setting

In an article in The Writer, Todd James Pierce offered eight rules for writing historical short stories. One of them was that “small details matter more than large ones.” His example was about a story that led him to think he’d “need to know how the mechanics of animation worked in the 1940s and 1950s, the tasks of an inbetweener or an inker.” While acknowledging that “the information was useful,” he concluded that it wasn’t the “dreamy material” that leads to compelling stories. He discovered that the small details were more important: “the weight of a pencil in an animator’s hand when held the right way, how images ghost up through a stack of drawings when pegged onto a lightboard, the sound a moviola makes when a reel of new film stutters across its screen.” He used these “small daily details” to build a “believable historical setting.”

While I fully support his premise that the small details matter, I am convinced that his understanding of the larger world of the mechanics of animation in the 1940s and 1950s also informed his work, that knowing which small details to use may have been helped by knowing the broader subject matter thoroughly.

This brings me back to the issue of research, which I seem unable to leave (see previous couple of blog posts). How much is enough? How much is too much? (One comment on my last blog post suggested that while conducting research, it’s important to remember actually to write–a valid point.) I have found, however, that the small details that stand out in my own research and which I wish to use in my story only stand out because I know their importance from the larger context. I don’t disagree with Pierce, but I wonder how much his broader research into the period helped those small details jump off the research page as “musts” to include in his story. For his full article, see https://www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/fiction/historical-short-stories/ It’s well worth a read.

In historical fiction, a story is made up but is set in the past and sometimes borrows true characteristics of the time period in which it is set. That story can appear in movies, novels, even poetry (e.g., Omeros, by Derek Walcott, or Brébeuf and His Brethren, by E.J. Pratt). One of the most succinct blog posts on the elements of historical fiction was written by M. K. Tod in 2015, 7 Elements of Historical Fiction (https://bit.ly/2ChaCo1).

Many of the elements she describes are applicable to all story making–plot, character, dialogue, and so forth–but one is particularly interesting for this story genre, namely “world building.” Of course, all stories have “worlds”, but historical fiction calls for a world that requires extensive research into what Tod says are “the customs, social arrangements, family environment, governments, religious structures, international alliances, military actions, physical geography, layouts of towns and cities, and politics of the time.” She then quotes Harry Sidebottom, author of Warrior of Rome:

“The past is another country, they not only do things differently there, they think about things differently.”

She continues by listing an extensive list of “topics” to consider when conducting research into the period of your story (please see Tod’s post for the list).

Among the comments is one by “jazzfeathers”, who basically expressed concern about lecturing rather than presenting the historical setting, but also commenting that, sometimes, readers would like to be lectured. In response to the dilemma of how much historical “fact” to include, Tod compared Conn Iggulden, who is sparing, to Sharon Kay Penman, who includes extensive historical fact.

Finding the balance in any writing is never easy, but I recommend Tod’s post and subsequent discussion. It may be four years old, but it’s timeless.

Making a World from Small Details

Historical Fiction Elements