History for those who choose to study it brings to light a number of wonders, atrocities, or curiosities that often are confined to dusty books. 

For writers, history becomes an avenue to write about current events by taking advantage of the distance that the past allows. But to write historical fiction, means to make a number of assumptions…. and sometimes bending the truth to better serve the story.  An act that can take a tale from plausible to pure fantasy. 

Which begs the question: is  historical fantasy that different from historical fiction?

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Naturally the presence of fantastical elements is the defining difference between genres.

But sometimes it’s the only real difference. As there are often liberties taken with historical fact, sometimes to the point the facts are hardly in conversation.

Historical Fiction  ≠ Fact. Some pieces of historical fiction are very factual…and some pieces aren’t that much at all.

You see this more often in movies where the historical characters hardly resemble the person they are based on, mainly because the name attached is more important. People’s lives are quite complicated and any rendering in fiction can’t properly capture it a times.

Even in stories that appear as very factual play loose with details. Hamilton for example presents itself as largely biographical despite modern flair and hip-hop stylings. However if you dig into the history you’ll find there are a few statements in the play, that either misrepresent certain facts (the Schuyler sisters actually did have a brother) or simply gloss over. Some changes can be quite small, but sometimes I think a story could be much more interesting when real history is shown without embellishments.

Given the importance of getting facts straight why do writers bend history?

Some Facts Don’t Go the Plot

• Finer details about inventions, battles,  don’t always work for the book’s settings
• Some real life people are too old or too young for the time period selected 

Opting for Drama

• Sometimes facts are changed to heighten the drama. 
• Facts are often distilled to make a tighter narrative 

We Can’t Comprehend Time

• We compartmentalize eras into broad time frames or aesthetics 
• Unless we specialize in a time period, our ability to draw lines between eras varies

History is just a setting

• Historical time period acts as a flavor to the story
• More people interested  in an era for aesthetics, social movements, or technology 
• Setting is the medium in which themes are being used to filter through

We don’t know all the details

• All we have is general ideas of the past
• The further in the past we go, the less we know
• We know less about certain groups that don’t get written about in history
• We know even less about the daily lives beyond the few bits that gets preserved

Not so different after all?

To write both historical fiction and historical fantasy requires  an understanding of facts, figures, and important events. Across genres certain themes and plot points might appear in both (or inspired by).

While some historical fiction can veer into fantasy, the intent of being historical fiction in the first place still remains. As you write notice the direction your story is taking and be upfront about how historically accurate you remain.

As always, the conscious choices we make as writers on what to choose or exclude makes all of the difference.

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