Write Your Own Historical Fiction

Provides tips on how to write historical fiction stories, including how to get started, how to create characters, and how to develop plots. Includes suggestions from famous authors.

Farrell, Tish: I began writing while living in East Africa during the 1990s. There were stories everywhere – blowing in through my windows and under the doors. I fell over them out on the streets. I was especially struck by the courage of street children who survived many dangers, trawling city waste dumps to make a living. That is how my first children’s book, ‘Jessicah the Mountain Slayer’, and my writing career began. ‘Jessicah’ was published by Zimbabwe Publishing House and won second prize at the 1996 International Zimbabwe Book Fair and a White Raven citation from the International Youth Library. Since then I have written ‘Sea Running’ for Macmillan Pacesetters and ‘Joe Sabuni P.I.’ Heinmann’s Junior African Writers series (also translated into six Zambian languages). Phoenix Publishers, Nairobi publish my work in East and Central Africa, and many of my short ‘Africa based’ stories have appeared in Cricket, Spider and Cicada magazines in United States. Nonfiction works include ‘Kenya’ in Franklin Watts Changing Worlds series and the ‘Write Your Own’ creative writing books for Compass Point Books which has won several awards in Britain and the U.S. I also write ‘mini novels’ for teens who prefer to read small books with big content. In an earlier life, after studying Prehistory and Archaeology and Social Anthropology, I worked in museum education. I write stories in the hopes of understanding how other people live their lives, no matter where that might be on our extraordinary