Facts in Fiction's Clothing
Whether the medium is books, movies, or television, the growing popularity of the historical fiction and reality-based fiction genres has sparked more than a few debates. Fiction writers and academic historians often take opposing positions on the cost/benefit of taking creative license with historical events for the purpose of entertainment.
Unquestionably, these genres can serve a noble purpose – enlightening the unexposed reader (or viewer) to true historical events through the creative application of compelling fictional characters who maneuver within specified non-fiction times and places. Unfortunately, it could also lead that unfamiliar reader/viewer to takeaway "facts" that were meant to be understood as fiction.
The challenge for writers in these genres is balancing the desire to create a gripping story-driven by captivating characters with the need to preserve the integrity of the historical events those characters intersect with. The reality is, both cannot be achieved simultaneously. The employ of one will always impose the concession of the other.
If the goal of a given work of historical fiction is to shine a light on a lesser-known facet of history in a compelling way, it inherently embeds the risk of leaving the reader confused about which details from the work were a part of history and which were a vehicle for the story. There is no perfect solution, but there are numerous channels for authors to create transparency and invite the reader to peek behind the curtain (should they be so inclined) to get clarity. Personally, I'm a fan of the back-stage-tour approach (via web-extras or a compendium, for example), accompanied by Discursive Footnotes and Citational Endnotes.
As an author who was first (and is always) a student of history, I have been meticulously mindful of that balance in my own writing process. My current project, Two Truths and a Spy, is a modern historical/reality-based fiction of intrigue, espionage, romance, and suspense, covering more than five decades of real-life military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East. All of the central characters in the series are definitively fictional, yet they may engage with known public figures from our non-fiction world and operate in a framework of dates, events, locations and circumstances that align with memorable headlines from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Creative license is most definitely exercised.
