History as a Partner in Story - Part I: It’s Flow

Queen Elizabeth I

The challenge in writing non-fiction is to craft it so that it comes across like a novel and the challenge in writing a novel to make it as believable, at least in some aspects, as a work of nonfiction.

The fact that I have a limited grasp on history has turned out to be a real obstacle in developing context for the book project I’m working on. It’s my first fiction work, unless you count the NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month) project, which I did a few years ago. It entailed writing a 50,000-word book in thirty days. It was so much fun – but hardly shelf ready after just a month.

Now that I’m involved in a serious project, fiction is proving to be much harder than I thought. I’m primarily a non-fiction lover. And so it’s important to me that my characters be believable, that they behave in believable ways and live in a believable world, especially since the story I’m working on takes place in a real world scenario.

My character lives in London in the Elizabethan Era, so I dove right in and started reading The English and Their History by Robert Tombs. It’s a tome of over one thousand pages if you count the notes and index. And though at times I feel like I’m slogging my way through, mostly it’s really exhilarating.

One of my strong signature strengths is learning, so I’m actually kind of in Paradise discovering all this stuff about a subject I knew so little of. There are so many nuances to the unfolding of events, so many tributaries, so many influences; Viking, French, German, Scottish, Irish. It’s difficult to stay with the main flow of England’s history. But that boundary marker, staying with the main flow has been very helpful.

To think of history as a river, to understand that the water I’m standing in right now has come from somewhere and it’s also going somewhere, that metaphor has helped me to get a bigger picture, to establish context while keeping the main thing, the main thing.

For example Parliament’s legislative and executive powers weren’t born overnight. It was a rather torturous road from monarchy to the electorate. The Elizabethan Era had a part in those changes. Understanding the politics of a place, the powers that be, and the struggles for change help create a sort of empathy with the day-to-day struggles of a people. That understanding helps me to “be there.” I’m working on getting a feel for the context and standing for a while in the “river” of history looking backward to where the flow has come from and forward to where it may go.

Our own stories also need the help of context or the flow of history to bring their innate depth and richness to light. It matters that I’m a child of the 50’s. The home-life dictated by that culture, “king of the castle” and all that goes with it, shaped my upbringing. As a teen, the cultural revolution of the 60’s marked me. I can’t even really know myself unless I know where I stand in the river’s flow.

My father was born at the beginning of WWI. He came of age between the two wars, in the midst of the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and gangland violence. I needed to know that, to let it sink in somewhere deep in my knower before I could try to write about him.

What might be beckoning you to step into the river of history’s flow?

Writing Prompt for the Week: A Character of Interest