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Preamble:
“Your challenge will be especially hard,” cautioned my creative writing professor, “because you are writing historical fiction. You are writing a time, place, and culture you’re unfamiliar with.”
Don’t we all write about that, to an extent, regardless of genre? Sort of. But in some cases, we’re allowed to simply make up the rules as we go. When writing about real places and real faces, authenticity is essential for true immersion. You want your reader eagerly devouring page after page of your novel, not pausing and scratching their head at some reference that’s completely contrary to the time period. Or when a character completely immersed in this specific culture acts like they themselves are from another time and place.
In my days of independent writing for preexisting series (yes, I’ll say it, fanfiction), I loved using narratives as a teaching tool. Every sentence was an opportunity to move readers temporally, educate them seamlessly while (hopefully) entertaining them. That is what the genre of historical fiction as a whole has the potential to do. That is what many books can do, regardless of time, when set within a particular culture. But the content must be true to the time and place no matter what.
