How to Write Historical Fiction

Research like a journalist, not a museum

You do not need to learn the entire century — you need to learn what your protagonist would touch, taste, fear, and own. Read primary sources (letters, diaries, newspapers) before secondary sources. A single specific detail (the price of bread, the smell of a hospital ward, the brand of cigarette) is worth ten paragraphs of generalized period color.

Voice and dialogue

Don't write 'forsooth.' Don't write twenty-first-century slang either. The goal is a voice the modern reader can read fluently that still feels of-its-time — sentence length, idiom, what characters notice. Read Hilary Mantel for the master class: her Tudor characters think in modern psychology, but never in modern words.

Real people, fictional lives

If you use historical figures, decide early whether they are protagonists or props. If they are protagonists, you owe them research and accountability — read the biographies, get the facts straight, and admit your invented scenes in the author's note. If they are props, keep them at arm's length and let your invented characters carry the plot.

Famous examples to study

Read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall for prose and political detail, Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See for sensory wartime, Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles for myth as historical fiction, Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale for popular WWII fiction, and Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth for medieval epic.

Common tropes that still work

The forbidden love across class lines, the family saga across generations, the war seen through one household, the immigrant arrival, the dual timeline (then and now), the woman whose contribution history erased, the rise and fall of a dynasty.

Common mistakes to avoid

Anachronistic language and beliefs (your medieval protagonist cannot think in twenty-first-century feminism without justification), info-dumping research, ignoring class and economics, treating women and minorities as scenery, and the 'tour guide' protagonist who exists only to explain the era to the reader.

Five books to study

• Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel
• All the Light We Cannot See — Anthony Doerr
• The Song of Achilles — Madeline Miller
• The Nightingale — Kristin Hannah
• The Pillars of the Earth — Ken Follett

Tropes that still work

• Forbidden love across class
• Multi-generational family saga
• Dual timeline (then and now)
• War through one household
• The erased woman of history

Mistakes to avoid

• Anachronistic language
• Info-dumping research
• Ignoring class and economics
• Tour-guide protagonist
• Modern morality grafted on without nuance