In Alan Bennet’s The History Boys, history is famously explained as ‘One bloody thing after another,’ but, as the eccentric schoolteacher Hector explains: ‘The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.’
That’s one of the reasons historical fiction has such appeal. The hand that reaches out to us from a vanished world where hands held different objects, where skin was clothed in different fabrics, where many scents and tastes are unknown to us, where much of the everyday physical experience is strange and unusual: these things play a key part in making that connection both poignant and powerful.
And for writers, a central element in creating that vanished world is the use of period detail. Here are three tips which might help writers use such detail effectively.
1. Do the research and make every effort to get it right. Devotees of the genre, and of particular periods, not only expect such detail, they expect it to be right and are more than happy to point out when it’s wrong.
Try to use a wide range of sources besides the rabbit hole of the internet and question every historical fact you think you know, and never take the word of a single source.
Use books, obviously, but illustrated books of objects can be particularly useful. Objects and information in museums are other great sources of period detail: domestic pottery, weapons, clothing, everyday implements, personal hygiene objects, the list is endless. and sometimes the smallest, most insignificant object, can, used wisely, have a major impact.
If possible visit the places you wish to feature, walk the streets, and the landscapes, note the scale of things, the buildings, the perspectives.
The internet is both a chest of marvels and a repository of half-truths and falsehoods. When Raymond Carver wrote a story about Chekhov’s death he invented details and included a fictional character. Some subsequent biographies now include reference to that character. An untruth, hijacked by history!
2. Stop the research! Accept that you could go on forever, accept that much as you are addicted to it, you must decide at some point, to stop and concentrate on writing the story! For, in the end, it is the central story, and the characters who make up that story, that matter most.
It’s ok to be fixated on a single detail and pursue it relentlessly, as did Hilary Mantel in regard to the colour of the wallpaper in Anne Boleyn’s chambers, but there will come a time when the writer has to let go and use what they have and what fits the needs of the story.
3. Exercise restraint. Period detail can inform, delight and resonate with your reader. But it is not the story. It can serve to create a sense of time and place, and put us in the shoes of those long gone, but it is not the story. Period detail needs to be in the background, a backdrop rather than centre stage. The depth and detail of your research can give you confidence and suppleness, but you don’t need to demonstrate it on every page.
Hilary Mantel’s estimates that, at the most, the reader only needs to know about one tenth of what you know. Which is hard, given how much effort you’ve put into your research, and how much enjoyment you’ve got out of it. But a steady drip feed of apposite period detail seasons the dish wonderfully, where a great flood of it overwhelms the reader’s appetite and shouts, ‘look at me and my knowledge!’
Contributed by Rob Bray
leicesterwritersclub.com 