5 Pros and Cons of Writing Historical vs. Contemporary Fiction
Award-winning author Alma Katsu shares five pros and cons and writing historical fiction vs. writing contemporary fiction.
It may appear at first glance that the chasm between historical fiction and fiction set in the present day is enormous. If you’ve already been writing historical fiction, why would you decide to switch gears? Yet, that’s exactly what I did with my latest novel, Fiend.
Most of my readers know me for historical horror novels such as The Hunger, a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party with a supernatural twist, or The Wehrwolf, an Amazon Original Story of the German resistance set in the waning days of WWII, which won the Bram Stoker Award for best long fiction. Yet Fiend could not be more of-the-moment: It’s the story of a super-wealthy patriarchal family—which may or may not benefit from the help of an ancient evil “protector”—being forced by the youngest generation to change its ways.
If you’re contemplating a similar shift, I’ve prepared the following checklist to guide you through the challenges and benefits.
5 Pros and Cons of Writing Historical vs. Contemporary Fiction
PRO: With historical fiction, you have the “handrails” of history to lean on.
What I mean by that is you get built-in help when it comes to filling in details or establishing boundaries for your story. I’ve found this helpful when I’m both plotting and writing. It eliminates choice and, to a degree, helps narrow your focus. History will dictate where the story is set, the characters you have to choose from, what they ate, what they wore, how educated they are, their religious disposition, their likely attitudes toward marriage and childbirth and death.
It’s widely said that art benefits from having constraints (think architecture: money, time, materials, lot size) and I agree. You don’t have infinite choices, and the creative challenge lies in how you work within this limited palette.
CON: There’s no getting away from it: If you’re writing a historical, you must do research.
How much will depend on your story and how close you need to be to actual historical events. The Hunger, for instance, was about a real journey made by actual people. Not a lot of wiggle room there. Less work is needed if you’re writing a story that happens to be set in a particular period but isn’t about a specific incident.
Of course, many writers don’t see research as a “con” at all but credit it as the reason they got into writing historical fiction in the first place. Many writers freely admit that they love getting lost down the rabbit hole of research. If this is you, as a former professional researcher I would caution you not to lose too much valuable writing time by indulging a research addiction. It can easily get out of hand.
Writing Fiend was more enjoyable and easier than writing a historical in many ways. I was writing about a time period I was familiar with (obviously) but that doesn’t mean there was no research. Most of what I knew about the lives of the ultra-wealthy came second-hand, gleaned from books or TV (like the show Succession, which was an inspiration for Fiend). I found there were not a ton of resources on the subject, a bit of a rude awakening after having a much deeper bench of research materials to draw from when writing about something that happened 100 or 200 years in the past.
That’s when you get to rely on that writerly joy, making things up. I find that I’m reluctant to make up stuff in historical fiction, concerned that the fiction police are going to write me up for the slightest infraction (mistakenly letting a character strike a match when they hadn’t been invented yet, for instance).
PRO: With historical fiction, your audience is fairly defined.
It’s not that people who read historical fiction don’t read contemporary stories also, but they have an established preference for all the norms that come with the genre. You know how to please them, and you know what choices you might make that could displease them (which you can make, of course, but at your peril).
CON: Stepping away from an established readership is scary.
Will the readers who’ve enjoyed my historical novels give Fiend a try? I’m not feeling too pessimistic because horror readers tend to be omnivorous (though maybe “adventurous” or “forgiving” are better descriptors). Early feedback has been promising. However, if I wrote straight historical fiction or a genre where readers’ preferences are strong (historical romance, say) I might be more circumspect about switching up.
CON: You don’t want to put the cart before the horse—your job as a novelist is to write the story you want to write—but it’s generally harder to place the film/TV rights for historicals than for contemporaries.
And yes, there are exceptions to this rule, but few. The reason: They’re more expensive to make.
Readers ask all the time when there will be a film version of The Hunger, and while it was optioned once, I’ve learned in the years since that it would take a very determined studio to bring it to completion. Fiend, on the other hand, was a much easier pitch. (Take this with a grain of salt; your mileage may vary.)
In reality, every pro or con I’ve listed is a two-sided coin, depending on which camp you’re in. One writer’s “pro” (the license to indulge in research) is another writer’s “con” (“if I wanted to do that much work, I’d go back to school”). I hope that, in the end, you’ll decide to take the plunge, whichever direction you’re headed. It’s a great writing exercise, if nothing else, and as writers we need to continually challenge ourselves.
Check out Alma Katsu's Fiend here:
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