(A/N: Post title is a play on the song Building a Mystery by Sarah McLachlan and taken from the song Where the Streets Have No Name by U2.)

Blank fictional map by Skybase (http://skybase.deviantart.com/art/Blank-Fictional-Country-Map-104826834)

I am a victim of my own writing predilections, and also a beneficiary of them.

I write historical fiction, but at my core, I treasure the freedom to make and break the rules of the factual and natural world offered by the fantasy genre.

I love learning and writing about how people lived in the distant past, but am less intrigued by stories of real personages out of history, who tend to from the upper classes of society, and instead prefer the historical equivalents to people more like myself.

I’m dedicated to creating a strong sense of place for the reader, for whom distant past settings are likely very alien and divergent from modern life and sensibilities.  Yet not even historians know for 100% certain what in the past was like, thus reference books, Google Maps, and even visiting specific locations in their present-day incarnations can only offer so much insight.

These three writing preferences converge upon a common point, that being the point where there is a gap in recorded history.

I experienced such a gap in my novel-in-progress: in one of the English towns where much of the story takes place, there is no recorded history that I’ve been able to find between the years of 1086 and 1316.  There isn’t conclusive evidence that a castle existed there, but I’ve gone and created one all the same, designing and describing its layout and lifestyle to suit the needs of my story’s plot.

As I mentioned in a previous post within this series, historical fiction and fantasy share a need for detailed world-building, yet differ in that with historical fiction, you have to look all those details up whereas in fantasy, you have to make them all up.

Well, when it comes to places and situations for which there is little recorded history, the historical fiction writer gets to make up stuff as well, thus revealing another meaning to the title of this post series: building a history.

But just how much history does one need to build?

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(A/N: Post title is a play on the song Tell It Like It Is by Tracy Chapman.  I don’t know what it is about this series of topics that lends itself well to making post titles out of modified song titles, but I plan to keep rolling with it as far as it will go.)

Every writer has to conduct some manner of research to inform his/her story.

Even when writing a memoir or a tale otherwise drawn completely from personal experience, I’m willing to bet the writer will need to look up or into something, whether it’s the layout of a city or the history of a particular landmark, or the number one single on Billboard at the time.

In historical fiction, however, the research needs are as astronomical as they are minute.  Not only must one research the plans of cities (that may or may not still exist), you also need to know what the roads were paved with.  Information about a landmark might be coupled with that about what was fed to the slaves that built it.  The names of popular songs might be accompanied (no pun intended) by details on what the stringed instruments of the time period were strung with.

And that’s not all; not by a long shot.

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