Writing historical fiction – the role of eyewitnesses.

Realising that my next 7th of the month MTW post would coincide with the horrifying events of October 7th 2023, I have felt compelled to pay my respects, and to examine the role of eyewitnesses in writing historical fiction.

On October 7th, 2023, the world awoke to the news that Hamas had launched a pre-planned and coordinated attack on several Israeli kibbutzim and the Supernova music festival, murdering over a thousand Israelis and foreign nationals, mostly unarmed citizens, including children, and taking hostage 250 individuals of whom 40 have died while held in captivity and 100 are yet to be returned.

The gruesome eye-witness accounts all report the indiscriminate nature of the attack even if some of the minor details and interpretations seem to be at odds with each other.

Since then the violence has increased multiplying the suffering of Jews and Arabs and all those caught up in the Israel-Gaza war. Our prayers continue.

Those of us attempting to write historical fiction occupy what might be called an interstitial space between accurately documented events or biographies and our creative imagination. Fact and fiction are woven together, and it’s left to the reader to pick at the strands, if they wish to, to differentiate between the two. It’s more immediate with films that take maybe 2-3 hours to enjoy, whereas a typical Hilary Mantel will occupy the reader for days, weeks, or, in my case, months! 

A plug whilst I'm here: the recently published The West in Her Eyes, Janet Hancock (Resolute Books), is an excellent read and a great example of how to put fiction into history - and vice versa.

The distinction between The Crown, Ghandi, Cry Freedom, Apollo 13, and Braveheart or Ben Hur, is that the first four in the list were made when eye-witnesses were still alive. In contrast, Braveheart and Ben Hur were based (however loosely) on historical accounts long after the eyewitnesses had died. 

Where does our moral compass point when it comes to preserving historical accuracy within historical fiction? 

After all, we are storytellers, not journalists, or historians. Is there a tacit and playful agreement between the reader and the writer that permits, even expects, the writer to go off-piste? (I hope so!) But how far off-piste? Or maybe that is sailing very close to Mark Twain’s maxim of ‘never letting the truth get in the way of a good story’? 

Palestinian writer, Susan Abulhawa, in her beautifully written Mornings in Jenin, and Jewish writer, Assaf Gavron’s wonderful The Hilltop, illustrate the tension between using historical fiction as a tool for propaganda and a genuine, if biased, outpouring of hopes and dreams for a better world.