Source: Five Reasons I Love Historical Fiction | The Wolfe’s (Writing) Den
If you read my recent post about the progress on my 2016 reading goals, you may have noticed I’ve been reading a lot of period fiction this year, and it’s really been inspiring my fascination with history! I love reading stories set in the past for much the same reason I enjoy science fiction and fantasy: they show me a world I could never see or experience for myself. And what more could you want from a fiction genre?
So continuing through my “five reasons” series, here’s a list of five reasons I love historical fiction. Enjoy!
1) It offers a deeper insight into human history.
History is fascinating, but there’s only so much we can…
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Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog 
Those are the reasons why I also like writing historical fiction 🙂
It involves a lot of research, and the kind of reserch that has to do with people, much much more that history lessons do. Researching has been one of the best things about writing my 1920s stories 🙂
Point 3 in your list is my favourite. We sometimes think to past time people as aliens that thought and acted different from us, and sometimes we think we could never understand why they did what they did. But the truth is they were human beings just like us, so we can understand if we put in the effort to understand.
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As a history teacher I had a great deal of contempt for historical fiction. That is until I read Jack Whyte’s series THE CAMULOD CHRONICLES about post Roman Britain. So well researched esp down to even such details as food and clothing. I fell in love with the characters but it was wonderful to get into the minds of the people of that era, their fears and joys and outlook on life. People lived in different times with different circumstances but I learned that people through the ages are very much the same even from then to modern times. Historical fiction is much more than non fiction’s dates and events. With historical fiction (and primary source non fiction) we get connected to people of the past and see the progression of human experience. The most impressive historical fiction I ever read was AZTEC by Gary Jennings. I mean this author had to have been transported 500 years ago to know the intricacies of daily life in Aztec Mexico to know this stuff.
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Agreed Carl – I read and reviewed AZTEC a few years ago, but still remember the basic story even now – it was an interesting, as well as informative, read 😀
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