Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Monday, 14 August 2017

On Writing Historical Fiction.

'You need to know ten times
as much as you tell."

- Hilary Mantel

This is surely also true of biography
and autobiography, which are themselves
forms of historical fiction.

1 comment:

Bearz said...

This is surely a comment about learning a lot about history before your start to write, and editing what you know into a narrative that keeps it's sense of drive, even with repeated readings. Since nowadays most books are poorly copy-edited and are littered with errors in the facts and spelling in them the chances of an author condensing what they write by nine tenths to give what they write a longer creative life for the reader then I think Hilary Mantel is right, but hopelessly optimistic.