Emma Darwin on Writing Historical Fiction

This is the second volume that I’ve read devoted specifically to the subject of writing historical fiction, and it is the better of the two by far. It provides a good practical nuts and bolts approach to the crafting of stories in this most demanding of loose and baggy genres, focusing primarily upon the novel. If exercises should be your thing, then Darwin provides plenty of them peppered throughout the text to get your creative juices flowing. Her lengthy experience as both a tutor of creative writing and a novelist truly shows through here, and whereas some other books I’ve read on the practice of writing tend to contain a fair amount of waffle, this one doesn’t. It is packed with useful suggestions, and would likely be useful to anyone looking to write in a different genre.

One of the many things that I liked about this book was that it cautioned against the slavish following of advice dished out by any one author, as every writer has their own stylistic bent, and what is ‘right’ for a predominantly American readership might grate with some UK readers and vice versa. Every author has to find their own individual voice, as well as their readership, with the latter being one of the hardest tasks of all, not least because of genre constraints and expectations. Darwin touches upon several of the subgenres of historical fiction such as adventure and thriller, crime and mystery, and comedy to name but three, but alas she does not touch upon my own: the rather idiosyncratic combination of ‘horror’, historical fiction, and, more often than not, comedy.

As with every book I have read on writing and publishing, she emphasises the importance of submitting your manuscript to professionals in the sphere of copy editing and proofreading, although her text in the final two chapters provides ineloquent testimony to their fallibility in the form of a considerable number of typos, as well as a completely mangled and nonsensical sentence.

Emma Darwin’s book Get Started in Writing Historical Fiction may be viewed by clicking on the book title.