The Art of Historical Fiction:
A professional historian looks at writing history


I didn't start out as an historian.

My undergrad degree is in creative writing from the University of Florida, where I studied with Harry Crews, Brandon Kershner, and Padgett Powell.  I've edited manuscripts for published friends, written a few of my own, and been told I'm a pretty good structural editor.  My entry into history came through a back door, and I'll be eternally grateful to Gene Borza for not laughing his head off in late 1991 when I called him about the possibility of coming to Penn State to study Macedonian history -- even though I didn't have a single history degree to my name, nor any [useful] language.  So here I am, a history professor, despite the fact I've spent more years dealing with fiction than with formal history and I headed up the literary magazine in my high school, not the Latin club.

Life's a funny thing.

But that should explain why I keep a website about Alexander fiction, and why I started collecting ATG novels in the first place.  I was a writer before I became an historian -- which isn't to say I don't take history seriously.  (Unfortunately, some might assume so.)  Yet when I discuss historical fiction, it's as much the writer talking as the trained historian.

Still, I wonder if, at the root of it, the pursuit of both history and fiction doesn't spring from the same basic need?  By our very natures, we human beings are meaning-seeking, meaning-making creatures.  We don't just live out our lives, we take the mass of disconnected daily details and interpret them, find coherence in them, and -- if we're lucky -- arrive at some deeper meaning . . . even if that meaning is just to recognize the mundane grace in being alive.  Some of us interpret our lives a little more than others, and some make a grand performance of the whole thing: "All of life's a stage . . ."  But myself, I've always preferred, "The unexamined life isn't worth living."

I grew up with one foot in a culture that regards storytelling as teaching, not just entertainment.  Both my grandfathers told stories, but one told stories that meant something.  He never got beyond an 8th grade education while here I sit with a Ph.D, hoping that one day, I live to be as wise as he was.  That's my tradition.  My mother told stories, and so did her brother and another sister, and now, so do I.  My niece tells stories in her art, and one of my cousins directs theater.  We're a family of storytellers.  It's sacred business.  I even use stories in my classes -- which I think my students basically enjoy, but some aren't too sure what to do with because it's not standard Western pedagogy, especially when I don't then lay out the salient points in nice bullet-style format.  I want them to string the beads themselves.

Thus, I'm a big believer in narrative instruction.  Stories touch the capacity of the heart, move us in ways visceral as much as intellectual.  They inspire us to good or to evil.  They're powerful things -- strong medicine -- and should be treated with due respect.  They move us so deeply precisely because we don't live amputated at the neck.  The best stories evoke our passion and compassion both.

That's my reason for finding historical fiction as valid in its own way as history.  I realize that some have real questions about the validity of turning history into fiction.  It's a philosophical issue, based at least partly on the notion that fiction is 'false' and history is 'true.'  Historians pursue what happened while fiction authors are happy to twist what happened, if that suits the plot.  Yet Flannery O'Connor said, "Fiction is after truth," and there are several kinds of truth.  As long as one keeps that in mind, I see no reason not to make room for both fiction and history.  I'm rather dubious of 'objectivity' anyway as either valid or attainable.  Our human mortality leaves us caught in our own historicity, and we fool ourselves if we think we aren't.  If ontological truth exists, we can't know it.  Yet I do think honesty is attainable, and maybe it's honesty that we're really after.  We may come closest to objectivity when we realize just how subjective we are.  That allows us to use our experiences -- not be used by them.

Historical fiction is never really about who any given historical figure actually was, but with who we are now and what it's possible for us to become -- or what we might want to avoid at all costs.  And in truth, don't we study the past in order to understand where we're going now, too . . . and what we might want to avoid at all costs?  Pursuing the details can be fun -- I'm one of those nutty people who actually enjoys spending hours in a big research library chasing down epigraphical evidence for the origin of a name -- but it's never purely an antiquarian pursuit for me.  I find myself asking, 'What's the POINT of this?  What do we learn about ourselves in the process?'

There are two basic types of historical fiction, and I don't mean publishing genre categories.  To my mind, the primary division is between historical fiction and historical allegory.  While as I said above, historical fiction is never really about who any given historical figure was, the sleight-of-hand is less evident.  The mark of good historical fiction lies in the quality of research as well as how effectively the author draws the reader into the world of the story.

Historical allegory, however, succeeds or fails by the strength of the symbolic hermaneutic between the past and the present.  The veil between past and present is mighty sheer -- and should be.  One of the best examples of historical allegory that I've found in ATG fiction is Indo-Irishman Aubrey Menen's wickedly funny A Conspiracy of Women.  Ostensibly, the book is about the final years of Alexander's reign, his time in India, and the mass weddings that followed.  But it's really about the British in India and the clash of an imperialistic nation with a Traditional one.  It holds up a mirror so we can see ourselves more clearly.  (A longer review of the book.)

Menen isn't always true to history.  Yet if he were, the story wouldn't have worked half so well, and his liberties didn't bother me because they had a thematic point.  It's metaphorical truth not historical.  I don't like it when authors of historical-anything make Big Neon Boo-boos from a failure to do their homework.  That's lazy writing, and "But it's just fiction!" doesn't impress me as an excuse.  If one doesn't want to be bothered with a little background-check, then write something else that doesn't require it.  I'm fairly unyielding on that score.  Or, to quote something Judy Tarr used to say, "Practice the art of getting it right."

Nonetheless, one of the issues that faces the author of historical fiction is just how dot-i-cross-t accurate one ought to be.  Ultimately, authors can get away with exactly what they can get away with, based on their own raw skill.  But some things are prohibitive.  Consider, for instance, the number of guys named "Amyntas" at the Macedonian court.  Greekish names are odd enough to English speakers unfamiliar with them anyway.  Does the aspiring author really want to dump every Amyntas in Macedonia on her readers and make them wade?

I thought not.  A little common sense (and a judicious weeding of the Cast of Characters) is the sort of adjustment that's not only forgivable, but even desirable.  Conflate, combine, clarify.  It's okay to ask the reader to work a little -- AS a reader, I prefer it when an author doesn't insult my intelligence.  Nonetheless, requiring the reader to construct a flowchart and stemma to keep track of everyone is going a bit far.

Furthermore, the author will have to choose a solution to the several and varied controversies in Alexander studies.  Just who DID kill Philip?  Was Philotas guilty of conspiracy, stupidity, or flat framed?  And what, exactly, happened with the Pixodarus Affair?  (Just to name a few.)  One must also make some decisions about personalities.  Ancient historians may shy from writing biography these days, but the author of historical fiction needs to present well-rounded, 3D characters.  So was Olympias really the bitch that Plutarch's portrays, or an early Epirote proponent of Grrl Power?  Of course, the shrewd author will construct something a bit more complicated, or Olympias won't be either interesting or believable (or appropriately historical).  Nonetheless, rendering dimly realized characters in an effort not to impose personal opinion on the past simply isn't an option.

Sometimes, too, historical fiction presents the author with questions the historian doesn't have to consider in quite the same way.  For instance, Philip was murdered in a VERY full theater.  Just how did they get everybody out of there without a mob scene?  Or was it a mob scene?  The histories don't really tell us aside from Alexandros of Lynkestis banging on his breastplate in support of Alexandros of Macedon -- and was that right after the murder, with Philip's body cooling at his son's feet, or was it later in the day?  If one is writing a story, one must fill in the blanks, or iron out what doesn't make sense.

In general, I think there ought to be a good reason for messing with the historical record significantly.  E.g., as Waldemar Heckel has shown,* Ptolemy, Erygios and Nearchos were all probably older advisors to ATG, rather than contemporaries, but if one were writing a novel about ATG as a boy, then tweaking their ages in order to reduce the number of unfamiliar names floating about might be perfectly valid.  Or suppose Alexander wasn't Philip's son?  Lord knows, that rumor ran around even in antiquity.  An author might make it true for the sake of a terrific potential plotline.  Use a change cleverly and I'll forgive such a profound historical alteration.  But make Parmenion a Spartan for no apparent reason beyond phil-spartany (yes, I'm inventing words now) . . . well, that's strikes me as flat silly.  (See David Gemmel's Lion of Macedon.)  There are logical alterations, and then there are changes that apparently beamed in from Mars.

Nonetheless, a historical novel still won't cut the mustard -- fact-check or no fact-check -- unless the WORLDVIEW is correct.  The historical novelist has to 'grok' it, to borrow a term.  Historical fiction -- when it's well done -- shouldn't be a costume drama with what amounts to 20th/21st century people (with 20th/21st century attitudes) parading around in short tunics and death-by-purple.  (See the observations of my friend, author Kate Elliott, on world-building . . . it's for fantasy, but it applies to historicals, too:  The Fully Realized World.)

The past is a foreign country.  Human beings may all experience the same emotions -- we laugh, cry, get hopping mad -- but what events evoke those emotions can vary.  A lot.  One of the reasons I admire the work of Mary Renault and Judith Tarr is that they (mostly) get the attitudes right -- the worldview.  Even if one may quibble with points, their ancient Greeks largely think like ancient Greeks, not modern Westerners.  Yet they're not so alien that we can't understand them.  That's how you do it -- make the past intelligible to the present, but let it be the past.  That's what constitutes GOOD historical fiction of whatever genre stripe . . . mainstream, historical fantasy, historical mystery, alternate history, etc.

Yet when it comes to historical allegory, things change.  Part of why historical allegory succeeds is because the "historical" characters aren't historical.  It is a costume drama, but a costume drama with a point that should pierce us with a new perspective.  It's ironic that we often see ourselves most clearly when we catch a glimpse of our shadow out of the corner of our eyes.  In fact, a historical allegory would fail if the characters weren't recognizable as something other than what they appear to be.  Richard Adams wasn't writing about rabbits in Watership Down, and Aubrey Menen wasn't writing about Macedonians, either.  So historical allegory is a different animal than historical fiction in terms of both technique and goal -- and they shouldn't be mistaken for one another, or judged by the same kanōn.

Jeanne Reames
(No portion of this text may be used without the author's permission)

--------

Heckel's article is "The Boyhood Friends of Alexander the Great," Emerita 53 (1985) 285-89.

kanōn = measuring stick.

BEYOND RENAULT: Alexander the Great in Fiction