Writing Tips at GarySpeer.com » Historical Fiction

With apologies to Freud — make sure you know your cigars

Gary — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:08:29 +0000

I’m sure you’ve heard that famous quote attributed to Sigmund Freud, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” I don’t know the context of the quote, in fact I’ve seen suggestions that it isn’t even a legitimate Freud quote. But as writers we really need to take it seriously, whether writing about cigars or Mexican [...]

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With apologies to Freud — make sure you know your cigars

I highly recommend you take a look at this Audie Murphy site

Gary — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 03:02:50 +0000

I highly recommend that you take a look at this “Audie L. Murphy Memorial Website,” for a full account of this remarkable man. As a follow-up on my last post, I felt compelled to direct you to a wealth of information about this remarkable man, who was not just one of my personal favorites in [...]

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I highly recommend you take a look at this Audie Murphy site

Some thoughts about fictionalizing real-life public figures

Gary — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 02:19:43 +0000

I’m reading a well-written adventure novel right now by Stephen Hunter and want to share some thoughts about fictionalizing real-life characters. One of the characters he created in the book made me think about the matter. The novel is “Pale Horse Coming” and it’s one in a series he’s done about a fictional Medal of [...]

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Some thoughts about fictionalizing real-life public figures

More about doing research when writing fiction

Gary — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:11:15 +0000

I enjoy reading — and have tried my hand at writing — historical novels. For many years, as those of you know who’ve been around this site much, I fiddled with a couple of novels set in the American West of the 1800s. I’ve not yet finished one, but I have three that I’ve started [...]

Writing Historical Fiction Part 3: Good sources are everywhere

Gary — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:08:16 +0000

One of the best resources I’ve found for the sort of research I’ve used when writing historical fiction is a set of books that were published in the 1980s and ’90s by Writers Digest Books. This was a series of dictionary-like books called “The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life …” followed by whatever period of [...]

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Writing Historical Fiction Part 3: Good sources are everywhere

Writing Historical Fiction Part 2: Finding story ideas is one benefit of doing historical research

Gary — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:45:20 +0000

A few years ago I was taking a graduate level course in Mexican history and ran onto the perfect idea for a historical novel set in 1785-86 in the region which became New Mexico and involved a Spanish governor, Juan Baptista de Anza, and the Comanche Indians. I realized that de Anza displayed an understanding [...]

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Writing Historical Fiction Part 2: Finding story ideas is one benefit of doing historical research

Writing Historical Fiction Part 1: How much research is enough?

Gary — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:52:33 +0000

If you’ve written a novel or ever studied novel writing, you know the term “back story” and how important that is to the development of the novel. The “back story” is the background information about characters, events, and locations which rarely makes it directly into your novel, but which you and your reader need to [...]

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Writing Historical Fiction Part 1: How much research is enough?