To create a past that seemed authentic but would be a fiction, you need an invented language.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've never believed it's a fiction writer's job to create an exact replica of the past, a diorama the reader can step right into. But it is my responsibility to learn everything of the world I'm writing about, to become an expert in the politics and history that formed my characters' identities.
The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.
You can't believe anything that's written in an historical novel, and yet the author's job is always to create a believable world that readers can enter. It's especially so, I think, for writers of historical fiction.
Most fiction comes from your experience.
I don't think there's such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.
Overall, I adhere to the one guiding rule any author writing historical fiction should follow: whatever you describe has to be possible. It may not be common, obvious, or even all that probable, but it absolutely has to be possible.
I've always been drawn to historical fiction.
Sometimes I think fiction exists to model the way God might think of us, if God had the time and inclination to do so.
The laws of literary creation are unique; they don't change, and they are the same for everyone everywhere. I mean that you can tell a story that covers three hours of human life or three centuries - it comes to the same thing. Each writer who creates something authentic in a natural way instinctively also creates the technique that suits him.