical fiction all the time.  I still enjoy the adventure and romance, but I value what it teaches me about my own world.  I’ve read a lot of historical fiction about World War II as part of the research for my own novel, as well as history and biography and reports and diaries,  because I wanted to know how other authors present their “emotional truth” of the period.  I want to add my own perspective of that truth, based on what I read and what I learned from the stories my parents and their generation told me when I was young.  

We are at a point where the survivors of WWII are now dying.  Shortly, their time will be fully “history” and we will no longer be able to hear their stories directly.  We will have only written, oral, and media presentations of that time.  This is my chance to add a perspective from what I read and from what I learned from those who lived through that time and conveyed their stories to me.  I want to honor that gift in my work.  I anticipate completing my novel in 2021 and look forward to sharing it with the world, adding my own perspective to the collective view of that time in history.

Image: https://celadonbooks.com/what-is-historical-fiction/ 

Why Historical Fiction? Pt. 1

Copernical heliocentrismI’ve been working on a historical novel set in WWII, most intensively in the last two years.  Why another WWII story? Because I see parallels to our own time, I grew up in Britain in the aftermath of that war, and my premise is based on a “true” story from WWII that was told to me by my mother.

The key is my first reason: parallels to our own time.  George Santayana wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The challenge, however, is not remembering the past, but figuring it out at all.  As we approach a time when those who lived through WWII are slipping away, and those of us who were brought up immediately after that war and were affected by it, I wanted to explore the war from the intimate perspective of family.

A historical novel is undoubtedly biased and wouldn’t claim to be “true” in a factual sense, although authors of historical novels strive to set their work within an accurate context.  A historical novel presents a view of events that attempts to bring the reader closer to the emotional “truth” of those who experienced that period in history.   Before I address the idea of “emotional truth” in a blog post in a couple of weeks, it’s important, first, to address the nature of history itself.

History is a slippery slope.  Records are lost, suppressed, formally locked up for a certain number of years, interpreted.  Where does that take us?  To bias.  Even primary documents can be biased.  Diaries, obviously, but even a simple factual form.  Someone chooses to check the wrong box for his/her/eir age.  Why?  Vanity?  Fear? Some practical reason? Someone falsifies a document in order to survive; another person is forced to write what a person in power wants to hear.  Who can blame them?  You survive in the moment.  That’s why I often put the word “true” in quotes.  

Our biased behaviors probably go back to the beginning of the human race.  A classic example is Galileo.  He believed the sun was the center of our universe and that got him into trouble.

Enter the Roman Inquisition. In 1615, they decided his belief was heretical because it contradicted the sense of Holy Scripture.  When Galileo defended that belief in print, this was interpreted as an attack on Pope Urban VIII. Galileo was tried by the Inquisition, found heretical, and forced to recant.  

Why was Galileo was put on trial?  Politics (court intrigue, problems of state) and emotions (anger, fear on the part of the Pope).  The nemeses of historical truth.  

As an addendum, Galileo didn’t originate his belief.  He learned it from the work of Copernicus (b. 1473).  It is believed that Copernicus came to his conclusion independently of Aristarchus of Samos (born around 310 BCE), who probably originated the idea.  So someone knew how the universe was structured centuries before the majority of people accepted it as truth. 

In one way, this pressures a historical novel writer to be as accurate as possible as regards facts.  In another way, the very instability of history gives the historical novel writer permission because “truth” is far from absolute.

Written:  November 17, 2020.  Pt. 2 coming Dec. 1.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_heliocentrism

  

 

Research and Creativity

Shows the left and right sides of the brainAs my blog readers know from previous posts, I believe in deep research for fiction, particularly historical fiction, which naturally calls for research. I’m not satisfied when others in the writing business suggest that I can get what I need on Google, Google images, Wikipedia, etc.  Of course I use these tools, sometimes to get started, but more often for “place holders” to note where I need to dive into resources that will give me either answers or show me that what I propose to include in my fiction “could” have happened and is viable to include.  It is fiction after all.

On Medium today, Jeff Ryan published an article on Medium: Honoring the Critical Link between Research and Creativity.  https://medium.com/@19RoadsLessTraveled/honoring-the-critical-link-between-research-and-creativity-5c2dc38fe9c4

Ryan speaks about standard factual research (records, documents, etc.) which he uses extensively, but he also talks about “contextual” research, i.e., researching beyond needed facts to understand what else was going on in the worlds the characters inhabited.  I’ve always thought of my research as all of a piece, but I find his separation of factual and contextual research very helpful.  He also shows how the discovery of a very small detail can change the direction of a novel.  

From now on, I plan to tag my “place holders” with F or C or FC to indicate the type(s) of research I need in a particular section.  This will help me to decide where I need to introduce some element from world events occurring at the time my characters live, where I need backstory, where I need speculation, and so on.

Ryan says that adding contextual research to his process enables him to create more multi-dimensional characters and provide his book with urgency. 

I also recommend Paddy Sutton’s Research and Creativity Go Hand in Hand. https://www.research-live.com/article/opinion/research-and-creativity-go-hand-in-hand/id/5028992  Written in 2017, Sutton, a creative director at Argo, talks about researching for ads.  He believes creativity is about questioning and challenging.  “As the legendary Robin Wight of WCRS advised, ‘interrogate the product until it confesses to its strength’. That’s research.”  He describes research as analytical, creativity as intuitive and gives examples of how the two work together.  

Perhaps that’s why I like writing.  It uses my whole brain—left and right.  What could be better?

I highly recommend you check out the above links.  They’re quick reads and impactful.

Image credit: https://www.research-live.com/article/opinion/research-and-creativity-go-hand-in-hand/id/5028992 

Finishing the 30/30 Project

I just completed December’s 30/30 Project for Tupelo Press, along with nine other poets.  On previous occasions when I’ve participated in this event, I’ve worked from a theme, thinking that some structure, however fluid, would help me to generate new work.  This time, I didn’t do that.  I roamed the multiple and varied subjects that crossed my brain.  As I look back on my work for this month, I realize that free-range has been a better option, at least this time. 

I retired about a year and a half ago to write full-time.  When I was writing while holding down a full-time job, structure helped me stay on track.  Now that I write every day for longer periods of time, I’m moving away from early structure and finding my generative self growing more creative in a free-ranging way.  While some of the pieces I wrote for the project will likely not develop further, I’ll definitely develop and revise some of this work to send out to publishers for consideration.  

At some point, structure becomes important, but, for me, that’s further down the line, after a longer period of exploration.  That said, this year, I submitted a sonnet, certainly “structured,” to the Kelsay Books Metrical Poetry Contest and won second place, but I don’t think that would have happened if I’d not had a longer generative period before fitting the work into a sonnet form.

This has led me to wonder about the roles of free-form thinking and imposed structure.  How do I work with each poem to find the right balance between the two?

Many years ago, when I taught high school, working particularly with students who faced multiple challenges at home and in life, I found that the more rules there were to a poem, the more amazing were the students’ results.  I taught forms like the cinquain.  See https://mickhispoetry.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/modern-traditional-cinquains/ for the rules and some examples.  See https://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/list-of-50-poetic-forms-for-poets for a list of many poetic forms, some of which are very complex.  If I didn’t provide structure, the students were lost and had trouble writing anything at all.

So where’s the sweet spot?  The place where you’ve free-ranged enough and it’s time to explore a structure, whether it’s a formal structure or a form that emerges organically from the work itself.  I may look for that sweet spot for the rest of my writing days, but this month has led me to a closer understanding of both approaches and the importance of finding the right moment to move from one to the other and back again.

Inspiration, Motivation, and Supporting a Small Press

December 1 and the Tupelo 30/30 project starts for this month.  This project has been running for a number of years.  The goal for participants is to write 30 poems in 30 days.  This is my third time participating in this project and it’s always a thrill.  It inspires me, motivates me to generate work, and allows me to support an important small press.  Each of us commits to raising funds for the press through donations to support the poems.

The first poems are up at https://www.tupelopress.org/the-3030-project-december-19/ and will be added to daily until the end of the month. Please read and enjoy them. If you’re inspired, please donate (you’ll find a donate button on the page. I’m honored to be a fundraiser for Tupelo Press this month, even more so when I read my fellow writers’ bios (https://www.tupelopress.org/3030-project-contributors/).  They’re amazing and I’m happy to journey and write with them this month.