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Newbie question again...
I admit I've done fan fiction for self-entertainment... and all of that, but I'm a little nervous about working with real people where the records have been lost on what they were really like. (Besides I've only written for *finished* series.)
I would find it easier to say, write Picasso than Attila the Hun.
Reading back, I'm finding that a lot of the characters that actually existed are turning out flat, while the characters that didn't exist and I made up are much rounder. Which probably means it's a baseline fear... I keep hoping something will show up in the research, but nothing does, which was originally why I chose it for the first Historical Fiction project. (Ironic, isn't it?)
So how do you get past that for historical fiction? How do you round out characters that existed when the next grand academic paper could prove you wrong?
I admit I've done fan fiction for self-entertainment... and all of that, but I'm a little nervous about working with real people where the records have been lost on what they were really like. (Besides I've only written for *finished* series.)
I would find it easier to say, write Picasso than Attila the Hun.
Reading back, I'm finding that a lot of the characters that actually existed are turning out flat, while the characters that didn't exist and I made up are much rounder. Which probably means it's a baseline fear... I keep hoping something will show up in the research, but nothing does, which was originally why I chose it for the first Historical Fiction project. (Ironic, isn't it?)
So how do you get past that for historical fiction? How do you round out characters that existed when the next grand academic paper could prove you wrong?