Last night I was deeply touched by the PBS documentary, Perilous Fight: America’s World War II in Color. Normally, I do not watch war documentaries. But the color images drew me — and the stories swept me away. Historical documentaries have recently become less about teaching facts and more about telling stories. I was entranced by narrators reading letters from soldiers and their families. The film followed specific GIs as much as possible. When a pilot (whom they had showed in home movies with his beautiful wife and bouncing baby boy) was writing a letter about going out on one of his last flights in his tour of duty, I nearly shut off the program. You could feel what was coming–the dreaded telegram–and they read every painful word. And then the final blow — the only thing found in the wreckage of his plane? A pair of baby shoes. Ouch. How can you watch something like that and not be changed?
Human hearts respond to story, not facts. Historians can tell us the casulty numbers, they can show us the footage… but tell us one soldier’s experience and we weep. It becomes real. “His story” becomes our story. “His story” is far more poignant than “history.”
So, what does that mean for writers of historical fiction? Use historical detail lightly, as a backdrop for your novel — but focus mainly on lives. Usher your reader into the time period by allowing them to connect with your character’s heart. Many new writers (myself included) struggle with this. (Read more in “Back Up the Dump Truck.”) Randy Ingermanson teaches that most readers are seeking powerful emotional experience (and what is the acronym for that?), not a history lesson. (Read more about Randy’s PEE, ahem, here). Yes, make sure your facts are correct and that the reader truly feels like they are in your chosen time period, but do so through your character’s experiences.
If you want to read a great example of how an author can balance story with history, check out my favorite WWII historical novel: Sarah Sundin‘s, A Distant Melody. It was a Friday Book Pick back on April 8th.
Now, go get to work! And don’t forget: tell his story (or her story) , not history.
From the PBS website, describing the letters used in the documentary: A goal of any work of art is to share the emotion, the truth of a life at a moment in time. If so, then the letters that went back and forth across the continents between 1941 and 1945 are collectively one monumental work of art: composed of billions of simple, small pieces – pieces that share the moments of triumph, tragedy, love, hatred, duty, and loss.
What you wrote is so true! I didn’t come to love history through history books. In fact, history was my least favorite subject in school. I grew to love history through biographies and fiction – through people and story! And when I fell in love with those stories, slogging through dry textbooks became a lot easier – because it was about real people. I never aimed to teach history through fiction – but if someone becomes more interested in WWII or more appreciative of what people went through, I’m fine with that 🙂