When I started writing historical fiction, I believed my main job was to get the history right. I spent my time in archives and county histories, lining up events, comparing accounts, and double‑checking dates. If I could build a solid timeline—who was where, when—then surely the story would follow.

I still care deeply about that work. The facts matter. They shape the boundaries of the world I’m writing about and keep me honest about the past. But as I begin drafting my sixth novel, I’m realizing again that the history, by itself, can’t carry the narrative. The characters have to do that.

How I Used to Let the History Lead

In earlier projects, I often let the historical record set the pace. I’d outline the big moments, then write scenes whose main job was to move the reader from one documented event to the next. If a testimony mentioned a meeting in town, I wrote my way dutifully to that meeting. If a report described a family leaving home at dawn, I built a chapter around getting them to the door.

The characters were there. They spoke, argued, worked, and made difficult choices. But more often than I’d like to admit, I was asking them to serve the chronology. Their primary role was to escort the reader from Event A to Event B, carrying just enough emotion to make the history feel vivid.

On the surface, this approach can work. The plot moves. The dates line up. The novel feels anchored in real events. Yet over time I started to sense that something was missing. The books were built on weighty episodes from the past, but the people inside them sometimes felt thinner than the history surrounding them.

Letting Characters Carry the Story

The new novel I’m drafting now has grown out of years of research. All of the study I did for my previous novel plays a role in my novel, but it’s not the centerpiece. The characters are at the center, the history is just the context they live in.

What I’m trying to do differently is to stop letting a sequence of historical events be my guiding force. Instead of asking, What needs to happen next according to the record? I’m asking, What does this line reveal about a particular person living inside that world?

That question has changed how I approach each sentence. I’m paying closer attention to what a line means—not just in terms of information, but in terms of character. What does this bit of dialogue say about who this person trusts? What does this description of a room hint about what someone refuses to see? What does a small action at the table, or on the road, quietly confess about what they fear?

Line by line, I’m trying to be more intentional about the way my characters inhabit a fictional world based on real history. The facts are still there, forming the landscape and the pressure outside the frame. But instead of forcing history into their world, I’m working to let them live in it—to let their choices, misunderstandings, and small moments of courage or failure shape how the history lands on the page.

Still Learning, Six Novels In

I’d like to say I made this shift once and never slipped back, but that wouldn’t be honest. Even now, six novels in, I catch myself outlining by dates, worrying about whether I’ve included every relevant incident, or feeling guilty when I linger too long in what looks like an ordinary day.

Those are the moments when I have to remind myself what I’m actually trying to do. The reader doesn’t need a perfect reconstruction of every step that led to a well‑documented event. They need to feel what it was like to be one person moving toward it without the benefit of hindsight.

So I go back to the line in front of me. I ask what it signifies about the character—about their private logic, their blind spots, their hopes and fears. I look at whether the sentence honors the life I’m trying to imagine, or whether it’s just hurrying me toward the next item on a historical checklist.

I’m still learning how to let characters lead in a world shaped by real history. The research remains important; it always will. But the life of the story, I’m finding, comes from the people who have to move through that world without knowing how it will all turn out. My work now is to follow them more closely, and to trust that if I do, the history will still be there—only this time, carried by lives instead of just facts.

Here is just a very short excerpt from chapter one of the novel I’m drafting:

The sun had risen above the trees and the day was bright, even if a little cool. Outside the Wright cabin two wagons were ready, both filled with women and children packed tightly alongside bags of flour, wheat, corn, tomatoes, and other vegetables. Thomas Ireland sat at the head of one wagon and Will Everett at the head of the other. The remaining men stood at the back of the wagons, guns in hand and alert. 

“Go safely now,” Old Pawn said. “Lean Bear and his men mean you no harm. They only want you to leave.” 

John Ireland took the old Indian’s hand and shook it while a few of the women uttered thank yous.

“Let’s get on with it then,” urged Henry. 

With that Ireland and Everett cracked the reins and the wagons lurched forward as the horse struggled against the weight of their payloads. 

“We had such a nice place here,” Laura Drake said, barely audible over the noise of the lumbering wagons. “A beautiful lake, a bright green forest, an abundance of free air. It’s such a shame to be uprooted again.” Seeing that no one heard her, Laura sat quietly, stroking Bella’s hair as she watched the Wright cabin fade into the distance, the sun still gleaming brightly off the lake.

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