I define the four degrees of fidelity as follows: There’s one more dynamic to shaping the reader experience, and that’s the fidelity of your story to known facts. This is historical fiction, after all, so time can’t be completely ignored. Note that time has a non-zero starting point. You have a mixer board in front of you and by tuning each of the dynamics, you shape the reader’s experience. Imagine the author being like the audio technician at a concert or in a recording studio. For these reasons, I consider culture to be a distinct category.Ī single category of inspiration may be your starting point, but the shape of your story will also be inspired in varying degrees by one or more of the others. The culture of the Roman Empire affected places and peoples from northern Britain to north Africa and from the Iberian peninsula to the Middle East. Alternatively, culture can be spread, typically through mass migrations or conquest/imperialism/colonialism. Consider, for example, the Mayan civilization that existed in a limited location, but spanned the time from 2000 BC to the Spanish conquest in the 16th century CE. In the past, however, culture could develop and remain in relative isolation for long periods. Some might argue that culture is nothing more than the convergence of time and place-and in some cases, that’s true. Whatever your source of inspiration, I postulate that it falls into one of six basic categories: time, place, person(s), event(s), culture, or legend.

The elements of a good historical narrative And even though historical fiction must be grounded in fact, the opportunities for colorful, enlightening, and entertaining narratives are nonetheless rich. But with 5,000 years of recorded human history spanning many civilizations both extant and extinct, empires that have come and gone, innumerable people both famous and infamous, and seven continents (well, maybe Antarctica isn’t quite so rich a source), the worlds and characters available for an author to explore in historical fiction are vast.

Some may argue that fantasy offers the most wide-open landscape for storytelling.

Historical things to write about