It’s April again and that means it’s time for the A to Z challenge and this year, my theme for the A to Z Challenge is characters and narrators.
H is for historical characters (and other famous people)
If I had a nickel for every time Napoléon, Josephine, Queen Elizabeth, and King Henry VIII showed up in novels, I’d have a shit-ton of nickels.
But how do you even write them?
This, my friend, is where you need to do more than stretch your fingers over a Google searchbar. There are people who love – absolutely love – the historical character you’ve got flitting about in the background (or forefront) of your scene. Doing proper research (in other words, reading several articles and full length books) will do justice to the (in)famous characters of the past and gain you some street cred among your current (as well as future) readers.
ProlixMe 
I agree. If you’re going to include Alexander, or Napoleon, or Marie Antoinette, at least read the source material. Even if you’re writing a funny book and its a caricature of the historical figure…it’s still way more fun if you give them some historical accuracy. Five Fists of Science is a hilarious graphic novel featuring Nikola Tesla as essentially a 19th-century super hero, and has Mark Twain as his hype-man. The writer (Matt Fraction) did excessive amounts of research about his characters, and even took the time to outline their appropriate, albeit exaggerated, behaviors in an appendix. I highly recommend it for Twain fans, Tesla fans, and comedy fans.
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Oh that sounds so awesome!!! I’ll have to check it out. 🙂
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Yep, agree – I write about animals, and make sure i have every last thing correct, reading the most up to date info, and contacting the species experts if something is not clear. You can be very sure if you write something incorrect someone in the know will be along! i have found that experts are very happy to share their knowledge, and for historical info museums are a good source, costumes etc, habits of daily life – you can mail the relevant person after phoning up to see who it is. ~Liz http://www.lizbrownleepoet.com
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That’s true, there are so many people out there that have done a lot of research already and are excellent sources for information. 🙂 thanks for stopping by. 🙂
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Now I want to dust off my book Napolean on Napolean. It’s in the garage buried somewhere.
Stephen Tremp
A to Z Co-host
Twitter: @StephenTremp
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lol. And you should. 😉 thanks for stopping by!!
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Oh, this one was sneaky! 🙂
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🙂
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