Has anybody read Persia Woolley's book on writing Historical fiction?
It was reasonably good in its time, I think, but more for beginners than for writers who already have a fairly good grounding in fiction writing and want to extend and fine-tune their skills and apply them to historical fiction. As I recall, its strong point was research. Since she wrote it, the internet has dramatically transformed the process of researching historical fiction. Of course, the other methods of research she writes about - travel, specialized history books, etc. - remain important.
As far as I'm concerned, no one has yet written the definitive book on the really nitty-gritty details of writing historical fiction: how to choose a language style (modern slang? forsooth-speak? something in-between?), how to balance historical detail and storytelling (Lindsay Davis's most recent novel,
Masters and Gods, has reduced one of my guest reviewers to a state of frothing rage because of the overabundance of historical data and sparseness of story), when and how to sacrifice strict historical accuracy in the interest of telling a coherent and absorbing story, and other problems specific to historical novels. I have a copy of Myfanwy Cook's
Historical Fiction Writing: A practical guide and tool-kit, published in 2011, which addresses a host of these types of issues, but in a way that stresses writing exercises. To me, it seems more geared toward use as a textbook in a writing class than for a writer working on a specific project. I'm not sure how widely available it is - it's from a U.K. small-press publisher.
My favorite writing books, none of them specifically targeted to historical fiction, are:
Donald Maass,
Writing the Breakout Novel
Noah Lukeman,
The First Five Pages
Noah Lukeman,
The Plot Thickens
) I have another agenda here: I have forgotten the names/authors of two books I liked very much and loaned out (never to see again). The first was the one featuring the use of scenes and sequels.
