Entertainment Is A Part Of Historical Fiction
I’ve already mentioned the entertainment inherent in history. Many will read that and say, perhaps quite forcefully, “This guy’s a nut!”
Ah contraire, the entertainment is there.
The problem is in how it’s been fed to us. In order to ensure that students have actually studied their lessons our education systems demand thatwe memorize, and later enter in tests, the year that something happened. In truth, the year doesn’t matter except in its relation to, and thereby its effect on some other event.
For instance, Jacques Cartier apparently arrived in the New World in the area that is now known as Montreal in 1535. That date was probably important to Champlain who later used Cartier’s information and lived in the area for some time, but for me it doesn’t mean too much. What I would like to know is did Jacques and his crew cut down trees?
There was undoubtedly some laughter.
How many people actually believed Cartier’s stories when he returned to France? How many didn’t believe him but used those stories anyway to create money for themselves? … Much the same as speculators do with stocks today.
In 1614 Champlain received, from France’s King Louis XIII, ten years of exclusive trading rites for furs from New France.
Just a minute! That’s like someone having exclusive rights to sell all the diamonds produced in North America.
What did King Louis, (who was renowned for at least thinking he had everything) expect to get from Champlain in return for this ten year agreement?
My point is, when someone tells you that one of Champlain’s men, Brûlé spent 20 years among the Huron; kick your imagination into gear. What happened?
Use your imagination.
All this is why I generally write historical fiction as entertainment. First I agree that if we don’t learn from history we will repeat the same mistakes. Even knowing the history we’ll make the same mistakes, but hopefully less often.
If we don’t have some entertainment, however, it’s often difficult to get through the learning phase. Besides, just the facts of a historical event can be very boring as can the life we are all living without entertainment.
So far I’ve had ‘The Great Liquor War’ and ‘Partners’ and hope to soon have ‘Homesteader’ out and, perhaps by the end of ’09 I can have ‘The Yearlings’ released. They are all historical in some respects. To some degree,they all contain historical content .
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