Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I am not a fan of historical fiction that is sloppy in its research or is dishonest about the real history.
What's most explosive about historical fiction is to use the fictional elements to pressure the history to new insights.
As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what's going to happen.
One thing I like about historical fiction is that I'm not constantly focusing on me, or people like me; you're obliged to concentrate on lives that are completely other than your own.
Historical facts are the vital framework around which non-fiction writers construct their narratives; they are, quite simply, indispensable.
The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
The blurring of fact and fiction has great commercial potential, which is bound to be corrupting in historical terms.
For the serious biographer, history and the life story of a real individual are inseparably intertwined. Get the facts wrong, or distort them, and the life story gets distorted: becomes fiction.
As a writer of historical fiction, I believe you don't want to fictionalize gratuitously; you want the fictional aspects to prod and pressure the history into new and exciting reactions.
The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.