HNSNA Mini-Conference: Writing the Past with Authenticity, per Susan Meissner

I wrote last year about attending the virtual conference sponsored by the Historical Novel Society North America (HNSNA). This year, the major Historical Novel Society conference was in England, and I was not able to go. (Someday, maybe I can attend a foreign writing conference.)

HNSNA sponsored the mini-conference on July 23 as a teaser for their next full conference in 2023. I signed up for the mini-conference and listened to several of the sessions. I have until late in August to watch the other sessions.

Of the sessions I have listened to so far, my favorite was Susan Meissner’s advice on writing historical fiction with authenticity. Her advice covered the pre-writing stages of idea generation and research as well as the writing phase.

The rest of this post focuses on what Susan had to say about the writing phase. She offered five tips on drafting a historical novel (which follow in bold), with my own thoughts on these points added.

With respect to drafting your novel, Susan reminded us that the story is king, not the history. A story is about a character who wants something and has to struggle to get it. History, of course, is full of real people who fit this mold, and many writers of historical fiction include real people as characters—even as main characters. But real life is not built around plot points. So as you write, find or create the story, don’t rely on history to give it to you, even if you are writing about real historical figures.

Susan also said to strive for authenticity, not total accuracy. It’s more important to make your story world feel true than to have it be completely accurate in every detail. Verisimilitude—the appearance of reality—will bring the past to life and still leave room for the story to emerge. In other words, don’t worry if you don’t get the history absolutely right. (In fact, Katherine Clements, another historical fiction writer, said exactly this when she presented to the Historical Novel Society, Heartland Chapter, later in July.)

Make your historical setting a character. This point really rang true for me. When I wrote my first historical novel, Lead Me Home, my early readers told me that the harsh and inhospitable land my emigrant characters passed through as they traveled the Oregon Trail was a character. Much of the conflict and tension came from the travelers’ struggles to survive in an alien land. So look for where issues in the past add to your story.

Do not include info dumps in your novel. Ever. Authors of historical fiction never find places for all the research facts they have discovered. If you try, you will lose the story. You, the author, must be invisible in the story. Showing off what you have learned will bore the reader. It’s a real temptation for beginning writers to want to include everything. But as you gain experience, you can find ways to insert nuggets that give the flavor of the period without overdoing it.

Susan ended with the advice that historical novelists should read great historical fiction. Her novel, A Fall of Marigolds, which I have read, is a great example of a dual timeline novel. One timeline related to a nurse on Ellis Island after the Shirtwaist Triangle fire in September 1911, and the other timeline, in September 2011, focused on a woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Many dual timeline novels focus on one era at the expense of the other. I didn’t feel that way about A Fall of Marigolds.

I read a lot of genre historical novels that aren’t—and don’t aspire to be—great literary fiction. But I try with every book I read to glean something about the craft of writing. In some, I find great characters with quirky personalities or surprising depths. In others, the plot structure and twists engage my curiosity. In others, I admire the writer’s ability to bring out humor or grief or another emotion, which is something I struggle with in my writing. In still others, the setting or time period are places and eras about which I know little and can learn a lot.

I rarely decide a novel has nothing to offer me, though I do find some quite boring, often because, as Susan Meissner said, authors let history take precedence over the story.

What do you look for when you read historical fiction?