Historical Accuracy vs. Creative License—What Writers Must Know

EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Historical fiction writers often ask: “Can I just make stuff up?” In this episode, Zena Dell Lowe explains the balance between staying true to history and using creative license to craft compelling stories. She covers examples from fiction and media adaptations, giving you actionable insights to write stories that feel authentic while keeping readers engaged.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] What would be the difference telling a fictional story about a nonfiction event as compared to writing a purely fictional story? Like I'm I, I've already got some thoughts on this. Like clearly you need to do, you need to do research, you need to tell the truth and then not do things that go around or beyond.

[00:00:18] Clearly break what people know to be true. Do you, but any other, any other, tell that to Quentin Tarantino, who has Hitler being assassinated in a movie theater? It's not How Hitler died. Hello and welcome to the Storytellers Mission with Zena Del Lo, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through.

[00:00:39] I mean, Quentin Tarantino told me that even if I do historical things, I don't have to follow history. I mean, I didn't know that. I didn't know that until I saw Quentin Tarantino. I mean, that was this whole thing. I mean, once about a time in Hollywood. The whole thing is a fictionalized version of what happened, and it doesn't end badly because it's, and part of that is thematically, it's about how Hollywood glamorizes everything and ies, even the most heinous things of our society often.

[00:01:09] So there's this, there's a thematic element there, but I don't know that there are any rules anymore. To be honest with you, Steven, it depends on the type of historical fiction novel you're trying to write. If you're writing one that you want to be based on the truth, but you have a fictional character in that, then you need to be as true to history as you can and don't directly defy the historical events as we know them.

[00:01:33] On the other hand, if you wanna just make something up, you can. The trick on that is, again, audience buy-in. So if the audience. Knows that George Washington was the first president of the United States, and you are telling a story about the, you know, the early days of the revolution and you have it that, you know, Tom PD was the first president of the United States.

[00:02:01] That may or may not work depending on the other elements of your story. If you've told this story in a way that we're supposed to buy it as historical fiction, but you've totally been historically inaccurate, now we have an issue. But if there's something in your story or your storytelling style where it's all kind of like, let's say, what is it?

[00:02:22] Oh, oh brother, where Art thou. Where you are, you've got whimsical, absurd elements. Now we're gonna buy it. You know? So it just depends. Again, it comes down to credibility and the type of story you're telling. And why can, can I just, I have this, that sort of situation because I'm redoing the, you know, the Wilberforce one.

[00:02:41] And so the basic premises historically accurate that, you know, his daughter falling in love with this guy, but. A lot of the characters are fictional, all the dialogue's fictional, but that's, I think it's okay. I'm trying to be faithful to the who they were and the situation. Right. Well, yeah, and so like in that case, you are trying to have the main characters of your story should all be true, you know, and then your, what you're trying to do.

[00:03:08] Flesh out the truth about what really happened to them and how they, based on what we know about the historical facts, you are trying to flesh it out and illustrate those things in fictional form. Because we don't know all the details, but we know certain results. So you're trying to flesh it out for us and let us see.

[00:03:28] So in your case, your main characters. Are going to be true historical characters that have been fictionalized to a degree because they have to be for the purpose of trying to understand their story, but you're not trying to defy their story or undo their story. You're actually trying to flesh out their true story.

[00:03:46] So there's that. Now in that. You are going to maybe have other characters that you make up because they serve the story and you don't know if that, you don't know if you know he had a best friend named George or not, but in your story, he has a best friend named George. I mean, if you do know that he has a best friend named Henry, you shouldn't give us the best friend George.

[00:04:05] You know, you try to keep it as true as possible if you're doing that kind of a story. I just finished watching The Last Kingdom Shall Highly Recommend, by the way, it's about Ure Destiny is all, and it's based on basically the history of England and the the last Kingdom being northumbria before you know, England is finally united as one country, and URE is the fights for the sax.

[00:04:32] But is actually a Dane, who, well, he was raised Danish and so he's this unlikely character. And what's interesting about it is he, you know, they talk about how he doesn't show up in any of the historical Chronicles that he is not gonna be in the Historical Chronicles, but essentially they're saying in this.

[00:04:49] Story that we owe it all to Urich, the heathen Dane. Without him there would be no England, and yet you're never gonna see him in the historical documents. So what they did is they justified that and they did a lovely job. It's actually, I really enjoyed the series, but they are being true as far as they can be based on the records that we have.

[00:05:09] They're trying to be true, but they're taking license. But there's some really, really fun stuff, and it was a very historically researched novel that then, of course, well, a series of novels that then became a TV series. Thank you for listening to the Storyteller's Mission with Zena Del Loe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better Your store.