Fact vs. Fiction in the Historical Novel- A Writing Workshop

Workshop Summary

This workshop will cover the purposes and goals of the different approaches to historical fiction; conceiving the story deeply enough to mine a series and not just one book; mastering source materials; uses and limitations of research techniques, with some handy hacks; how to enlist elements of the time being written about, such as events, language, society, and material culture, to enrich the story; when to  explain and when to tell a reader to hit the dictionary; when and how to amplify historically minor characters into a larger presence in the story; how to break through if the story bogs down; pits that we all fall into; how to signal an agent or publisher that you are not just one of the thousands of wannabes—with lots of time for questions so you get help with YOUR story, and not just get lectured at.

About James L Haley

James L. Haley is the author of six historical novels. Of 2016’s The Shores of Tripoli, the Wall Street Journal commented, “The history is thoroughly researched, the fiction inventive, the style at once easy-going and rapid… This is a marvelous and richly enjoyable novel.”  Best-known in Texas for his biography Sam Houston (Univ. of Oklahoma Press 2002), Galveston resident Haley is the author of 25 books, and he has taught or presented from Phoenix to Boston.