I've been working on a historical novel for the past three years. Right now, I have the characters and all that and the basic idea of where I want the novel to go. My problem is the time period, which is around 800A.D.. The novel is set in the Philippines, waaaaaaay before the Spaniards came and colonized the country.
I've done as much research as I possibly could given my resources, but the problem is there's so little to go by. Most historical artifacts/documents made before the Spanish came are gone/destroyed, so I'm having trouble constructing the world itself.
The setting of the novel is more along the lines of "what could've been" or "what we probably once were". I've tried to base some of the world-building on neighboring countries I knew the Philippines had a connection to during that time period (Malaysia for example), but I don't know... it's tough.
My question here is how does one keep a piece historical when there's so little material to research? I fell like I'm always in danger of crossing the border to fantasy...
I've done as much research as I possibly could given my resources, but the problem is there's so little to go by. Most historical artifacts/documents made before the Spanish came are gone/destroyed, so I'm having trouble constructing the world itself.
The setting of the novel is more along the lines of "what could've been" or "what we probably once were". I've tried to base some of the world-building on neighboring countries I knew the Philippines had a connection to during that time period (Malaysia for example), but I don't know... it's tough.
My question here is how does one keep a piece historical when there's so little material to research? I fell like I'm always in danger of crossing the border to fantasy...