Fable & The Verbivore

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Episode 185: Historical fiction part 2

Bethany Stedman

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Ep 185: Historical fiction part 2 Fable & The Verbivore

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This week on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re talking about historical settings and how they can be employed in fiction.

As we open this conversation, we talk about how some historical settings have a specific tone or feel that have been used so often in books and films that they can almost function as a shorthand. Settings like Victorian London, Regency England, or Ancient Greece are so familiar to an audience that very little work is needed to convey what these places are like. Whereas less well known settings require more work to set up and build a foundation for the time and place in the mind of a reader.

When thinking about setting, we touch on these key things:

  • Try to find direct experiential resources that can help accurately bring a setting to life. Things like visiting the place in person, historical photos, historical videos, direct eye witness reports, or nonfiction books on a time and place can all help

  • Establish sensory details (using the five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell) found either through your research or through your own imagination and creation

  • Recognize that a place can have an aura beyond just the things we can interact with physically through our senses. A place can have a feeling, a flavor, and an energy to it and stories can either lean into that or show something that flips it on its head

  • Be open to any events during the time period that naturally create conflict or drama that fits well within the story you’re telling or that can’t be overlooked do to their wide reaching impact during the timeframe 

  • Read other fictional books within your historical setting to see what others have done can help lay a foundation for the time and place and if those authors list their sources in a bibliography within the book consider checking those resources out

Throughout this discussion, the Verbivore talks a little about the settings in the historical fiction books that she’s working on. This includes some of her research into the setting of Papua New Guinea during WWII and the feel of a Speakeasy during the Prohibition era as well as how the research that she did into the time and period has impacted the settings that were ultimately included in her stories.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be talking more about the topic of book research.

We hope you enjoy this episode. Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore references a Star Trek: The Next Generation noir episode that has stuck with her over time and is one source of inspiration for a mytery she’s working on writing. That episode is from Season 1: Episode 11 and is called “The Big Goodbye”.

The Verbivore references some resources listed in an article about researching a particular historical setting from an Australian author who has written some novels set in the Victorian era. That article is on her website KatClay.com under the title “How to effectively research historical fiction”. She also has a good YouTube Video on this same topic under her Kat Clay account titled “How to Research Historical Fiction”.

Here are a few articles and videos we referenced for this conversation:

Books and Films Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)