Telling History Through Story

INTRODUCTORY NOTE: I managed the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog for six years before IWC closed its doors at the end of 2018. The idea was that all IWC members would contribute posts, and some did. However, there were also many gaps where we would have missed our weekly publishing schedule unless I came up with something. The blog missed fewer than a half dozen posts during those six years because I filled in the slots. Some were fairly generic posts, such as quotes from writing masters or recommendations for craft books, but others were more substantive. Although all posts are still available in the blog archives, I have decided to resurrect some of my substantive posts and reprint them here from time to time. I’ll start with one that may explain why I write middle-grade historical novels. “Telling History Through Story” appeared on the IWC blog on July 2, 2014.

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Telling History Through Story

When I was a child, I hated history. Well, hated may be too strong a word. It’s probably more accurate to say that history bored me. But I loved reading, and I loved stories.

I also loved what I used to call the “blue true books.” They were biographies of famous Americans that concentrated on the childhood years, and they had a blue cloth cover at that time. As the picture shows, the cover has changed over the years, and the series now has an official name: “Childhood of Famous Americans.” I’m guessing that many of the incidents in them are pure fiction, at least for the earlier books that would have been harder to research.

But I learned something about history because it was told as an engaging story.

These days I enjoy history in most forms, but I still prefer it as story. My library contains an ever-increasing number of memoirs and autobiographies and first-person accounts of historical events. When those primary sources aren’t available, or when they need supplementing, I turn to well-written biographies and other secondary sources. And I still read the “blue true books” when I come across them at used book sales or museum book stores.

Even as an adult, I learn best when history is told as story. That’s a good lesson for authors who write history as either fiction or non-fiction. If you want to capture the attention of a reluctant audience, use story. Don’t just write about the 4^th of July—write about people who lived it.

One other caveat. Even when writing fiction, the story must be historically realistic. Not every detail needs to be accurate, but it must be true-to-life.

I recently heard about a novel set at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. It sounded interesting, so I went on Amazon and read the reviews. They said it was well told but historically inaccurate. The author had the Americans liberating the camp instead of the Soviets. So even though it might have been an engaging story, I didn’t buy it.

But as long as you keep the important details intact, you can broaden your audience by telling history through story.