The Challenges of Writing Historical Fiction (Part Two)

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At a book signing during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books a while back, where I was promoting my Finding Billy Battles trilogy, I was asked several times about the research process for writing historical fiction novels.
           I explained that researching the first book in the Finding Billy Battles trilogy began with my own memories. I grew up in Kansas, listening to the way my great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents spoke. Everybody in my family grew up in Kansas, so it is no stretch to say that I was immersed in “Kansas-speak” from an early age.
Signing Books at the L.A. Book Festival

Nevertheless, even though I grew up in Kansas and I know the places where my characters live and work very well, I didn’t know what those places were like between 1878 and 1894–the time span in which the first book in the Finding Billy Battles trilogy takes place. So I had to do significant research, and I am glad I did. It helped me write a book that I believe is historically accurate.

Fortunately, I was able to conduct extensive research online. I spent a considerable amount of time researching the websites of the Kansas Historical Society, as well as those of the Ford County and Douglas County Historical Societies. I also found helpful information about the period at other locations, including the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad.

I am a relentless researcher. That comes from my 27 years as a journalist with the Chicago Tribune. During that time, I learned how crucial accuracy is for the credibility of a journalist and the news organization they represent. Your stories MUST be accurate in every detail; otherwise, you and the company that employs you lose credibility.

Similarly, I believe authors who write historical fiction owe it to their readers to be accurate about the time and place they have put their characters in. That means you MUST do good research. You cannot rely on watching a movie about Bleeding Kansas in the 1850s and 1860s and then write a book based on how that film depicted the time, the places, and the events.

As I mentioned, you can do a lot of that research online, but NOT all of it. Libraries are still the best places to find the kind of books that will tell you what a place looked and sounded like in the 1890s. Luckily for me, I have amassed an extensive library of books over the past couple of decades on 19th-century America, Asia, and Latin America — the prominent locales for my characters in the Finding Billy Battles trilogy. I have old maps of countries, cities, and territories that have proved invaluable in creating accurate settings in the book.

Another challenge was getting the patois, or dialect of the time and place, right. People spoke differently in 19th-century Kansas than they do today. They dressed differently. They interacted with one another differently. It was a time of face-to-face communication. Telephones were a rarity, and of course, social media back then meant meeting at church, at a barn dance–or, in the case of some people–in a saloon.
Curious Readers Lined up for Billy Battles
Transportation was an adventure. Trains were the fastest way to get from point A to point B–IF there were tracks. Horses were the most common means of moving about. I had to get all of that right down to the sounds, the smells, and so on.
Historical fiction demands accuracy. Otherwise, your readers will not believe your story. We all suspend our disbelief when we read fiction, but even then, we want the story to have a genuine ring to it. You cannot achieve that if you aren’t accurate with the construction of your setting, the behavior of your characters, and the vernacular of the era. Those were all challenges I faced, but I enjoyed facing them–just as I enjoyed facing the long line of curious readers who came to have their Billy Battles books signed at the L.A. Times Festival of Books.
In book two of the Finding Billy Battles trilogy  (The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles), I faced even more challenges because Billy finds himself in French Indochina, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Japan of the 1890s–and those places were a veritable paradise for polyglots, miscreants, spies, and people running away from something, just as Billy Battles is.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of accuracy in developing a historical novel. Readers need to trust you when you describe a place, a city, or an event. They almost want you to have been there so you can present them with an accurate picture of the place and time. For me, recreating 19th-century settings like Lawrence, Denver, Chicago, and New Mexico, among others, was part of the fun of writing. I want my readers to “see” what I am seeing and what my characters are seeing, hearing, and feeling.
As I mentioned in Part One of this blog topic, I prefer to refer to my writing as “Faction.” It is a blend of the journalist’s ability to gather accurate information and the fiction writer’s ability to imagine and create compelling characters and stories.
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(Next: (Part Three) Three Things I Learned While Writing The Finding Billy Battles Trilogy)

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