When is an Historical Novel Like a Movie Adaptation?

Writing an historical novel is much like making a book into a movie. There are three ways to make a book-length piece of fiction into a film.

First way, you can replicate the book as closely as possible, sometimes scene for scene. The Harry Potter films come to mind. Gone With the Wind. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, although even those movies left out large chunks of narrative. The books these movies were made from had a huge and demanding fan base. Watching the movie had better be pretty much like reading the book, or else.

The most spectacular failure in an effort of this kind, to my eye, was Erich von Stroheim's 1924 silent film, Greed. Von Stroheim followed the book it was made from, Frank Norris's McTeague, not only scene for scene but line for line, often putting a paragraph of Norris's text up on the screen to accompany his visual expression of it. No wonder the studio bosses took it away from him and chopped it to pieces. Setting aside the cost overruns, it was just too long for anyone to sit and watch. It's true that there are respected critics out there who believe Greed to be the greatest movie ever made. I don't think it's even a movie.

A book-length work of fiction is a different art form from a movie. The second way to approach making a book into a movie is to be respectful of that difference and also be respectful of the book, of the spirit of the book, that is, not the words, and to express that spirit cinematically. A good short story, like Brokeback Mountain, makes a better movie than a whole book, because there's less stuff in it. Kenneth Roberts' Northwest Passage was a huge book. The Hollywood movie that was made from it took just a segment of it and made a thumping good movie. Same with East of Eden.

The third approach is to take the book title and write whatever you feel like. You hardly even have to read the book to do this. Just make stuff up. Sometimes it's fine. Depends on what you're working with. Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex is a good example.

The problems of writing a historical novel are similar. The material you're working with may be bigger than what you're trying to do.

The first way to approach your historical novel is to put in everything you can find out about the place and time you're working with. All the famous characters, all the historical events, hardly anything truly fictional, like those terrific books from the English writers about the Tudors and the Elizabethans. Or you can write about a big handful of fictional characters experiencing different aspects of the reality of your historical period, like John Dos Passos in USA. You can get lost in this sort of thing, like von Stroheim in Frank Norris's work, and find yourself tracking down the buttons on the underwear your people would have worn when you should be blocking out swaths of dramatic action. But maybe that's okay, if you have what it takes to pull off a huge saga. (Like a loyal fan base, a supportive publisher, and thirty more years of productive life.)

The second way to do it is to respect the period, express the spirit of the period as you understand it, but put your own characters in your book, with their own drama. Get the details right, but find a segment of the universe that you can work with. Then go ahead and shamelessly write fiction.

Or you might use the third approach, which is not respectable but might be fun. Pick a period, pick a historical figure, put her in all the wrong clothes and tell bald-faced lies about her. Only make sure her heirs aren't going to sue you.

© 2015 Kate Gallison

The King of Historical Mysteries: The Instruments, the Ideas, the Product

Erik Larson has been described as a writer “gripped by historical mysteries.” This prize-winning author is my better twin. He also writes on yellow legal pads, only he uses a Ticonderoga Number Two pencil—soft. I use a Pilot G-Knock or PaperMate Flair pen.

“Using a computer is great,” says Larson. “You can spew and rewrite a paragraph ten times. But there are passages that are too important, too complex, to do that. When you write longhand, you've got to think about it before you write, because the manual effort is significant. It matters. That really helps.”

I'm often as interested in a writer’s personal writing routine/schedule as the products of his/her pen.

Larson, Brooklyn-born, grew up in Freeport, L.I., graduated from the U. of Penn in Russian history, then the Columbia School of Journalism. Had news jobs in Bucks County, PA, then the Wall Street Journal and Time.

He has written several non-fiction books, including In the Garden of Beasts, about the first American ambassador to Nazi Germany. His latest is Dead Wake, about the last voyage of the Lusitania.

In the Garden of Beasts, an enthralling work of novelistic history, has all the pleasures of a political thriller. And reads like a thriller—utterly compelling. Larson is a master at writing true tales as riveting as fiction. This book with much suspense has the feel of a John le Carre novel.

Larson's book The Devil in the White City won an Edgar for nonfiction crime writing and stayed on the NYT bestseller lists for over three years!

He admits he was influenced by the brilliant crime novelist P.D. James, as well as Truman Capote’s masterpieces of true crime.

In the bestselling Thunderstruck he mapped Marconi’s invention of the wireless with the exploits of the notorious British murderer Hawley Harvey Crippen.

As a boy Larson read the Tom Swift series, Nancy Drew, Dumas and Dickens.

He learned to be a great “detail writer” and at the WSJ found that “little details make a scene come to life… sometimes just one sentence can really do it.”

But what he really wanted to do was “write narrative nonfiction in order to tell true stories from the past.” He was heavily influenced by The Alienist by Caleb Carr—about a serial killer in New York in the 1890s.

Larson says, “I don't necessarily hunt for dark subjects. It just happens that the darker events of history are often the most compelling.”

At one point, Larson intended to work on novels. “I don't think I have the sensibility to be a novelist. To be a novelist, you've got to do really rotten things to your character; you've got to give them cancer—all these awful things. I don't have it in me. But it’s not to say I won't do it sometime in the future.”

“People will always want a good story. As long as there are people around who will produce them, there will be a market for them.”

On his work days… “My day starts very early. I make some coffee, half decaf, half black, and I have one Oreo cookie. A bad day is two Oreo cookies.”

Larson loves The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett's noir classic. “It is the ultimate detective novel, and frankly not just detective novel… Here's this writer, here's Hammett, who in 217 pages creates this world with four of the absolutely most vivid characters that literature, I think, has ever come up with. He created a genre—the whole school of hard-boiled detective novels. And that in turn led to cinema noir. It's a tremendous accomplishment.

“I have been influenced by Hammett, but mostly, though, by Hemingway and Chandler. But they all share the same sense of what’s important in actually constructing a sentence—very spare, very clear, almost devoid of commas and adjectives. That’s what I try to do when I write… Hammett is expert in conjuring suspense and he does it so many clever ways.

“First, there’s the overarching suspenseful theme, which is the bird… What is the Maltese Falcon? Where is it? Who's got it? Which by itself would be enough to drive a narrative… Then you have all these people with their secret agendas… Brigid O’Shaughnessy, who is obviously lying at every turn, and suddenly this guy Joel Cairo appears, and where the hell did this guy come from? And what does he want?

“And then we have Casper Gutman. And he is such a compelling character. All if that adds up. You've got to finish this book because you've got to find out what's up with this bird!”

More by Erik Larson:

“I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.”

“I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I’m constantly disinclined to do so.”

“I don't listen to music when I write, but I do turn on appropriate music when I read portions of my manuscripts back to myself—kind of like adding a soundtrack to help shape the mood.”

Thelma Jacqueline Straw

The Historical Novel Society London 2014

This conference took place over this past weekend and was my first HNS gathering on this side of the Pond (I am still in the UK as I write this).  My novels are a mashup of historicals and mysteries.  I usually think of myself as a mystery writer, but with the crowd in attendance here, I was one of them.  I felt it too.  What a warm and welcoming group.  Here are some pictures of the highlights:

To get to the University of Westminster each morning, I took
the Tube to the Baker Street Station and passed this guy along the way!

The proceedings were emceed by Richard Lee, founder and executive director the society.  He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, with an emphasis, as you can imagine, on British writers.  Here he is holding up a winner of the Indie award

There were about 350 attendees, enough to give the conference a high energy level, but still keep
it intimate enough to feel as if everyone was accessible.  There were lots of scheduled
breaks, all with food, snacks, coffee, tea, creating a festive atmosphere.

A big highlight for me was the interview with the brilliant Lindsey Davis!

This debate was hilarious, as each participant tried to convince the audience
that his or her era was the most interesting--amid much spontaneous and side-splitting banter.

On Friday and Saturday evenings, we repaired to the nearby
Hardy's Restaurant for a lovely dinner with long tables that made
conversation easy and just about guaranteed camaraderie. 

The closing event was a historical fiction quiz that pitted these three writers/experts
against the audience with questions to see which group knew most about the subject
matter of historical novels by past and present writers.  I was GREAT fun!  The contest
was close, but in the end, the audience won.

In fact, the audience won in many ways.  I'll come back to this one!

Annamaria Alfieri

Poetic License

Some years ago as I was working on on a historical novel – I think it was Bucker Dudley – I realized suddenly that I was too deep into the thing. I truly felt that if I didn't get every single detail right not only would it throw the reader out of the story, it would throw me out of the story, like stepping on a crack and breaking your mother's back. That moment in Somewhere in Time comes to mind, when Christopher Reeves pulls the modern dime out of his his historically correct vest pocket and throws himself back into the late twentieth century, leaving behind the woman he loves.

It wasn't even the fear of suffering public shame. (That's when you get fifty or sixty letters from readers pointing out how you messed up, along with several snarky Amazon reviews.) It was this conviction I had that my portrayal of the environment of a story had to be so perfect that anyone who happened to be transported to that time and place could use it for a map.

Sick, right? First of all none of us are ever going back there. There's no such thing as a time machine. Secondly, the environment of a story exists in the service of the story, and not the other way around. All that's required is that the historical details be plausible. What, after all, is Truth?

It was Harold who reminded me of the convention of Poetic License. So I whipped up an authentic Poetic License and posted it over my desk.

Now I am able to invent bogus historical details without fear or shame. When at a gathering of historians no less an authority than Professor Paul Israel, the world's foremost Edison scholar, gently pointed out to me that there was no such thing as the portable film strip hole punch I had described in The Edge of Ruin, I was able to smile. Because the hole punch served the story.

Kate Gallison

Moods and the Reader

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of thrillers. Nothing else seemed to hold my attention. In a few weeks I may feel like reading something less ominous and gripping — Jane Austen or P.G. Wodehouse, or something mind-improving such as an historical tome or even a textbook (unlikely). The point is, we all have reading moods, and these moods determine our reading choices. These moods can be affected by something as simple as the weather; in the summer I tend to go for cozies and lighter novels. In the winter, I might happily settle down with a trilogy like The Forsyte Saga, or even War and Peace.

While having these thoughts, it occurred to me that maybe — just maybe — agents and editors have similar reading moods. And what if the agent you’re querying about a thriller, is in a cozy mood, or vice-a-versa? Or what if the editor to whom your agent sends your noir manuscript is in the mood for a light-hearted romp? What then? Hmmm? Perhaps our rejections are simply the result of a passing mood. You know, when the rejection reads, “Nice, but not what we’re looking for,” they may be looking for it next winter when they are in a more somber mood. Or when the rejection reads, “Not for us,” they may simply mean not for us today, but tomorrow when my indigestion passes, I may be eager for it.

This revelation is not very helpful as far as getting your book published, but it may make you feel better to know that your work may not be at fault, it just hit the reader when they were in the wrong mood.

Robin Hathaway

The Relevance of History

Kelli Stanley is an award-winning author of crime fiction (novels and short stories). She makes her home in Dashiell Hammett's San Francisco, a city she loves to write about. She is the author of two crime fiction series, one set in 1940 San Francisco (featuring hardboiled female PI, Miranda Corbie), the other in first century Roman Britain.

Her novels include City of Dragons, Nox Dormienda, The Curse-Maker, and City of Secrets (September, 2011). "Children's Day", a prequel to City of Dragons, was published in the International Thriller Writers anthology First Thrills: High Octane Stories From the Hottest Thriller Authors. Kelli earned a Master's Degree in Classics, loves jazz, old movies, battered fedoras, Art Deco and speakeasies. You can learn more about her and the worlds she creates at http://www.kellistanley.com.

First, let me thank Kate for inviting me to write for the Crime Writers' Chronicle — I'm happy to be here! Particularly because today — February 1st, 2011 — marks a significant occasion for me. The Curse-Maker — a "reboot" of my "Roman noir" series, and sequel to my out-of-print debut novel, Nox Dormienda — is officially released into the wild, left to forage what it can on its own in a hardscrabble world.

The Curse-Maker is my third published book and the second that I wrote. The setting is first century Roman Britain, and thus millennia apart from City of Dragons and the Miranda Corbie series set in 1940 San Francisco. (For the record, City of Dragons was the third book I wrote and the second to be published. City of Secrets is the fourth book I wrote and will be the fourth to be published when it launches in September.)

What do they have in common? A love of the noir style, used and tweaked and pulled and tucked in very different ways. And, of course, history.

I'm sometimes asked why I write historical mysteries, and the question always surprises me. Maybe I spent too long in the classroom — I earned two Bachelor degrees in Art History and Classics, and a Master's in Classics — but it's hard for me to look at history as something apart from everyday life.

History is a record of the human condition. It's yesterday and all our yesterdays, whether lighted by fools or hallowed by angels. We need to glance at the past occasionally, focus on it, study it, and recognize the forces — and the fools — that shaped it, not hold it at arm's length and memorize dates and names. It can help guide us past contemporary mine fields, help solve the problems of a more complex world ... because no matter how complex the world is, human beings are roughly the same as they've always been, good, bad, indifferent, trying to survive.

For me, history is as much a part of life as breathing. Think of human life as a number line ... we learned about negative numbers at a young age, and moved up and down the number line, tracing integers with a child's finger. Why can't we do the same with time? If we can't literally travel backwards — yet — surely we can do so in our minds.

So I write historical mysteries. And I write them, actually, for the readers who don't normally read them. I try to breathe sensuality and life into the time and place, to transport the reader so that she becomes a part of the action, not a spectator watching a travelogue. I write to overcome the impression of boredom and narrow-minded and immutable opinion that characterizes so many people's experience of history class. I write to overcome the idea that it is a preoccupation of intellectuals and art-lovers and aesthetes, something alien to be roped off and gawked at, spectacle now, forgotten tomorrow.

I want to write other things, of course. A graphic novel. Contemporary crime fiction, too. I struggle against the ghetto of category, and resist type-casting. After all, today is as important to me as ... yesterday.

— Kelli Stanley