Giving Birth to Historical Characters

The Historical Novel: The Good, the Bad . . . and the Pitiful

All readers have encountered good and bad novels. Some were so fantastic that the ending of the book seemed like the most devastating thing in the world. Others were cheesy, leaving us to wonder why a girl named Tiffany would have lived in the Middle Ages and where exactly did she get electricity? The biggest challenge to writers is creating fictional characters that seem real, that seem to jump up and say "hello" or "hola" or whatever other language they would use in their time period.

Without Realistic Characters, Stories Miss the Mark

I have been creating characters for my stories for years; it started as an experiment, as a sort of hobby, but soon grew to become a major writing interest. It's now my favorite part of writing. I am very picky about historical authenticity, though, and I highly advise that any historical fiction writer should be. After all, it's really annoying to be reading about the Vikings, and then suddenly be introduced to a blond girl named Ashley wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Authenticity is very important. Even if I'm writing for my own personal interests, I always make sure names are accurate, and this brings us to the first rule of creating historically-correct characters: the name.

A Name is Everything, So Choose Wisely

It's been said that a character is nothing without a name, and that's pretty much true. What would any of us be without names? It's very tempting to just use the first nice name that seems to "suit" your character, but if accuracy is important, you should check when the name was used if you want to stay authentic. I usually use family tree websites; say I want to know how old the name "Jenny" is. I put the name in within the years my Jenny would be from, and if there are none born around that time, I know the name wasn't popular then. That's just one way of doing it, though.