The Book Stacks

Today, historical fiction author C.W. Gortner is joining us to talk about his writing.

Why do I write historical fiction?

Since childhood, I’ve loved reading and writing historical fiction. It’s one of the oldest and finest traditions in fiction, and while many of today’s novelists bring fresh, exciting perspectives the basic structure of conjuring history and the people who lived it hasn’t changed.

Historical fiction at its best illuminates where we are by revealing where we’ve been. I believe such classic writers as Alexander Dumas, Daphne Du Maurier and Rafael Sabatini turned to historical fiction because history exerts such a powerful influence on us. I write historical fiction because I seek to immerse myself in a different time and still make sense of the world I inhabit today.

I started writing when I was quite young; my mom tells me I was always scribbling stories and illustrating them in spiral-bound notebooks. Writing is a passion for me; in my teens, I even took time off from partying to write a typically angst-ridden novel of desire and urban living, which I still have. It was awful but I finished it. I finished most writing projects I undertook; I never found it hard to keep writing and so when I began to consider undertaking a Masters in Fine Arts in Writing, it seemed only natural that my thesis should be a novel.

By this time, I had written the first draft of what would eventually become THE LAST QUEEN. I started writing it because while I liked most historical fiction I read few novels were set in Spain and there were stories I wanted to tell, in ways I think no one else had told them before.

Writing historical fiction isn’t easy. Striking that delicate balance between fact and fiction is often challenging. It can even become tenuous when confronting issues of religion, race, sexuality, and gender. I write about people in the 16th century; I do not share their beliefs.

The Renaissance was a brutal, quixotic, and complex time. As much as I strive to bring it to life for readers, the truth is we can never truly understand what it was to actually live in the 16th century. Therefore, the best I can achieve is an approximation of the past.

I consider historical accuracy an obligation—in that the writer should not deliberately alter or distort known facts or have characters behave in overtly modernized way, just to suit a particular publishing fad or temperament. To have my lead character march at the head of an army like Joan of Arc, for example, would fly in the face of every known fact about her.

That said, I also love to uncover secrets in history. Whether it’s Juana of Castile’s alleged madness, a squire’s search for his identity or Catherine de Medici’s reputation for evil, it’s what we don’t know, what we haven’t been told, those subtle edges that get lost in the broad scope of history, that intrigue me. There are always two sides to every story: I look for the one we rarely hear.

Still, my books are novels and their principal function is to entertain. I hope my readers will become immersed in the story and feel it on a sensory level. I also hope, as a secondary objective, to awaken interest in the time itself. If someone reads my book and thinks, “I want to know more about Spain or Juana la Loca or history, then I’ve done what I set out to do.

Likewise, if someone reads my book and writes to me to say, “I couldn’t wait to turn the page, that, too, is my goal as a novelist. For while a Renaissance person faced issues we don’t, love, hatred, power, intolerance, passion, and the quest for personal liberty are universal themes.

Readers identify with emotion. It’s why we read.