Today I am talking about developing believable historical characters. have you ever wondered how you can get inside the mind of someone from another era? Today's show is full of actionable tips that will get you started.
Today I am talking about developing believable historical characters. have you ever wondered how you can get inside the mind of someone from another era? Today's show is full of actionable tips that will get you started.
Hi, and welcome to the writing and Marketing Show brought to you by author Wendy H. Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. It's jam packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast, so it's time to get on with the show. And welcome to Episode 61 of the writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur Wendy H. Jones. It's great to have you here with me again, it's a solo show again, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I haven't been feeling so well, even last week, but I've paired up today, things are much better. So hey, we're back on track. And I did have a guest. But unfortunately, they couldn't do it in the end. So I'm going to interview them next week. So we'll be back on track with the guest next week. But what I thought I would do was do another show based on history because everyone found last week's show. so helpful. And before I get into that, we're going to be talking about writing historical characters. And it's part one of a series that will have several parts interspersed with my guests. So before I get on there, I would like to say that it's a pleasure to bring you the show every week, and I love doing it. But it does take time out of my writing. If you would like to support that show, you can do so by going to patreon.com/wendyhjones and supporting me for just $3 a month, which is less than the price of a tea or coffee per month. And I would be very grateful. So that's patreon.cpm/wendyhjones. And it means that I can continue bringing you quality shows. So I've been very interested in writing history recently, as I told you, and on Saturday, I was an absolutely fabulous writers day with the Association of Christian writers on a very, very accomplished historical writer called Fiona Veitch Smith did did a talk, and she was outstanding. And I'm very much enjoying looking into history. And I've been doing a lot of research and a lot of different things about history. I wrote an in depth blog about researching history today. So what I thought I would do was do a series on writing historical characters, because although a lot of it is like writing contemporary characters, a lot of it is different as well. So, as I say I'm going to be talking about writing historical characters. I want to start by saying in many ways, people don't change. From the first man or woman to the new baby born today, we're all the same really, we all breathe, eat, sleep, get ill, go to the toilet, have a need for companionship, and we seek entertainment and amusement. It was ever thus. And whether telling stories around the fire through oral tradition, or playing multiplayer online games, whether eating freshly killed meats, or a vegan diet, we're all still the same under the skin, really. So there's not much difference. And yet, much has changed. The way we think about things, the way we process information, the way we act, the way we react, the way we think about children, our expectations of what is normal and acceptable. They've all changed. And they will continue to change throughout eternity. So how do we get into the minds of our characters, when they are historical characters? When we didn't live in that era? How do we do it? How can we take ourselves back to a time where we may not have been alive, and find out how what people were like how they lived, and what they may have been like themselve.s We need to be able to portray them realistically in our writing. And that's why we need to think about writing characters. And at first this may seem like a difficult task. But let me reassure you it is possible. And I know it's possible because I've done it, and so have many others. I'm going to give you examples from my own writing to explain because what I'm going to start about with this time, although we're talking about writing historical characters, I'm going to talk about you Using objects to do so. So my young adult books, the Fergus and Flora mysteries, are contemporary mysteries, but they are based on some historical fact, I've weaved historical stories in with a contemporary mystery. So there's a historical storyline running through them, which provides the basis for the contemporary mystery. Now, I'm going to digress slightly here, guys, because my way mysteries are currently moving publishers, so they're not available. They will be available soon, with new covers new titles, and a brand spanking new third book in the series. Now, I'm only telling you this so that you don't go off looking for them quite yet. But they will be out soon. So back to characters. How did I write them? How did I write the historical characters in my contemporary mysteries? Well, in one, I started with an object in all three of them, the object was the first thing that I chose. In the first book, it was an ancient Egyptian dagger. In Book Two, it was a broch. Now, if you don't know what a broch is, and that's pronounced broch, a lot of people think it's brooch, but it's not it's broch which is an ancient stone dwelling in Scotland. And in Book Three, the terracotta warriors, that were found China, were the objects that form the basis for my historical storyline, and my contemporary mystery. Once I had my objects, I started to imagine who may have been involved in the life of that object. And I wanted to think about who might have been involved with it throughout the ages to today. Now, let me check one of them and go more deeply into this. I knew I wanted my character to be young. So that gave me a starting point. So I now had an ancient Egyptian dagger, and a 13 year old boy. My next move was to do what I did when I was talking about in last week's podcast, which was about researching for historical books. And I started researching the era so I started researching Ancient Egypt. This gave me an idea of the society and the political situation at the time. Now I knew I knew that Pharaohs liked a good war. And I now knew that by the age of 13, boys were considered men. Pharaohs didn't care that the pharaoh didn't care who he conscripted into his army. So my boy was sent to war. I then try to get into the mind of a boy in the midst of a battle a young boy, a young 13 year old boy in the midst of a battle. Now, I could never have been like that, but I really tried to channel what he might have been like. So I thought about what might be happening while he was seeing his friends dying around him or being seriously injured around him. And I imagined his feelings he would be terrified, ill prepared and fearing death. So what would most children most young people want to do? In that situation, they would want to run from it, they would want to get as far as far away from it as possible. So they would sweep away unnoticed, leaving the sounds, the smells and the heart of the battle behind him. Still clutching his dagger, he runs through the demons of dark as he runs this though the demons of darkness are nipping at his heels. Now, this isn't still isn't good fodder for a mystery, really, because we've got a little boy that's run away from a battle and we're talking about a contemporary mystery here. And I've got my object was a historical dagger, but so far, nothing about that object has actually shaped my story. So what I decided to do was look at skills my boys could have, or boy, not boys my skills that my boy could have, that would make this dagger special. I did some more research to get an idea of the time and he became a distiller of rare poisons. He then dipped the blade in the poison and instilled it with a curse. Anybody who touched it, then and in the future would be cursed. So that was what formed the process. Something befell everyone who held this dagger throughout the throughout time, and I had various characters throughout time who held the dagger, and something happened to them. And this is what formed the basis for my contemporary mystery because the dagger then came to Dundee in Scotland in modern day times, was stolen and laid a curse on Dundee, and only a couple of teenagers called Fergus and Flora, were able to solve the mystery and saved on Dundee, of course. So I thought I'd let you into my thought processes to give you an idea of what can be done. I combined the research skills I was talking about in last week's podcast, and combined it with an object and some or a lot of imagination. And it helped me to come up with a realistic historical character. However you need to flesh this out by by thinking about what they look like. Again, this needs to be realistic, unless the lack of realism is a part of your story. My 13 year old ancient Egyptian Egyptian boy is probably going to be of small stature with brown or black hair with brown eyes. If I made him six foot with blond hair and blue eyes, at some point, there has to be a reason for this in the story, it has to be a reason for it. So we need to make them realistic. So then I thought about what he would weigh what we would wear, where he would live, what he would eat, was he married. Now you're probably thinking 13 year old boy married not realistic, except 13 year old boys were considered adults in ancient Egypt. So to give him more realism, I had him as a married man. And that gave a flavour of what life was like at the time without me saying, Oh, you know, children could get married in ancient Egypt, I just made him married. And I then knew that I had to slip things in. And only miniscule parts of it made it into the final manuscripts, enough to flesh him out, the slap of his sandals on a deserted road, slaking his thirst with beer, etc. My character, one characteristic by one characteristic slowly took shape. And he was revealed one slipped in detail at a time in my manuscript. Now, there was about everything I've told you now, there was so much research went into it, and so much time spent fleshing out the character. But it was only about two pages at the very beginning of the book for this character. But I knew him inside out, I knew this character, I knew who he was, I knew how he felt. And this is how, and this is how I did it just by imagining it by fleshing him out. So what I'm going to do is give you a challenge. It's a slightly different podcast this time, because I'm going to ask you to do some work as well. My challenge is to find an object. It can be one around you, or one you see on the internet, or in a book or a magazine, or in a museum. I saw my object at the British Museum in London. Now I know that as I write this in March 2021, there are no museums open. Sorry, guys. But Rumour has it they are going to be opened by May or June, I hope. So you might be able to do that soon. Go to historic houses, go to art galleries, go to museums, were else can you find historic objects, you can find them in antique shops, you can even find them in junk shops. And at car boot sales. I'm not sure any of this is going to be very helpful to you in the near future due to COVID because of the lockdown. But in the future, if you're listening to this in the future, or you're doing this in the future, then they are very helpful suggestions. Now your object needs to be historical object, or trust me it's not going to suit a historical novel. If the nearest thing to you is an Amazon Alexa, sorry, but it ain't going to meet the criteria or cut the mustard for being considered history. However, if you have a tape deck in a junk shop, or you even have a tape deck near you, because you still have one, this is where you're going to feel very old, because according to the historic novel society, history is considered anything over 30 years ago, and that makes me feel extremely old. However, there is another definition that history is 50 years ago, so that makes me feel slightly less old. However, I still am classed as historical some of my life sorry. If you're of a certain age, you're some of you is, this is now history. So any object, you know if your house is crammed with antiques, and a minf dynasty vase or two then you're on a winner. So once you have your object, whatever it might be, then think about, I want you to write down 10 characters, choose 10 characters that could have been associated with this object. So taking our Ming Dynasty vase that I know you've got in your front room, think about who the characters could be, I'm going to give you I'm going to give you some examples. So it could be the potter, the artist who painted it, the peasant who transported it, the emperor who owned it, the child who lived in the Emperor's house, who may have become the next Emperor, someone who stole it, someone who sold it, someone who bought it, there are a lot of people who are going to have been associated with a Ming Dynasty vase. The one that springs to mind is somebody who broke it. But if it's broken, that that could be an idea, that could be an idea as well, but it's not going to go very far. But it could be someone who broke it, and you're writing historical novel about the person who broke it, something might have happened to them, they might have been transported because they were stealing it at the time, they were transported to Australia, all sorts of objects can come up with all sorts of characters, then what I want you to do is take your 10 characters, and give them five physical and five emotional characteristics for every single one of them, and make them different, make all of their physical and emotional characteristics different. So you now have 10 characters that you can flesh out further if you want. Now, I'm not going to make you do everything with every single character, I'm not going to make you do anything. In actual fact, I can't make you do anything. But I'm not going to ask you, or encourage you to do this with every single character. But why don't you flesh five of them out further. However you need to flesh out, you really do need to take at least five of them, and give them further details. What do they wear? What do they eat? What do they like to do? What is the shoe size? What is do they wear a heart? Do they need to wear a heart? Do they have servants? Are they a servant, you know, give them a characteristics, then I want to take two of them and write down how the object has changed their life, what has happened to them. And you never know this might start you off on the road to a short story, a piece of flash fiction, a novel, a play a poem, it could lead you anywhere, just by doing this exercise. So I hope you've found this useful today. I'm going to leave it there to give you time to think and to do the challenge. I'm going to be back in three weeks with the next part of this with part two about other ways that you can think about fleshing out characters of developing characters for your historical fiction. I hope you have fun with the challenge. I hope you do the challenge. And think about everything I've said today about how an object can be used to shape your character and think about how you can use it even in your contemporary book books. But really, I'm focusing on getting you into the mind of historical characters today, so I will see you next week when I will have a new guest. Until then have a fabulous week and enjoy your writing. That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today. I'm Wendy h Jones and you can find me at wendyhjones.com. You can a so find me on Patreon where y u can support me for as little a$3 a month which is less than t e price of a tea or coffee. Y u go to patreon.com forward s ash when the H Jones. I'm also w nt to h Jones on Facebook, T itter, Instagram and P nterest. Thank you for joining m today and I hope you found it b th useful and interesting. J in me next week when I will h ve another cracking guest for y u. Until then, have a good w ek and keep writing. Keep r ading and Keep learning