History is not plot (How to write historical fiction 101)
How to Write Historical Fiction 101 is a series explores the special pitfalls of historical fiction that I’ve seen writers fall into again and again in my decade of editing in the genre and that don’t get talked about enough. It’s not a comprehensive overview of the storytelling principles common to all genres. For that, my top recommendations are Mythcreants, Helping Writers Become Authors, and Matt Bird’s The Secrets of Story.
I get on a call with a client we’ll call G – a new writer of historical fiction. G tells me she’s feeling a little lost.
She’s been an armchair historian of the war she’s writing about for years. Research is no problem for her. If anything, she has to stop herself falling down research rabbit holes when she should be writing. She knows every detail of her characters’ backstories; they’re real people to her by now.
Despite all that, she’s stuck. The story feels like it’s going nowhere.
I ask her the question that’s been bothering me the whole time I’ve listened to her. ‘Okay, so it sounds like you’ve got a good foundation for the setting and characters. What’s the plot about?’
She launches into a lengthy answer… again about the war.
By this point, I guess what’s going on. I’ve seen it many times.
In her mind, the plot is the war. For many other writers like her, it’s the lifeof the historical figure they’re writing about or the generationsof the family whose saga they’re chronicling.
Surely enough, when I read G’s writing, the only thing I can see holding all the scattered viewpoint characters, relationships, and subplots together is the war that forms their backdrop.
The story begins when the war begins and ends when it ends.
Each big plot point is the characters reacting to a major event within the war’s history.
In between, we read about various, isolated episodes in their lives.
This is exactly why she’s feeling lost.
New historical fiction writers often make the mistake of assuming that the history they’re writing about will provide them with most of the plot structure they need. To them, anything that happens within the scope of that historical event, life, or setting could belong in the story. So they’re not sure what they’re doing wrong when exploring those many directions doesn’t add up to a tense, cohesive, satisfying plot.
They’re treating history like plot. History is not plot.
So what is plot?
Creativity loves constraints. In plotting fiction, the most overarching constraint is – to borrow Mythcreants’ term – the throughline. (You might have heard it called the story’s ‘spine’, ‘core conflict’, ‘central problem’ or the like.) This is the outermost layer of plot, and it’s what we’ll focus on in this article.
A story’s throughline is the series of attempts of its main character(s) to resolve an uncertain, urgent problem with stakes. (‘Stakes’ are the bad thing that might happen if the problem isn’t resolved.) The throughline problem is introduced at the beginning of the story. The story is over when the problem is resolved. There are complications along the way.
This is what gives a plot a sense of direction and cohesion. The plot is an endeavour to resolve a single overarching problem.
My client G was (unknowingly) trying to use history – ‘the war’ – as her throughline problem, and this was throwing off her whole understanding of what her plot was about.
While the war is certainly a problem for her characters, it’s not one they can resolve. They’re ordinary soldiers and civilians trying to get by, not gods or even military leaders who have some modicum of influence over the war’s outcome.
This fact alone already means that the war itself can’t be the throughline problem.
Treating it like it was only left G without clarity around what her characters could try to do.
Meanwhile, a historical figure’s life or a series of family generations, two other common historical fiction focuses, can’t be the throughline problem because, well, livesare not problems. There’s nothing to be resolved there.
So thinking that their plot is their character’s or family’s life isn’t going to get a writer very far on the road to a working plot.
How to find your plot
You find your real throughline problem by getting specific and concrete.
A throughline problem should meet all these criteria, but if your story’s structure isn’t there yet, notice the problem that shows up in the answers to at least some of these questions. Your throughline problem or something close to it is probably there.
What problem in your story that the main character(s) actually do something about?
What’s the problem with the highest stakes for the characters we care about? (Not necessarily highest-stakes in general. A plague is high-stakes objectively, but if no one in the story we care about is in danger from it, we don’t perceive it as high-stakes.)
What’s the most urgent problem that also has high stakes?
What’s the most difficult problem that also has high stakes?
What problem is resolved at the story’s climax?
In G’s story, one of the many current plot threads is a young soldier’s struggle to survive long enough to get home to his lover before she’s married off to an abuser.
This, she decided, is the throughline.
The soldier can do something about this problem: train hard and make good choices to stay alive, work his way up in the ranks so he could earn his lover’s parents’ approval when he returns, etc.
The stakes are high because G takes the time to show us enough of the soldier’s relationship with his lover that we’ll feel heartbreak if she suffers in her forced marriage and they lose each other.
She made the problem more urgent by setting a date for the lover’s wedding to the abuser (deadline = more urgency) and more uncertainty by having the lover’s parents disapprove of the soldier, making the problem more difficult to resolve even if he survives the war.
The problem is resolved at the story’s climax, when the soldier heroically contributes to protecting his lovers’ family’s town and earns an honourable discharge and their approval. He marries his lover.
She agreed she should cut all scenes, POVs, and subplots that didn’t directly contribute to this throughline, or rework them until they did.
Case Study: The Memoirs of Cleopatra
At first glance, Margaret George’s The Memoirs of Cleopatra seems to prove that history can be plot. It’s a chunky, detailed, realistic account of most of Cleopatra VII’s life, from early childhood to death. This is a well-reviewed book by a professional storyteller.
But behind the scenes, George is doing something very clever. Early in the book, she identifies the throughline of Cleopatra’s varied life – and makes it the story’s throughline, too. That problem is the Roman threat to Egypt’s sovereignty. Rome covets wealthy Egypt and wants to add it to the empire.
Cleopatra’s reign, life, and ability to protect her loved ones and people depend on this not happening, so there are clear stakes that the story teaches us to care about.
The resolution is uncertain because Rome is very powerful.
The problem is urgent because the brilliant Octavian (Augustus Caesar) has his sights set on Egypt from early on.
Every plot-pertinent action Cleopatra takes in the story is an attempt to resolve this problem.
Even when she’s a child and not yet a queen, this version of Cleopatra is already stepping in at feasts with Roman dignitaries to ensure her drunken father doesn’t let Egypt get walked all over.
When Cleopatra schemes to corner Julius Caesar into publicly recognising their child as his heir, George doesn’t let this become an extraneous subplot about her heroine being hurt by Caesar’s lack of acknowledgement. She frames it as an attempt to win another layer of protection for Egypt: Caesar will leave Egypt in peace if his own son is on the throne.
Her later romance with Marc Antony is shot through with her pushing him to use his power to create a new empire with her that can hold its own against Rome.
On a personal level, she connects deeply with Egypt’s native culture and wants to preserve it.
The story ends – and Cleopatra ends her life – when the battle for Egypt’s sovereignty is finally lost to Roman conquest.
I could go on, but you get the point. The story is framed as Cleopatra’s attempts to solve one specific and concrete plot problem. It’s not just a series of episodes from her life.
Case Study Takeaway
Most history isn’t as story-shaped as Cleopatra’s life, so you probably won’t be able to copy George’s exact approach of mapping the throughline onto a life/event.
But you can apply the general method of looking for the big problem to be resolved within your character’s experience of the historical setting.
For example, your family saga’s throughline problem might be a generational trauma. The story begins with the family suffering from being on the losing side of a historical conflict (the trauma). They slowly overcome self-sabotage and cycles of abuse resulting from that trauma, clawing their way out over the course of generations in the post-war setting. The story ends when a generation breaks the cycle and becomes happy and stable.
Now, history is serving your plot, not working overtime to stand as both setting and plot.
Getting the plot unstuck
‘Oh, duhhh,’ G drawls with a slightly sheepish smile after her throughline problem clicks. ‘Seems obvious now.’
Finding your throughline problem often is one of those things that feels obvious – in hindsight. When you’re stuck, it feel almost impossible to see on your own.
Want help finding your throughline problem? I have a few options for you. If you’ve got an outline or partial draft that’s stuck, check out my Story Structure Rescue. For writers with a full manuscript, the Developmental Assessment is the best option. If you just want to talk it through, I offer one-off, on-demand coaching calls where we can discuss any topic you like.
