HISTORICAL
FICTION: BLASTS FROM THE PAST – ACCURATE SETTING, FICTIONAL PEOPLE AND DIALOGUE
Historical
fiction takes place in the past, which changes the setting for the characters and
their interactions. You still need a strong story, but some of your readers
will be reading partly for the information about the times and the places in
which your characters are immersed. They want to feel they are
being educated while they are being entertained. So, bone up on the period and
places in which your story unfolds.
The
tricky part is not getting things wrong. The dialogue cannot contain
modern slang and other anachronisms, items from another period rather than the
one you are dealing with. The battles must be in the right places with the
right winners. The “news” of the time must be correct. Did they have indoor
plumbing? Radio? Electricity? Trains? You get the idea.
Historical
fiction seems to require less imagination and definitely more research than
other genres, but you cannot get so bogged down in research
that you stop writing the story. Readers don’t need all the historical details.
Strike a balance.
As with other forms of fiction
and for memoirs, the writer needs to
make sure the reader knows the answers to the questions journalists pose for
themselves: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Similarly, the stories need
to start with something like headlines to alert the reader to what is coming:
“The girls never forgot that day….”
SCIENCE
FICTION AND FANTASY: WHAT COULD BE, MAY BE – MAKE US CARE, MAKE US SCARED?
Googling
“how to write science fiction and fantasy” produced 8 million hits. The winner:
novelist Orson Scott Card’s How to Write
Science Fiction and Fantasy, the
second print edition of which was published in 1991 and the Kindle ebook
edition, which I bought for $5.75, published in 2015. It contains sound advice
on his genres, followed by more about writing fiction in general. Here’s
material from Card’s summary of the contents of his five chapters:
1. The Infinite Boundary What is, and isn’t, science fiction and
fantasy….and how SF and fantasy differ from one another.
2.
World
Creation How to build, populate, and dramatize a
credible, inviting world that readers will want to share with you….
3.
Story
Construction Finding
a character for an idea or developing ideas for a character to enact…. Should
the viewpoint character be the main character? ….The MICE quotient: milieu,
idea, character, event….
4.
Writing
Well Keeping exposition in
its place. Leading your reader into the strangeness, step by step. Piquing the
reader’s interest….
5.
The
Life and Business of Writing.
Card (2001) tells would-be
authors, “…in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for.
They’re open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as dream. Above
all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before….”
So, get Orson Scott Card’s
ebook…it’s a bargain.
ROMANTIC
FICTION: LOVE LOST AND FOUND
On
Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells, by
best-selling novelist Leigh Michaels (2007), is highly favorably reviewed on
the amazon.com site, so who am I to disagree?
It will show you (the
description says) how to:
· Steer
clear of clichés
· Craft
engaging and realistic heroes and heroines the readers will adore
· Convincingly
develop the central couple’s blossoming relationship
· Add
conflict by utilizing essential secondary characters like “the other woman”
· Use
tension and timing to make your love scenes sizzle with sensuality
· Get
your characters to happily-ever-after with an ending your readers will remember
forever.
This is not a genre with which
I have much familiarity, despite being a romantic myself.
###
Excerpted from my own magnum opus, Write Your Book with Me, published by Outskirts Press recently and available from OP and amazon.com, bn.com, and other online booksellers.
My writing-coaching-editing website is http://WriteYourBookWithMe.com.
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