7 tips on researching and writing historical fiction
BY Leila Aboulela
28th Feb 2023
Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo, grew up in Khartoum, and moved to Aberdeen in her mid-twenties. Nominated three times for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction,) she is the author of five novels, including Bird Summons, The Translator, and Lyrics Alley, which was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Leila was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, and her short story collection, Elsewhere Home, won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Leila’s latest novel River Spirit will be published by Saqi Books on 7 March 2023.
Leila has been a guest speaker in special masterclasses for our Writing Your Novel students and a mentor for our Breakthrough Writers’ Programme – our initiative for under-represented writers. Here she shares some insights on how to approach historical research for a novel, drawing on her own experience of writing River Spirit, which is set in 1880s Sudan.
I’ve always loved reading historical fiction. There is something magical about stepping into the past, a tantalizing place where we can experience ways of life that have vanished. It was, though, only after writing contemporary novels, that I gathered up the courage to write historical ones. To be honest, the research put me off. The word ‘research’ conjured up hours spent in solemn libraries, studying historical tomes, wading through tedious facts and dates of battles. But it need not be like that. I found that research itself could be part of the creative process, that it could be inspiring and lots of fun. Here are the tips, based on how I did it.
1. Follow your fascinations
Read the history that interests you, rather than what you feel you should read. For River Spirit I went to the Sudan archives in Durham University. There, I came across a bill of sale for a slave girl. Her name, Zamzam, gave me an image of her. It was as if I knew her. This triggered my interest in nineteenth century slavery in Sudan. I began to research that topic. I had never intended the main character of my novel to be an enslaved woman. But how Zamzam became enslaved and how she found freedom, fascinated me and so I based my research on finding out more about the kind of day-to-day life she would have likely experienced.
2. Speak to the experts
I interviewed researchers who had written about nineteenth century Sudan. They pointed me towards specific books and papers – and saved hours of my time.
3. Read novels set in the same place and historical period
This was lots of fun because I could enjoy the fiction while at the same time feel that I was working! I picked up interesting, relevant details as well as the names of useful sources listed in the Acknowledgement pages.
4. Find your fictional characters in the footnotes of history
Many historical novels are based on minor figures in history, real people who are mentioned briefly in the footnotes. They might have played a minor part, or they were present when important things happened. Because little is known about them, they provide an opportunity for the creative writer to fill in the missing pieces.
5. Switch between researching and writing
Although I started off with the research, I didn’t devote all my time to it. If I felt creative, I would work on my novel. Sometimes I would keep writing until I got stuck and needed to research something specific. I remember my mum visiting me for a few weeks and to avoid walking around in a hazy daydream in her presence (which is what I’m normally like when I’m writing), I focussed solely on the research. But most of the time, I wrote and researched at the same time. One feeding the other.
6. Expect a longer editing process
Although I was careful, I ended up making the obvious mistake that historical novelists are inclined to fall into. My first draft had too much research! Information dumps, repetitions, ‘look what I know’ paragraphs. I had to cut and cut and cut again. I had to decide what was important to the story and what was not. The copy-editing stage took longer than with my contemporary novels. Lots of fact checking and another chance to trim down on non-essentials.
7. Accept that the research might never end
There are so many history books I could have read but I didn’t. Ones I started but abandoned because I got carried away with writing! The novel was going well and there was nothing more I needed to research. But it would be dishonest to say that I ever felt that I was finished with the research. Perhaps one can never finish researching a historical period. It is more about deciding when to stop and focus on the writing. The research can go on forever. At the end, it is the central story, and the characters who make up the novel, while the historical research remains in the background.
Get your hands on a copy of River Spirit, out 7 March.
If you’re working on a historical novel, why not join our specialist six-week online course: Writing Historical Fiction.