Guest Post: Historical Accuracy with Jill Eileen Smith

Historical Accuracy

by Jill Eileen Smith

History is story. And stories are about people. Take historical facts, keep them accurate, then dress them up – one in blue, the other in gray and set them at odds with each other in the same family during the Civil War – one defending a livelihood, the other defending a people, and you’ve just snagged my interest. But if you want to keep that interest, the author’s attention to historical detail must carry through the entire novel.



Case in point. I was reading a historical novel set in biblical times a few months ago, which included scenes involving religious rituals of an ancient culture. The descriptions were rich and colorful, and put me there. The religious ceremonies (though foreign and pagan to biblical thinkers) were interesting to “see” and understand. If the author got her facts straight, she was doing a great job of letting me envision a different culture.



But when she got to some of the facts in the Bible, I found some blatant errors. Where the Bible named someone specifically as having done something, she had the act done by someone else. Since I believe the Bible to be accurate history, she lost me with those errors. Writers of historical fiction need to do their homework and double and triple check facts to make sure they get things as right as possible. That is not to say we will never make mistakes, but we should do our best not to.

This carries over into little things a writer might at first overlook. For instance, if I’m writing about 1000 B.C. during King David’s reign, I’m stepping into a whole different world. While the characters may live and love and struggle as we do today, they were not modern in the things they used. In truth, they would not even think as we do today, though figuring out their mindset can be much harder than understanding what implements they used in daily living.



The writer of historical fiction must be aware of all of these things, but one of the easiest to overlook are modern terms we use without thinking. For instance, we might be used to saying A minute later…but “minute” should be “moment” because they would not have measured time in minutes then. The same is true for words like miles, inches, yards. Fabrics were never mixed in Israel, and cotton did not grow there. Rayon and polyester and other synthetics, of course, were unheard of and undiscovered. It’s debatable whether they knew of silk at the time. Their clothes were made mainly of wool or linen. These may seem like small things, but they add up to credibility. Even verbs like “inched” as in, She inched closer to the door, straining to hear, can’t be used because “inch” was not a unit of measure at that time, so the verb would not fit.

Thanks so much to Jill for stopping by to write such a helpful articale! I know we can all of us who have written or writing historical fiction know how hard it is to keep things acurate, so thank you!
 
Do you have a question for Jill? She will be visiting us here on the Writer's Alley today, so don't be shy!