historical fiction

  • Historical fiction, Research, Writing, Writing Advice

    Researching historical locations for your novel

    Researching historical locations for your novel

    I’ve written posts in the past relating to how to research your novel locations online, and also how to avoid certain location problems in your fiction. In this post I wanted to address the specific topic of researching historical locations for your novel. I’ve touched on some tools for this before, but only in passing. The larger topic was left to a future post – which I’ve finally sat down to write!

    Travel writing

    If your novel is set in the 20th century or very late 19th century, you have the advantage of accessing travel guides from the period. In fact, the German publisher Baedeker started publishing travel guides in 1832. They also published in English and French. If you’ve watched or read A Room With a View, you might recall references to Baedeker from the English tourists in the story/film.

    Some of these old books can be bought secondhand. I have travel guides from the late 1920s for Berlin, London, Paris, and Northern Italy.

    • How to Be Happy in Berlin by John Chancellor
    • How to Be Happy in Paris by John Chancellor
    • London 1929 – Illustrated guidebooks published by Wardlock & CoS
    • Muirhead’s Northern Italy – The Blue Guides

    These books contain a treasure trove of information and advice on places and events like markets which no longer exist. Some districts in London and Berlin were badly damaged in the war.

    Indeed, in the case of Berlin, you have a city bombed, and then subject to partition, with a wall running through the city and a no man’s land in between the inner and outer wall. This left tenements and even an old major railway station in limbo, abandoned.

    The map that folds out from the inside back cover of How to Be Happy in Berlin represents a city that no longer exists in the same form. Rebuilding after the war, empty lots left derelict for many years, the wall, and finally the post-reunification building programme has changed the city to the point where areas around the old Potsdamer Platz, for example, would be unrecognisable to a Weimar-era Berliner.

    That’s why a map of late Weimar Berlin is so valuable for anyone writing a novel set in that period. It’s fascinating to look at, and you can also cross-reference the map information with photo searches online. I have a book of photos of Berlin in this period. But there are images online and videos on the likes of YouTube.

    Travel guide information

    While you don’t want to overload your narrative with too much unnecessary information, travel guides provide useful snippets like the price of a taxi, the various railway stations for different destinations (which station do you take in Berlin for the boat train back to Britain), restaurant and food information, etc. Want to know the restaurants near Potsdamer Platz, just so you can throw in a real place? How to Be Happy in Berlin provides a list and the average price. It also goes into the different cabarets and nightlife. Just in case your characters are having a night on the town.

    You can also deduce social customs of the period – some cabarets didn’t allow girls (women) to enter the main establishment unless they were accompanied by a male. According to John Chancellor, the girls therefore hung around the bar, waiting for a male to take them through the ‘magic door that leads to the lights and the champagne‘. He also assures us that the German girl is not ‘a fat, stolid and stupid wench‘. No, Berlin girls are fine girls!

    They also include warnings about places to avoid or what not to do (because the locals don’t like it).

    My Italian guidebook, once owned by someone called Dorothy in 1924 (because she pencilled it inside the book), has passages she’s underlined warning of dangers to tourists. Or perhaps someone else underlined them for her, as an example of what to watch out for.

    Dorothy left some evidence of her holiday in the guide – a pencilled itinerary, and a small flier for a Venetian shop (whose address I tracked down on Google Street View – only to find the shop is no longer there and something else occupies the building).

    Yes, old travel guides, when used with Google Street View, can turn into fascinating rabbit holes, where you can spend all day checking out what those old places look like now. Some addresses and streets will obviously be gone. While some street names will be changed.

    Earlier travel and location accounts

    There are earlier travel accounts – for example, eighteenth century writer Samuel Johnson’s book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland AND The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (Penguin Classics). Somewhere on my bookshelves I think I have an eighteenth century travel account of America.

    I also have this Regency A-Z of London, which I found in a used bookshop many years ago:

    You can also check out diaries. If you want to know about an eighteenth century masquerade ball in London, you could check out Fanny Burney’s diaries. If you want to check out the opera in Italy, read Casanova’s diaries.

    Diaries and letters can tell you a lot, including descriptions of old eighteenth century pleasure gardens, the entertainments there, and the kinds of people who visited.

    One of my historical novel clients had her characters visit these places, as well as real period shops, etc. While you can just make things up, it’s fun to throw in actual places.

    If you’re researching via history books on specific locations, you’ll often find they reference primary sources like diaries, letters, and other accounts. Don’t ignore these – they can be tracked down online and downloaded if they’re in the public domain.

    I have a book called Glasgow in 1901 by James Hamilton Muir which likely has its foreign equivalents – it’s a tour of the city, with plenty of details and descriptions.

    Period journalism can also be a great source of information on location and social custom. I have a book on Glasgow called Midnight Scenes and Social Photographs: Being Sketches of Life in the Streets, Wynds and Dens of the City. It’s from 1858. It contains interactions with some of the poorest people, and one account describes someone lying in a basement under blankets because they shared clothing with someone else who had gone out.

    These are details many modern authors wouldn’t even think to include.

    The book also includes sensory information from the author about smells, etc.

    Paintings and sketches

    Pre-photography, our main visual reference point for locations is art. I collect books on Glasgow history, and the earlier periods are represented by artists’ renderings of the city. This shows the development of the city over time, the disappearance of rural areas as the city expanded and gobbled up more territory. It also shows old bridges, old building styles, and women standing in the Clyde washing laundry before the river was later deepened in the nineteenth century for shipping.

    All of this will also apply to other cities and towns in the UK and other countries.

    Sometimes artists were commissioned to record a location. Later photographers would be commissioned by some cities and towns.

    Photography and film

    The photographic record starts in the 1840s. For a city like Paris, this allows the modern viewer to see Paris before it was redeveloped by Haussmann. The old rickety buildings had not yet been replaced by the Parisian terraces we think of today. One of my historical novel clients wrote about this city around the time some of the new builds were up while other slum areas still existed. You can read my interview with her in which we discuss her research.

    The city of Glasgow commissioned photographer Thomas Annan to record the old slum district next to the High Street and the old Jacobean university college, before they were demolished. The old tenements would have been more sanitary before the industrial age, when the tenants had a free run down to the river, but boxed in during the industrial age, and crowded out by Irish and Highland immigrants, they had fallen into ruin.

    The celluloid record in terms of moving film starts in the 1890s, and is another useful source of information. Fiction films shot on location can show a lot of background detail. You can even cross-reference a street sign on a city building with your period map, allowing you to build a picture of that district if it’s a significant location in your novel.

    Fiction films often have fascinating backdrops, but you can also look to documentary film. If you’re interested in late Weimar Berlin, I recommend People on Sunday, which is an invaluable insight into the lives of young people in the city.

    Genealogical and other records

    Don’t forget to check out the following:

    • census records (which have fascinating references to professions that no longer exist and which can show the social makeup of a tenement or district
    • Parish records (pre-census in the UK)
    • valuation rolls are another record in Scotland – I can’t comment on anywhere else
    • Post Office directories
    • Cemeteries and gravestones
    • Old newspapers and magazines (another rabbit hole!)
    • ordinance survey maps

    Novels, poetry and songs

    Period novels are always a useful source of information. I also have a book of bawdy English songs which likely includes little social details about the various periods. Likewise, the poetry of Jonathan Swift has thrown up some juicy details, even when he’s being downright cutting. Check out the link to his poem below!

    A Beautiful Young Nympth Going To Bed.

    Conclusion

    Researching for historical fiction can lead to going down endless rabbit holes. So while research can help bring your historical world to life, it’s important to remember that much of the information you find is not something to include in your novel.

    However, understanding the location, the social customs there, the prices of things, the venues, and the social demographics, can help you and your characters navigate your period world more realistically. Sometimes all you need is a tiny detail, mentioned in passing.

    It’s best not to info dump, but you can impart information in a less obvious way that helps your reader immerse themself in the story. Remember to include sensory information. The past, for example, didn’t always smell very nice, but you also have visual textures, noises (carriage wheels on cobblestones), and more.

    Some writers research as they go along, and others research up front, before they even start. In the case of the latter, the danger is in delaying the writing of the story for too long. Research can be very seductive. It pays to exercise restraint and remember the purpose of the research – it’s not a form of procrastination! It is meant to serve the novel, not provide a useful avoidance technique for never starting your book.

    There is more to be said about historical research. I might keep some for another post. In the meantime…

    Are you a historical novelist looking for feedback?

    I have worked on novels set in the following periods:

    • Paleo period – with mammoths and cave lions, etc!
    • 18th century
    • 19th century
    • 20th century
    • World War Two

    I particularly like 18th century onwards, though I do have a substantial collection of 17th century history books. And I’m not averse to the medieval period either!

    I am currently open for manuscript critiques and developmental edits. One of my historical novel clients sent me a very long and detailed outline of her book to edit first, before she went on to write it. Outline critiques are also a service I provide – I can also include useful recommendations on books or documentaries/films that might be useful.

    You can find my service pages below. Or you can contact me at karen@indiecateditorial.com

    Service page – click the buttons there for more details on each service.

    You can also check out my blog post below on using period language in your work.

    Too much period language in a historical novel?

    Sign up for emails on writing and editing

    I write a weekly post on Substack, usually on a Monday or Tuesday. These posts are sometimes blogs I’ve posted here, which you can receive directly in your inbox. Sometimes they are newsletters or announcements featuring writing competitions I’ve heard about. You can sign up below.

  • Books, Reviews

    A Place of Greater Safety

    The cover of Hilary Mantel's novel A Place of Greater Safety.
    A Place of Greater Safety

    A Place of Greater Safety: The Pre-Revolutionary Background:

    Louis XV is named the Well-Beloved. Ten years pass. The same people believe the Well-Beloved takes baths of human blood… Avoiding Paris, ever shut up at Versailles, he finds even there too many people, too much daylight. He wants a shadowy retreat….

    In a year of scarcity (they were not uncommon then) he was hunting as usual in the Forest of Senart. He met a peasant carrying a bier and inquired, ‘Whither he was conveying it?’ ‘To such a place.’ ‘For a man or a woman?’ ‘A man.’ ‘What did he die of?’ ‘Hunger.’     (Jules Michelet)


    Sir Francis Burdett, British Ambassador, on Paris: ‘It is the most ill-contrived, ill-built, dirty stinking town that can possibly be imagined; as for the inhabitants, they are ten times more nasty than the inhabitants of Edinburgh.’


    Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety

    Winner of the 1992 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, this French Revolution novel is a hugely ambitious work.

    It’s a complex narrative tapestry following three of the main characters of the revolution – Danton, Robespierre, and Camille Desmoulins. We also hear from the women in their lives and other characters.

    Camille Desmoulins

    Camille (who appears on older covers of the novel as above) is in fact the lynchpin. Not just in terms of acting as a link between his more famous friends. But also in inciting the original riots that led to the storming of the Bastille.

    Mantel portrays him as a mercurial character: youthful, egotistical, neurotic, moody, arrogant, bisexual. And forever tossing his long dark hair in between writing furious articles against the old guard. He is courted by all sorts, politically and otherwise.

    Because of his beauty and diminutive size, most of the other characters try to protect him. Not always realising how sly and manipulative he really is. The rest want to murder him, or go to bed with him, or possibly both.

    He has his eye on an older woman, before making a cunning sideways shift to her daughter, Lucile.

    Danton, never a model of probity himself, suggests he might have both. Though Camille doesn’t mean to fall in love with his would-be mistress’s daughter, he does. But it’s also clear that he’s in love with Danton.

    Danton

    Danton is, appropriately, a larger than life character – with a huge appetite for sex, women, food, conflict and dodgy dealings.

    While Camille stammers, Danton bellows, since he possesses the strongest pair of lungs in the Cordeliers district.

    He has a knack for always being somewhere else when the trouble starts. And his physical unattractiveness in no way impedes his appeal to women. Far from it, Camille’s young wife is thoroughly wound up about him. Much to Camille’s vicarious enjoyment.

    There’s a curious threesome thing going on throughout this novel. First with Camille chasing both the mother and daughter, then with his interest in Danton and young Lucile, and then Lucile’s attraction to both Camille and Danton. But it’s an underlying tension rather than something played out for real.

    Robespierre

    Robespierre is a very different personality, and possibly the least well-drawn.

    Even by the end of the book, he’s something of an enigma.

    The novel begins when the three men are still young. Camille is four. Later, Camille attends Louis Le Grand school. There, Robespierre, who is a little older, takes charge of him.

    Camille, soon something of a celebrity at the school, is Robespierre’s first and only friend.

    Some of the other friends and opponents in the future revolutionary struggle are also students. Mantel includes a true event when the new king and queen pay a visit to the school. The pupils have waited in the rain for the royal couple to arrive. The scholarship boy has memorised his speech ready to greet them.

    But Marie Antoinette is bored. And the king orders the coach to leave even as the scholarship boy still recites his speech.

    ‘Never mind, de Robespierre,’ a priest commiserates, ‘it could have happened to anyone.’

    ~ A Place of Greater Safety

    No hint is given later that Robespierre ever dwelled on the incident. He’s portrayed as very much against the death penalty, a young lawyer of high principles.

    But it’s the extent to which he is willing to pursue his principles that’s the problem.

    He wonders if he could sacrifice a friend to his beliefs before he realises he has no friends.

    Then he remembers, he has Camille.

    The narrative threads come together

    While Robespierre begins his law career out in the provinces, Camille meets Danton in Paris. There they represent opposing sides in a court case.

    Camille tells Danton about his distant cousins – Antoine Fouquier-Tinville, and Antoine Saint-Just. The former, according to gossip, murdered his wife. The latter is currently in prison for stealing the family silver.

    Years later, Fouquier-Tinville will head the tribunal which tries Danton and his friends.

    And when Saint-Just finally appears, he’s worse than Robespierre in his po-faced political extremism. It’s hard to imagine him capable of any youthful indiscretions.

    However, he did once nurture ambitions to be a poet.

    Camille, who abandons law for writing and publishing, makes the fatal mistake of ridiculing some poetry Saint-Just sends him. A slight which Saint-Just never forgets.

    Narrative viewpoints

    Mantel takes an often wry omniscient view of her characters, but also allows them to speak for themselves.

    So Danton takes over the narrative in places, as does his wife Gabrielle. Camille’s would-be-mistress and eventual mother-in-law Annette is another viewpoint character, as is her daughter, Lucile.

    Sometimes the narrative is third person, sometimes first. Mantel also weaves in contemporary quotes and accounts from her real-life characters.

    She can also turn on a pin from a revolutionary cutting off someone’s head, to a London playbill on the very next page:


    18 August 1789

    At Astley’s Amphitheatre, Westminster Bridge
    (after rope-dancing by Signior Spinacuta)
    An Entire New and Splendid Spectacle

    THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

    From Sunday 12 July to Wednesday 15 July (inclusive)
    called

    PARIS IN AN UPROAR
    displaying one of the grandest and most extraordinary
    entertainments that ever appeared
    grounded on
    Authentic Fact

    Because of the complexity of the characters and events, there’s not much time spent on description. Some of the dialogue is written in script form.

    Marat looms on the edges of the book, huge and loathsome in appearance.

    The king is clueless about politics. He’s also subject to the stronger influence of his wife, Marie Antoinette. His cousin, the Duke of Orleans, is ambitious for the throne, and also manipulated and advised by his mistress.

    Choderlos de Laclos, the author of Dangerous Liaisons, is in the duke’s pay. He’s a spy and recruiter of useful people – like Camille.

    When the reader becomes complicit

    A Place of Greater Safety is not just an account of events leading up to the Terror. It also draws the reader into a compact with the characters.

    By making Danton and Camille attractive personalities, she seduces the reader into their dubious machinations. So that the reader themself ultimately colludes with them.

    Perhaps the most chilling scene in the book takes place once Danton, Camille and their friends are in power. They draw up a list of people who will be executed. Camille is left to bargain for the life of an ex-lover.

    Swept up in events, they have all moved beyond the point of no return.

    What these amusing, entertaining and seductive characters do in that room is nothing less than evil.

    And as Camille’s agitated father-in-law points out, Camille is now part of the new establishment.

    ‘You don’t understand, anyone who wants to make a revolution, has to make it against him.’

    ~ A Place of Greater Safety

    But Camille, ever one to risk political suicide, wakes up to reality. He turns on the Terror itself when he writes a tract comparing current events to Rome during the reign of the emperor Tiberius.

    Conditional Absolution

    The title of the novel’s penultimate chapter is Conditional Absolution. Camille partially redeems himself. But in doing so he pits himself against Saint-Just. And Robespierre, the man who once wondered whether he could ever sacrifice a friend for his principles.

    Danton’s fate is well known. As is Robespierre’s.

    Most people will not have heard of Camille and some of the other characters – don’t look them up on Wikipedia. Read the novel instead.

    It’s a fabulous account of good ideas gone bad.

    Mantel also spares plenty of humanity for all her characters. From Marie Antoinette needing to urinate before her execution, to the ridiculous but still likeable Duke Philippe of Orleans.

    However, there is a word of warning. The cast of characters is large and the book runs to almost 900 pages.

    A Place of Greater Safety will either defeat you or take over your life. For me, it’s quite possibly the best historical novel I’ve ever read.

    More posts from the blog

    Historical fiction as a time machine

    Review of Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon

    Joan Lindsay and Picnic at Hanging Rock

    Famous first lines… or how to start your novel

  • Developmental Editing, Writing, Writing Advice

    Too much period language in a historical novel?

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    Too much period language in a historical novel?

    Too much period language in a historical novel?

    I was recently in the mood to read some historical fiction and decided to pick an indie novel. The blurb sounded fun and I looked forward to spending hours and hours in another period. As per usual, I started with a Kindle sample.

    And that’s as far as I got.

    In fact, I didn’t even get to the end of the sample.

    I gave up.

    So, what was the problem? To be honest, there were numerous problems. Some are simply related to the lack of a good editor – or any editor. Because I suspect this book never saw an editor.

    But that was not the biggest issue.

    No, the biggest issue was the language. Or rather, the saturated archaic language meant to evoke the period.

    The problems with syntax, grammar, and shifting tenses only added to the difficult prose.

    So, let’s talk about using period language in historical fiction. What can possibly go wrong? And should you use it? And is there such a thing as too much period language in a historical novel?

    An unfamiliar language

    The biggest issue is that modern readers are simply not familiar with this language. A writer might feel impatient at the unwillingness of modern readers to wade through overtly archaic language. But bear with me…

    For people of a particular period – say, Shakespeare’s time – the language used back then would be clear and transparent. It would not be confusing. It would be their own way of speaking – depending on class and education obviously.

    They would not notice anything strange or elaborate about their way of writing and speaking. It would be the norm.

    It would be as clear and transparent as a pane of glass.

    But, to our modern ears, it sounds like a different form of English… With a higher number of obsolete or strange words. Some words would be recognisable but possibly spelled differently. Or they might now appear in a slightly different form.

    If people from Shakespeare’s time were to teleport to the present and listen to us talk, we too would be hard to understand. Yes, people can acclimatise to speech and new words. But it’s hard work.

    And a novel isn’t meant to be hard work. At least, not when it’s a genre novel.

    But the point I was making above about period language being normal and easily understood within its time is important. When you use modern language, you might think it doesn’t sound right. But using the reader’s language, with some period words sprinkled here and there, is the easiest way to convey the period. (Along with actual descriptions of locations, events, mores, and so on.)

    Because to the people of Shakespeare’s time, their language was normal. It wasn’t a novelty or colourful or rich.

    Therefore, it doesn’t work to replicate the language of that time. Because we can never experience it as anything other than outsiders. Readers are like time travellers. They travel back and they immerse themselves in the period. But if they don’t have the natural language of the period, it’s going to be difficult. They will always be that modern person trying to fit in and never quite succeeding.

    To experience the period more accurately, it’s best to remove as many linguistic barriers as possible.

    Other ways to convey period language

    You don’t need to drop all period language. It’s a matter of density. Overuse makes the story harder to read and a modern writer is never going to write as fluently as a writer from the original period.

    In fact, a modern writer can make a big old mess of period language precisely because they are not and never will be fluent in the language. They don’t use it every day, speak it to their family, think in it, write in it, and hear it from their neighbours.

    A modern writer can unwittingly fall into pastiche or parody.

    It’s far better to read a lot of material from the period and listen to the rhythm of the language. Choose some words to use, but try to make your prose as transparent as possible. You should aim to give a flavour of the period.

    To go beyond that means alienating readers who might otherwise have bought your work.

    The language is the medium through which a story is delivered. So, the question is this – what should the writer’s priority be? Telling the story and introducing the reader to the characters? Or injecting a strong sense of the period through the language? You might try both and do a good job, but it’s a difficult balance.

    Get a good line editor

    If you’re going to attempt to write in the language of the period, you cannot skimp on a good line editor.

    Why?

    Because if you set up one difficult hurdle for the reader – obscure language – you can’t afford to have additional problems with grammar, punctuation, tenses, etc.

    All books will have some errors in them. The fewer the better. However, the more errors there are, the more times readers trip up.

    Here are just some of the problems you don’t want to be mixing in with overtly archaic language:

    • One long and convoluted sentence after another – this not only drags the pace, but it taxes the modern attention span
    • Grammatically incorrect sentences that force the reader to back up and read them again as they try to unpick the meaning (made worse by too much archaic language)
    • Meandering tenses

    I would also suggest being careful with overly long paragraphs. Especially if you have rather a lot of them. They can drag the pace down. They can also be more taxing on the eye, requiring visual scanning across one long line after another. Again, throw in too many strange words on top of this and a modern reader might balk.

    Having said all that, some readers do like a lot of period language – especially if they have some knowledge of the period to start with. But it’s worth considering the downsides and offset some of the cons by ensuring your book is edited well.

    Do you have a historical novel in need of a critique?

    One of my developmental editing services is an opening chapters edit. Contact me for a quote since you can opt for a custom word count. This developmental edit is detailed. It includes an editorial letter, plus track commenting in the margins of your manuscript. I read your manuscript several times, which allows me to dig deeper into the writing, characterisation, and plot. I’m also available for follow-up email feedback. You can email me at karen@indiecateditorial.com.

    Other IndieCat Blog posts

    Historical fiction as a time machine

    Review of historical epic, A Place of Greater Safety

    Social media blockers

    Don’t make this mistake on your author website

    Boost your writing with the Pomodoro Technique

    How to order the stories in a collection

    Why your book cover design matters