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WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

Spinning a Yarn out of History: How to Craft a Plot from your Historical Obsession

February 24, 2022 by Guest Contributor

By E. C. Ambrose

Some of the most compelling fiction arises out of the writer’s engagement with a narrow aspect of history.  It might be an event with an exciting impact on the people involved or the future of nations.  Many authors come to historical fiction because of a personal connection to a distant time and place, and their writing explores the experiences of people who lived in that milieu.  My obsession is early technology, and my latest novel was sparked by a footnote.

So how do you transform a passion for history into a compelling narrative?  

Begin by framing your concept: the specific niche in history you’d like to write into, and why it excites you. Are you most excited about the setting, the event, the people, or perhaps the transformation around one of those elements? Freewriting about your enthusiasm can hone your focus.  Capture this excitement in a brief statement to guide the choices you make as you brainstorm narrative ideas. If you’re developing a counterfactual or supernatural story, be sure to integrate that direction.

I organize my ideas using a spreadsheet for a timeline, characters, specific locations, scene ideas, etc.  You may prefer a notebook with dividers, or some other format.  The earlier you can settle on a system, the easier it will be to exploit your notes, both historical and fictional.

Now that you know where (and when) to begin, consider how to build a story about that concept.  Here are a few questions to guide you.

1. Where is the most striking conflict in this concept?

What is at stake?  A battle might be life or death for the soldiers on the field. It might be existential for the future of the region or intensely personal for the groom who tends the warhorses. 

Each of these levels can make an engaging narrative, and will suggest the character(s) involved as well as the breadth of the story.  A larger, more complicated conflict signals the need for a larger structure to fully reveal it. If you’d like to craft a short story instead, look for a more intimate view into the conflict and explore that impact.  Incorporating several layers of conflict adds richness, and shows why this character is invested in this particular conflict. That helps the reader to develop a rooting interest in what happens to them.

2. Who has the most to gain or lose in your concept? 

This suggests possible characters. To tell the complete story of the battle, you may need characters who have a top-down view like generals or nobility, as well as participants on the battlefield.  These affected characters may not all have a narrative perspective in the work, but the protagonist’s encounters with them will reveal new insights.  What additional layers of internal or personal conflict will these characters contribute because of who they are, the roles they play, or their own background?  Characters with opposing views illuminate the history in a more three-dimensional way.  Creating a cast list of the people most impacted, and how they relate to each other can help you imagine scenes and personal moments to build your plot.

Whose stories dominate the current narrative around the history and whose stories haven’t been told? Are you the right author to reveal lesser-known narratives? If you can respectfully present a new perspective, especially on a familiar or perennial historical moment, that can help to set your work apart.

3. What aspects of the milieu are most critical for readers to understand the concept and story? 

How can you reveal those aspects in the most engaging way?  Lectures, backstory and summary are the bane of historical narratives.  Instead, look for ways to embed historical details and context into scenes, through what characters experience, do, or understand. Deliver information through action or discovery, using sensory details to show the setting.  As your reader experiences scenes alongside your characters, they will absorb the historical backdrop those characters inhabit without needing lengthy passages of exposition. My spreadsheet includes a column for brainstorming how to deliver the historical context my reader will need.

In particular, avoid explanatory dialog in which characters simply tell one another the information you want the reader to have.  Instead, consider conflicts and opposing characters.  Can they withhold, discover or argue about the information instead of simply delivering it?

4. What expectations will readers already have about this concept? 

Reader expectations can enhance or distract from your story. For instance, readers of a Titanic novel are aware the ship will sink, and that creates added tension. Which of the characters will survive and how?  If your work contradicts reader expectations, either because it’s a counterfactual or fantastical narrative, or because those expectations are flawed, you’ll need to carefully frame the contradictions to draw the reader closer rather than losing their trust because the author appears to have their facts wrong.

As these questions spark ideas for scenes, add those to your notes. Look for ways to increase the conflicts and raise the stakes through arranging those scenes for maximum impact. I use notecards, dealing out possible story and character arcs until I arrive at the most compelling version, or know what I need to brainstorm next.  Spinning your historical grist into these narrative elements should deliver plenty of material to weave your concept into a story.

Like E.C. Ambrose, graduates of the Odyssey Writing Workshop often go on to expertly tackle big ideas in their fiction. Lectures by E.C. Ambrose and other top writers will be included in this year’s Your Personal Odyssey, a breakthrough program for writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Your Personal Odyssey is a one-on-one online writing workshop combining the intensive, advanced Odyssey lectures with expert feedback and deep mentoring in an experience designed to maximize your learning and improvement. The 2022 application deadline is April 1. Scholarships are available.

E. C. Ambrose writes knowledge-inspired adventure fiction, including DRAKEMASTER (Guardbridge, April 2022) about a clockwork doomsday device based on Su Song’s astronomical clock of 1090 CE, the Dark Apostle series about medieval surgery, and the Bone Guard archaeological thrillers.  She is a graduate of, and sometime instructor for, the Odyssey Speculative Fiction Workshop, and lives in the blustery Granite State where she thinks of plot twists from the bench of her floor loom. Find her on Facebook or visit her website to learn about all of her work.

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Filed Under: Guest Post, Writing Craft

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Roberta Eaton Cheadle says

    March 3, 2022 at 12:05 am

    Thank you for this useful post.

  2. Jessica03 says

    February 28, 2022 at 5:44 am

    Thanks for sharing such a useful information

  3. BECCA PUGLISI says

    February 24, 2022 at 10:01 am

    It doesn’t matter how many books are published; there will always be story fodder from so many sources. Love it.

    • E. C. Ambrose says

      February 24, 2022 at 2:49 pm

      Indeed! It feels like there’s always something new to be learned, even from the most familiar aspects of history–or any other field of study. Thanks for reading!

  4. ANGELA ACKERMAN says

    February 24, 2022 at 9:49 am

    It’s always neat what sort of research nuggets spark stories. Thanks so much for the great ideas here. 🙂

    • E. C. Ambrose says

      February 24, 2022 at 2:49 pm

      Thanks for reading. What do you find sparks your own stories?

      • ANGELA ACKERMAN says

        February 25, 2022 at 10:31 am

        For me, it can be anything – seeing a plastic bag caught in a tree limb and hearing it flap in the wind, or one of my kids posing a certain way, or even a mental flash of something that makes no sense (a gemstone embedded in the back of someone’s hand) and I have to follow the rabbit trail as to why that image/sound/etc. is important. 🙂

  5. Mindy Alyse Weiss says

    February 24, 2022 at 6:08 am

    Thanks for sharing this helpful post with us! I love that your latest novel was sparked by a footnote.

    • E. C. Ambrose says

      February 24, 2022 at 8:24 am

      Thanks for reading! Yes, that footnote was quite the rabbit hole! It was a reference to Joseph Needham’s landmark encyclopedia, the Science and Civilization of China, and remarked on “the vermilion pens of the ladies secretarial” whose job it was, in imperial China, to write down accurate horoscopes for imperial sons. Needless to say, I had to read more!

Trackbacks

  1. 🖋 Writing Links Round Up 5/30 – B. Shaun Smith says:
    May 30, 2022 at 3:37 pm

    […] Spinning a Yarn out of History: How to Craft a Plot from your Historical Obsession […]

  2. Spinning a Yarn out of History: How to Craft a Plot from your Historical Obsession – WRITERS HELPING WRITERS® – Sharon E. Cathcart says:
    March 2, 2022 at 10:41 pm

    […] Spinning a Yarn out of History: How to Craft a Plot from your Historical Obsession – WRITERS H… […]

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