I can’t quite remember what inspired me to watch Our Flag Means Death . I have a vague recollection of watching a trailer on Facebook and then, eventually, picking up my phone and flicking through various streaming platforms, finally settling on that as my pick. What I was expecting was a farcical pirate romp. Maybe elements of The Muppets’ Treasure Island but with a little more adult content. Lots of hopeless pirates attempting swashbuckling tasks with comically poor results. Possibly a bit of Blackadder -esque historical humour. As anyone who has watched the series would be able to tell you, I was a little way off the mark. In fact, it is a delicious, hilarious and touching tribute to Wokeness. And I say this as a good thing: all people are welcome here. For me, watching it straight after finishing (or getting towards the end of, I can’t quite remember) my novel about Alexander the Great, the relationship between Stede and Blackbeard really resonated with me. What begins as a fascin...
This week is Book Week Scotland, and this month is NaNoWriMo. This makes it a very busy time of year! For me as a writer, these two things have something in common: taking liberties with histories!
One of my favourite books by a Scottish author is Kidnapped. If you didn't love roguish characters before reading this (I always have done!) this book will change your mind, and you'll really be rooting for Alan Breck Stewart by the end. It's a book for all ages, and can be read on several levels.
But, although I loved this book, it taught me one very important thing about historical fiction: it doesn't have to be accurate. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact Robert Louis Stevenson knew the history, but still decided to change it - blatantly change it, too, since the dedication makes reference to it in the first paragraph!
I still love the book, though. It is a brilliant adventure through the countryside I know and love.
This NaNoWriMo, I'm attempting to write an adventure book - historical, of course. I am trying to write something in every genre I can, and this will tick adventure off the list. And I'm taking a few liberties along the way, although not quite so obviously as RLS! History evolves, and fiction is not the only thing which encourages this. There is a slant to each book you read - there has to be, or no one would have bothered writing it.
So, for the sake of my project, a dual-timeline novel called My Cloak Shall Be My Shroud, I'm attempting an approach with a slightly more relaxed attitude to historical accuracy. My hope was that it would be easier to do this and revisit the facts at the end in the editing stage. In practice, I still have eighteen internet windows of research open, mostly concerning the Roman legions in Britain, but ranging to caudles and disembowelled Jacobites.
But do you know what I've found? There is a certain amount of freedom to just writing and writing without having to worry about facts, and I also found I know more than I thought! Incorporating potential supernatural threads allows for a certain lenience, too. Early church history and the mysticism of conversions of the first British martyrs is heavily interwoven in the earlier timeline, and ghosts and shadowy forms haunt the later one. Throwing in these beliefs and superstitions allows a certain amount of artistic interpretation for events. And given the vague nature of timings and dates in that earlier period I, like RLS, have tweaked them to line up with what works for my story.
I'm not sure if this is an approach I'll keep for other projects but I have certainly made a discovery as I've plunged down the NaNoWriMo rabbit hole. Historical fiction does not need to be written as prescriptively as I always have done. I don't think I will ever be able to write a story I know to be inaccurate, but there are plenty of gaps in historical knowledge that we, as writers, can exploit.
In short: historical fiction does not need to be factual so much as true.
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