Where the Fiction Ends and the Truth Begins

The concept of history, as we know it, is a latecomer to formal study. From Rome through the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages, accounts of events were rarely written, and then largely by clerics who reflected the world view of their culture, often filtered through their own religious beliefs. Causality was rarely considered, and the facts that seemed important at the time were described with no relation to contributing influences.

The ‘Greater Chronicle’ of Matthew Paris1 who died in 1259 became the go-to resource for English chroniclers of the Middle Ages. They copied it directly making no analysis of events! Paris had the opportunity to acquire significant amounts of information from visitors to the Monastery of St. Albans where he spent much of his life. An article in Britannica.com attributes the success of the volume to a lively writing style. The article goes on to say that Paris invented speeches for the people he wrote about. He literally put words in their mouths. Then the text suggests that this technique was modeled on the works of classical historians. This was considered history.

Although this technique sounds very wrong to a modern historian, one must ask if this is such a terrible thing? In an article titled ‘Historical Fiction in the Classroom2’ by Colin Mustful, the author makes the point that “Writing a historical novel with accurate and detailed historical facts is especially challenging for the historical novelist who must blend history and imagination in a deliberate attempt to recreate the past. But doing so creates a more effective tool than traditional textbooks because of the novel’s ability to bring history to life.”

In writing my novel, ‘Greed and Opportunity,3’ I encountered a similar dilemma. I explained the situation in my Introduction:

Rather than recount an impersonal history of the Snowdon, Notre Dame de Grace and Hampstead neighborhoods, in Greed and Opportunity, I have attempted to animate that narrative by creating fictional conversations and events involving real characters to bring historical figures to life. These small dramas are not the absolute truth, but they are the result of a weaving of known facts to create a comprehensible narrative of the neighborhood’s development. I filled in the blanks between what I knew about each character to allow the reader to grasp the full impact of their activities more easily.

My goal is to create an easily understandable, however fictional, narrative which relates to real people and real places. The fictional aspects of the book are created to make the tortured history of this area less dry. The information comes largely from a series of walking tours, given initially on foot and then on Zoom during the Pandemic. The format of the book is my attempt to transfer the immediacy of those tours into a written format.

My current novel, ‘Challenger Confidential,’ has gone one step further into fiction. One could call it historical speculative fiction. The book is populated with real characters. It begins to diverge from the path taken by ‘Greed and Opportunity’ in that the most important characters are fictional. These fictional characters interact with real characters in meaningful and interesting ways. In ‘Greed and Opportunity’ I felt obligated to note where fiction had intruded on real events. I am not doing this in the body of ‘Challenger Confidential.’

So how does one let one’s reader know where the fiction ends, and the truth begins? I found a particularly illuminating answer to this dilemma in Kristin Harmel’s book ‘The Paris Daughter.’ In her author’s note she simply comes right out and describes the parts of her narrative that really happened and the parts that are imaginary in a wonderfully conversational tone. Instead of trying to decipher what parts of her story are real, one has a much livelier historical guide as well as an idea of why Ms. Harmel made the fictional choices that she did.

I wrote an elaborate author’s note at the end of my last novel, ‘Passing through Prince Street,’ which is as yet unpublished. I felt that I had unburdened myself of the responsibility of not misinforming readers of the veracity of some of the events that I described while still creating a tale that brought real history to life.

1 Article in britannica.com on Historiography consulted September 18, 2023

2 https://www.historythroughfiction.com/blog/historical-fiction-in-the-classroom consulted September 18, 2023

3 Book is available in Canada at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0BFTWDCZ6