One of the reasons I've never tackled historical fiction before now is that I can't decide which period to concentrate on. Obviously – well, to me anyway – it takes a deal of research and study to get the details right, so it’s best to concentrate on one period, right?

Trouble is I flit, like a bee, from one era to another. I love anything medieval, but I’m also fascinated by the Georgian period. The civil war is irresistible and the Victorians were so innovative and interesting, weren’t they…

How to chose?

Dee

I know, it's all so yummy, isn't it. One way round is to think about all the other things you want to explore in the novel, and go for a period of history which for social/cultural/historical reasons gives you the opportunity to do that. Hyper-civilised with dirty underbelly, to explore hypocrisy? Victorians. Social/intellectual/religious instability, to explore a society in flux? Elizabethan. Hunger and social unrest is met with political repression fearful of revolution? Post-Waterloo. And so on.

Emma

For me, it is very tempting to stick with one period to avoid having to research the 'everyday' background things, (clothing, food, lighting etc), but I also think it can get too comfortable.

I love the Georgian period and have written one novel set at that time, so at first it seemed obvious to keep the second one in the 18th century too. The trouble is, the subject matter is much more suited to the Victorian era, and I have had to make the decision not to try to shoehorn it into 1780. This change will also let me introduce a particular real-life historical figure who was born in 1834, rather than making up a similar character.

When it comes to reading, I much prefer hist fic set outside my main period of interest, otherwise I find that I am reading it for the writing and detail rather than for the story. (Plus I get jealous that they've done it better than me.)

Caro

Victorians. Defo.

The Big Bang?
Go on, write a novel set in it, I dare you...

LOL, Leila! OK, how's this for an opening line...

'Did anyone else hear that noise?'

Dee

Sarah Waters says she couldn't write anything set earlier than Victorian - couldn't get into their heads well enough.

I don't have a cutoff like that, but it's certainly true that the further back you go, the more of an imaginative leap you have to make, and the more likely you are to get it wrong. On the other hand, aren't imaginative leaps just what writing hist fic's all about?

Emma

Aha - interesting question! For me, part of the pleasure of writing historical fiction is finding things out. I love the research. The difficult part is knowing when to stop. So, I would love the idea of writing a novel set in a period and place I knew very little about and had to start almost from scratch. Oh, hang on - I already did that!

I love the idea of a novel set in the big bang.

Sarah Waters says she couldn't write anything set earlier than Victorian - couldn't get into their heads well enough.

That's definitely true for me, too. Though I do not, in general, compare myself to the Mighty Sarah.

Actually, I'm thinking my next one will be 'Jesus Christ Superstar - The Novel.' I watched the dubious seventies movie-musical the other night. Very inspirational, I must say. How long ago was that?

<Added>

Ok. Got it. 2007 years.

I like to create historical periods: sci-fi.

I do creative visualisations with writers, and in one of them, one of the most popular, I 'talk them into' their own chosen moment in history. I've run this particular viz with upwards of 30 people, and by far the most often 'chosen moment' has been the Great Fire of London. Whether that's because it's taught at school and they feel they have some kind of handle on it, or because it sparks (if you'll pardon the pun!) the imagination is difficult to assess. When I ask, very often, they can't actually tell me why they went for that.

Zoe, that's very interesting. I suppose it's very familiar history - a real 1066 And All That moment - but also, for most of us, a situation that we've never been in, but can enter imaginatively - fire's fire, after all.

One of the built-in difficulties of hist fic, I find, is that if you use a well-known period, it's very difficult to get away from the well-known things about it and write something fresh for you and your reader, whereas if you use a little-known one, however well you know it you have to sneak in an awful lot of explaining without succumbing to info-dump. Or cut the explaining, and pray that your readers are happy without it. I've resorted to a historical note at the end of the WIP, by way of squaring that particular circle.

Emma

It's an interesting condundrum, as you say, Emma. If you choose a little known 'history', the temptation must be there to be 'creative' partly because at some level, you imagine you can get away with it, but also because any recorded history will only ever be part of the story, so the scope is there. I've hardly written any historical fiction but I do enjoy reading it, so I'm thinking maybe it's something I might explore further. I wrote a flash piece recently about someone, and the more I read up on her and what happened to her, the more I felt 'hey, there's a novel here!' but sadly, it's already been done. And when you're writing about real people, just how much licence can you allow yourself?

When you're writing your fictions, how 'passionate' are you about your subject matter at the beginning? Do you write as a result of an existing passion or does the passion arise out of your research? Or is it both?

And when you're writing about real people, just how much licence can you allow yourself?

I'm writing about real people at the moment, and it's very tricky: I won't knowingly go against historical fact, but how far am I obliged to find out, say, about how the ladies-in-waiting system worked? I might want to, if it threw up interesting things (they did six months on and six months off - if you were the Queen, your closest confidante would suddenly not be there). But if I want to have the same confidante in two different scenes, even though the calendar (or even the historical record) dictates that she wouldn't have been, can I?

I do find myself deliberately not trying to find things out, not just because it might take too long, but so that I'm not tied in by inconvenient facts.

I'd always want 'creative' to win over 'accurate' if they're incompatible, but I'm very aware that some people read hist fic to get their history lite, and I suspect it's these guys who get so twitchy about historical facts being accurate. But if you want history, I find myself saying crossly, go buy a history book. This is fiction. On the other hand, how do you do 'convincing' when you separate it from 'true'...

The new novel is actually, at one (well-buried, don't worry, oh Tesco Book Buying Dept.) level an examination of what, exactly, is happening when we write historical fiction.

Do you write as a result of an existing passion or does the passion arise out of your research? Or is it both?

It depends. Sometimes I have something I want to explore about some basic human things, and wander around in my mental historical atlas till I find a time that seems to embody those questions in the way that wider world ticks. Sometimes I long to pin down the 'feel' of a particular historical period, and have wait for the right people to come along to live in it. With this one I was watching the Henry VI plays for the first time, and just knew I had to write about one of the characters - though her brother now has an equal share of the novel. Often it starts with seeing a person in a place - the clothes give me the period, and the place the beginning of the story - why, when, what happens next...

Zoe, if you fancy hist fic, I hope you'll go for it. The research isn't nearly as hard as you'd think, and you can do most of it online. And the frocks are so much more fun!

Emma

The new novel is actually, at one (well-buried, don't worry, oh Tesco Book Buying Dept.) level an examination of what, exactly, is happening when we write historical fiction.

That sounds fascinating, Emma. A very interesting theme.