My historical novels are pretty much event driven, the real historical events, with fairly believable but fictional characters being touched by those events. I have a thesis (an American slant, if you will) that the privileged at the beginning of the seventeenth century in England--and the class system--were selfish and self-serving, close to evil. The religious bigotry of the times, a striking parallel to present day, is also appalling. This slant makes for few admirable leaders and makes my protagonist more or less a victim who manages to survive anyway.
My take on history seems so inherently logical--and unromanticized--that I wonder if it is essentially uncreative? My writing is not polemical, but it does not galmorize behavior which a modern mind finds shocking. What I am wondering is, is there a chance other writers who see things in a similar way might, even as I struggle, be writing a similar tale? How creative need a work of historical fiction be to stand in a significantly different place? I try to make it entertaining, but I stick close to the real historical events as the driving force of the story.
My take on history seems so inherently logical--and unromanticized--that I wonder if it is essentially uncreative? My writing is not polemical, but it does not galmorize behavior which a modern mind finds shocking. What I am wondering is, is there a chance other writers who see things in a similar way might, even as I struggle, be writing a similar tale? How creative need a work of historical fiction be to stand in a significantly different place? I try to make it entertaining, but I stick close to the real historical events as the driving force of the story.