How To Research For Historical Fiction
Danny Cherry
Historical Fiction Novelist
Research. That dreaded R word. It's something to trip up your fingers flying across the keyboard. The thing that sucks the creativity out of art. At least, that's how a lot of writers feel.
The truth of the matter is, if you want your writing to feel authentic, you're going to have to do some research. Especially when writing historical fiction. What people love about historical fiction is that it's anchored in reality, yet gives the reader an escape.
My historical novel, The Pike Boys, is just that: Escapism. It’s a gangster drama, in the vein of Peaky Blinders, Sopranos, and Boardwalk Empire, set in a realistic prohibition-era New Orleans, and it took a good bit of research and attention to detail.
So, how does one prepare to write historical fiction? Here's my technique for crafting realistic worlds in a different era.
1. The idea
Ideas are all around us. Everything we see has a history, no matter how dull. For example: I once read an essay about a light post. Yup, a light post. However, the writer found out that light post was once used as a lynching tree, and went into a deep dive about it. So when I say that everything has a history, I'm not exaggerating. Capturing an idea is all about following what intrigues. When listening to a podcast or conversation, or whatever, if you hear a name, fact, or other element that intrigues you, write it down and research it later. There's probably a story behind it.
2. Learn your era
When writing in a different time period, you need to know a little something about it. Not a whole lot—just enough to give the illusion of being an expert.
When writing The Pike Boys, I knew I was telling a story about gangsters. So the first thing I did was find one book that talked about the criminal underbelly of New Orleans during the 1920s. I learned enough to start drafting. I also kept a list of things I needed to know. With historical narratives, you want to give the illusion that you're an expert. So with The Pike Boys, I did some adjacent research for that era. I learned about the political climate, race relations, the economics of how the criminal underworld worked. I didn't do more than what I needed to do.
3. Keep a notebook nearby
Or keep a Word or Google doc opened. As you're researching, you're going to run across interesting stuff that you may not yet be able to use yet, but jot it down and you'll probably find a home for it later in the project.
4. Draft first, research second
The last thing you want to do is to get bogged down by book after book, google search after google search, when you won't use the majority of it. That was one mistake I learned early in my attempts to incorporate research into my narrative storytelling. I'd spend hours upon hours researching things that I never needed to know.
After familiarizing yourself broadly with your subject, draft the book, then go back and fill in what you missed. Have fun, free write, take big swings, and worry about the facts later.
5. Place holders
When you're drafting, you'll inevitably run into something you're not sure how to name. For example, nowadays, a Bugatti is a nice car (I think). But it wasn't the most popular car in the 1920s. When working on my first draft of the novel, I just wrote "car***". I leave three asterisks behind terms I need to research later, so I can hit CNTRL+F for easy reference.
Let's say you're writing a medical drama, but you don't know what a certain procedure is called. Just put "medical***" or another placeholder to return to later.
When writing, you're using two parts of your brain: the reason side and the creative side.
The reason side will always try to slow you down, especially when you're writing historical narratives, or something requiring a lot of research. Ignore it. Let your fingers fly, leave a placeholder for things you're not sure about, and write so fast that your internal editor cannot keep up with you.
6. It's entertainment—not a history textbook
Don't sacrifice entertainment value for accuracy.
Yes, The Pike Boys was heavily researched, but I skipped or glossed over things that would've bogged the narrative down. A well-written book is akin to casting an illusion over a reader. If written well enough, they're under a spell and they go from the next word to the next to the next, until they're done. When writing a historical fiction book, you need to keep that illusion going. You don't need to give heavy exposition to explain what something is. Give the reader context clues.
For example: Clyde, the eldest of the Pike brothers, is mentally unstable. When he was a child, he took laudanum. Instead of stopping to explain what laudanum was, I worked it into his character. There's a scene where Clyde is released from prison, and Jesse, the middle Pike brother, suggests that Clyde get back on it. Clyde protests, insinuating he felt like a zombie while on it. That's it. I didn't explain how it was an opioid, or the history of it. Just keep the story going and work the facts in via action and character and the reader will figure it out.
7. Pay attention to the background
I know I just said that you don't want to sacrifice entertainment value for accuracy, but you don't want to go too far against history with background events. You can take creative liberties with your main story.
However, let's say your book is set during the Civil Rights movement. You may get away with some fudged facts about the main characters, but you don't want to ignore the unrest of the '60s—you don't want to ignore the 150 riots across the country in 1967.
A TV show that handles this well is Derry Girls. It's set during the Troubles of Northern Ireland. The foreground characters are a group of fictional teen girls getting up to all types of hijinks. However, the background is accurate to what was going on then. Bombs exploding, shooting in the streets. The TV show is a comedy, but the background events make it feel legitimate.
The gist is: take some liberties with your characters, but don't mess up the world you're trying to build. That's where you'll lose the reader.
8. Get used to criticism
You're going to have nitpicky readers. Unless it's something that every reader is pointing out, or something that is especially egregiously wrong, just let it go. I had a person tell me that one of my main characters, Rory, wasn't accurate to the time because of his name. For starters, that name has been around a while. But even if it wasn't, no one else said anything. So I kept it in and ignored them.
9. Don't get too wild with the dialogue
The dialogue in The Pike Boys is pretty era-neutral. That's by design. If I were to fill the book with terms and verbiage that were actually used back then, the writing would be distracting. However, you can't have a character in a 1920s book saying "dude," either. So it's a balance.
10. Build your characters from real people
Jesse, Clyde, and Rory, the Pike Brothers, are a blend of real life people. I took certain traits from historical figures, mashed together what I liked, discarded what I didn't. That added to the legitimacy of the story. Use real people as a template, and you won't go wrong.
Writing historical fiction is taking inspiration from the real world, adding some spice, deleting some snooze, and bringing your own unique perspective to the narrative. Use these tips to write your own genuine, compelling, and exciting story.
The Pike Boys will be released on January 22nd, 2024, but you can pre-order the e-book right now on $ Kindle$ , $ Barnes & Noble$ , Kobo, or wherever else you buy e-books. To get an email alert for paperback availability, subscribe to my $ Substack$ . I don't spam!
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