Thoughts on Story and History and an Update on My Work-in-Progress

Longtime readers of this blog know that it started as a WordPress.com blog called “Story and History: One Writer’s Journey Through Life and Time.” I’ve kept the title “Story and History” even after I integrated the blog into my author website in 2017. And I also use the full title for my monthly newsletter.

My very first blog post was titled “What Is Story?” It was a brief reflection on how story and history are intertwined. In fact, in French, the same word, histoire, can mean either story or history. It can be truth or fiction. Our history comes from the stories we choose to tell, whether true or not. Our stories develop into history and become our truth.

A couple of weeks ago I sent my work-in-progress to beta readers. This novel has taken a little longer than I had hoped, particularly after I rushed through the entire first draft during NaNoWriMo last November. My goal has been to write, edit, and publish a book in under a year. That won’t happen. This novel will take me thirteen to fourteen months to complete. Maybe fifteen. But it will get done.

While I wait for beta readers’ feedback, I have edited the novel yet another time. I cringe at every error I find in the manuscript (and there are many), wishing I’d waited another few weeks before sending it out. And yet, isn’t it better to get readers’ input while I still feel I have time to change the text? I’m making changes on my own, and I’m willing to make more changes once readers tell me what is working and what isn’t.

When my critique group completed their weekly input on the book and told me what they thought of the book as a whole, some of the feedback I received was that I had concentrated too much on the history at the expense of the story. They read ten pages a week, so they don’t have a real “reader” experience with the text, which is why I’m waiting for beta readers before finishing the text.

Still, I see the validity of my critique partners’ criticism. What they meant by “too much history” was that I stuck too closely to the historical record and failed to dramatize the characters’ lives sufficiently. Therefore, they didn’t think the story is as compelling as it could be. I admit I stuck pretty closely to history in portions of the novel. And sometimes history is boring.

As I learned from Janet Burroway’s book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, real life does not make good narrative. Real life isn’t the same thing as a plot. A plot must feed our desire for story in its pacing, story arc, character development, and tension. Real life doesn’t always do that.

So I’m still working to improve my story. I can reduce the amount of boring history, concentrate on the more dramatic events of history, and build more tension and conflict into what my fictional characters say and do. I can improve the pacing.

After all, I am writing historical fiction, not straight history. Whether I will ultimately be successful will depend on whether readers like the story, more than on whether I got all the factual details exactly right.

Story and history. They are not the same. They have different purposes. Still, the best of each both educate and entertain.

When have you found a great non-fiction history book that was entertaining, and when have you read a novel that taught you history?