The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Some novelists want to give people in history a voice because they have been denied it in the past.
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.
Historical facts are the vital framework around which non-fiction writers construct their narratives; they are, quite simply, indispensable.
He could have made it right with the book. But he hasn't. He is a revisionist of history. He has lied.
We cannot leave history entirely to nonclinical observers and to professional historians.
The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.
Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.
Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.