When you're writing historical fiction, you have to think a little farther into the situation: what the average social interactions were, what was acceptable behavior. What did people think was fun, what did they find unhappy, and why?
Historical fiction was not - and is not - meant to supplant literature from the period it describes. As a veteran of the Crimea, Tolstoy wrote 'War and Peace' to match his own internal sense of the truth of the Napoleonic wars, to dramatize what he felt literature from that period had failed to describe.
'War and Peace' holds a strange place in literary history, participating in the crowning of realism as a substantial and serious literary mode in America, even as the novel also contributed to the argument that historical fiction could be by nature dangerous, illegitimate, and inaccurate.
I'm a big fan of historical fiction stuff. Historical battles - 'Gladiators,' 'The Patriot.'
I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.
I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.
The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can't be disproved or shown to be false.
I taught English and history, so my education for that really helped prepare me for writing historical fiction.
I like to write stories that read like historical fiction about great, world-changing events through the lens of a flawed protagonist.
