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My historical inspirational romance novel centers around a true story, and this simple little fact is causing me no end of problems.
Its based on fact, so how much can I twist history to tell the story I want to tell?
I’ve been doing a lot of twisting. Bending events into a time period that I want, rather than sticking with the facts, putting events together with people that didn’t happen that way historically, putting thoughts, feelings, and actions onto people that did not actually react and feel that way.
My concious is screaming at me for making these twists. Yet, my practical, rational, mind tells me that the importance isn’t in these details, but in the overall story that I am telingl.
The way I have twisted the events heightens conflict and brings together seperate events into one cohesive story, telling more in less – and hopefully making a bigger impact.
There is still more truth than fiction in my story (uh, I think), and the themes I’m writing of aren’t changed. Actually, it is because of the themes that I have, that I am twisting history to bed to my will.
In the meantime, I’m making myself nuts. Going back and forth telling myself it shouldn’t matter, but I know that with the people and events I’m writing about either the publishers I’m hoping will publish it might hate the changes I’ve made, or some people that will read it will nitpick. And the last thing I want is for my writings to become a stumbling block for anyone else.
If you write with true events woven into fiction, how much do you allow yourself to twist what really happened, altering when events happened or which people were at those events?
Do you drive yourself crazy with guilt and obsess over these changes like I do when you alter history? How do you ease your conscious?
If you are writing ‘faction’ then I would recommend that you don’t change when events occurred; change the motivations that caused them to occurr!
This gives more than enough scope, and the historians who concentrate on dates and places as being ‘history’ won’t flood you with complaints; the history conscious that accept history is an account of interactions between people will understand what you are doing and may enjoy the story even more.
I see what you’re saying, but I think with my story the motivations for the events are more important than the exact time that they occurred. Does that makes sense? Changing the movitations would change the themes, and I’m not okay with that. I’ve been having an identity crisis with what exactly I’m writing: ‘faction’ or ‘fiction’ based on true events. It is very close to fact, but is still very much fiction. I still don’t know. I’ll have to think about it more.
Perhaps then the sequence of the events, or the sequence in which the characters become AWARE of the events, offers you the ability to twist things to suit your needs.
According to what you wrote there, I’d say you shouldn’t feel guilty for changing those facts. Being based on a true story or fact doesn’t mean you’ll have to write it as it happened; in my opinion, it only means you’ll get some ideas, feelings or actions from that fact or story. Changing the events is only a death sentence, so to speak, if you want to portray step by step what happened and you end up having a fictional story rather than a real one. Like you said on your first line, it centers around that story, it isn’t about it.
You’re right – it does center around a story – I think the only thing that is causing me the hang ups is the people that they are centered on are important historical people – so because I’m changing some things that happened time-line wise (same true stories, just condensed, combing two stories into one), I worry about what the true historians will say. However, when all is said and done, like you said – I’m not writing this story has a history book of the facts. Its about the story, and I need to remember that. Thanks!