The blurring of fact and fiction has great commercial potential, which is bound to be corrupting in historical terms.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.
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.
The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
It's such a rich experience when you enter into a subject from a documentary point of view. It's hard for fiction to compete with that.
Historical novels are hard to do for the general public for commercial writers like myself.
Reality always outstrips fiction. Whatever you make up, something more incredible always pops up in real life.
As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what's going to happen.
Ironically, in today's marketplace successful nonfiction has to be unbelievable, while successful fiction must be believable.
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.