This summer’s Agents & Editors Conference in Austin provided an opportunity to hear from a range of experts about craft, the publishing process, and more. Breakout sessions the first day of the event hosted by the Writers’ League of Texas included an afternoon one on historical fiction, with an emphasis on how to approach research.
Below are takeaways from the session moderated by the upbeat James Wade, a Hill Country resident and award-winning author of Texas-based historicals. The session featured fellow natives of Texas Elizabeth Crook, whose novels have also been recognized in their own right, as have the lauded works of novelist David Wright Faladé, who is also an English and multi-cultural studies professor in the University of Illinois system.
On the purpose of research, and general approaches to it
Crook—she discussed how important being accurate with historical research is, to the point that someone from the era covered would feel at home. That includes minor details, such as the three days she spent to figure out which stage coach line would have traveled between two towns in 1868: “You have to know the details well enough to not be seen [by someone from that time] as an imposter.” Yet Crook noted that she wasn’t so efficient at doing research early on, such as taking several years to dig into the details for her 1994 book about Texas’s fight for independence from Mexico, Promised Lands: “I now know what to leave out before I ‘put it in the boat’ and weigh the story down.”
Crook shared that selecting the right details is key to that efficiency: “all the backstory should percolate up in small places, throughout” rather than feeling like a history lesson. For example, she talked about using historically accurate phrases like “buckled the mare in the traces” (instead of describing the whole process of getting a horse ready to pull a wagon).
Wright Faladé—he recommended thinking about research as a tool “to understand the context that characters need to be placed in.” He turns to archivists as well as librarians to access good resources, and added that the author’s primary goal, when working with real stories, is to focus on what makes an individual interesting, while dramatizing the reality present for them at the time: “This is the focus, in a specific place and moment.”
On the best content to mine for historical context
Wright Faladé—he favors academic recaps of historical times because of their specificity of detail, and the footnotes of these works to learn interesting bits of color. When covering real people, he also recommends going to the documents they would have been reading at the time to gain a sense of their worldview.
Crook—she echoed the latter, primary document, advice, and also pointed out the value of viewing photos of the time when possible. In addition, she highlighted reading basic books about a subject, using online search engines, talking to experts, and, in her case, mining material in a quarterly publication about the history of the Southwest.
Both authors highlighted the importance of spending time in the location you’re writing about. As Wright Faladé put it, related to character development and more, “It feeds the imagination, to visit the place.”
For capturing dialects, Crook recommended reading letters of the time, diaries/journals, and memoir, both to ground yourself in the rhythm of historical language and in period-specific word choices. Wright Faladé noted reading old newspapers near the place you are covering, as well as looking up words on
the online etymology dictionary, and checking out the posts there by users who discuss nuances of historical word usage.
On the challenge of being accurate with dialogue, vs. readability and cultural sensitivity
Wright Faladé—he had spoken several years ago at a Writers’ League of Texas online workshop about the importance of writers of all backgrounds using the process of depicting characters whose lived experiences differ from their own to deepen empathy for others. In the June 2024 conference, he noted the importance of the balancing act of being true to the voices of another time, while trying to honor individuals’ dignity. In essence, he shared, it’s about not “writing down” when you incorporate vernacular language. As an example, Wright Faladé shared that he might not spell out a specific term phonetically, to avoid othering a character.
He also noted that some readers won’t like how you portray characters, regardless, at times for reasons that relate more to the perspective that’s being shared in a scene: “Voice isn’t just about what’s coming out of your mouth, but the things that you’re saying.”
By Barbra A. Rodriguez
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