Is Fiction a Type of Fabrication? Part 6 of 10

If you’ve just joined us, see the first blog in this series to get the email on which this is based. I’m looking at the art of fiction through the lens of someone who disagrees with the email. It has good points, but if you read it you will see what I find hard to accept.

I love literary fiction. It is a passion of mine, I read at least one or two books a week of fiction. Most I admit is entertaining and in many cases thought provoking. I love to write fiction, although recently with my work in non-fiction, my output is less. Soon, though that should be fixed… just need to get that non-fiction book edited.

One of the other realms of fiction that is a good read is Historical fiction. As one of many comments pointed out on this blog, this does require plenty of research. I would suggest that it is possible that in this genre of fiction the research takes longer than the book.

One of the books in this genre that I’ve read recently is The Constant Princess by Philipa Gregory. If you’ve never read this book read it. It is one of the better historical fiction out there. The point that this book gives is that fiction, in this setting, needs to be well researched since anyone can look up basic facts of the Tudor reign. Many can get more than that. For myself, I have at least three books in my personal library that I can look up to see “the facts.”

There are other that require this type of knowledge, but would not be “historical fiction” per say is alternate history. I would also point out that this requires time and energy to not only create a new history but to know a great deal about the “real” history that you are recreating.

I’ll leave you with a question: what do you think is the most important aspect to writing good fiction?