My Goldilocks Paradigm
For me, one of the major challenges in writing historical fiction is balancing my intellectual need to stay true to the facts of the real-life events that inspire my stories with my desire to write page-turning novels that are relatable to audiences today. Often I find myself walking this treacherous path of what to leave in, what to change, or what to leave out.
This is my Goldilocks Paradigm: not overwriting nor underwriting, but getting the scenes “just right.” Just like Goldilocks in the fairytale, I need to “try it out” before I know whether I’ve got the balance between fiction and truth correct. This often means writing a scene and letting it settle in both my mind and on paper, then going back to it later to gauge how it feels. Is there too much detail? Or not enough to feel authentic?
For example, just as many of us are discussing the results of the recent election, my characters in The Grays of Truth were most likely talking about President Johnson’s impeachment trial in 1868. Initially, I completely overwrote that scene in Chapter 26, going into entirely too much detail about impeachment procedures in both the dialog and the narrative. After letting the scene settle for a bit, I took a hatchet to it. I made the trial reference in the dialog much more casual, which served to authenticate the conversation at the supper table (and to immerse the reader into the time period) without bogging down the story.
Another big challenge is deciding which real-life people to exclude from my version of events, and whether or not to create composite characters to represent those people. In Veil of Doubt, Maggie Greene was one of those composite figures that I struggled with initially. At first, she played her real life self: a woman that Powell was romantically involved with while in Staunton. In my dramatization, I decided to have her follow Powell to Leesburg, allowing their relationship to continue and compromise his marriage to Janet (which was not true in real-life). When I realized this entanglement might infuriate my readers (and Powell’s descendants), I changed the nature of their relationship and decided to “merge” Maggie with the widow of Powell’s friend who died at Gettysburg. The next change came when I decided to combine two of the witnesses at Emily Lloyd’s trial into Maggie’s character. None of these women played a significant role in the true story and including all of these characters individually in the book would have overwhelmed the reader. But when I combined them into a sinlge “Maggie” character, she became an interesting persona, adding texture and tension to the plot.
My rule in writing historical fiction is to stay true to the spirit of the story. This does not mean that every aspect of the story is historically accurate. That’s the role of non-fiction. When I change real-life details to escalate stakes and improve pacing, I am careful not to compromise the overall integrity of the story. This is not easy. But by giving myself permission to sometimes deviate from the truth, I am able to bring the past alive and make it relevant and relatable to the modern reader–you!
