The Three-Act Structure, Historical Fiction, and Genealogical Research
How to gather the facts and turn them into fiction!
Historical fiction is a popular genre. From Taylor Jenkins Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo to James Clavell's Shogun, the genre allows readers to get swept up in the past and for writers to explore historical moments in time while weaving them into compelling and engaging narratives.
When we see the word "Fiction,” it may be easy to dismiss the importance of verified historical research. However, by incorporating genealogical research into your historical fiction, you add authenticity and depth to the settings, characters, and overarching story. This helps your story resonate with readers on a personal level.
By combining your research with the three-act story structure—a proven framework for storytelling that dates back to Aristotle (353 BCE)—you can craft an engaging and historically rich novel.
Here's how to do it:
Incorporating Genealogical Research
Genealogical research provides the foundation for your historical fiction novel, offering insights into real-life events, family dynamics, and cultural contexts. Maybe this is your personal family history research, or perhaps you have researched a time and place to plop a fictional character into – whatever inspiration you are writing from, here's how to leverage this research effectively:
Unearth Family Stories: Explore the history of your ancestor, any individual from a specified time, to uncover compelling anecdotes to help your story feel more relatable to the reader, unique traits like physical abnormalities or a particular way of doing things, or unresolved mysteries like who was a personas biological parents to tied to their life and legacy. These elements can serve as inspiration for characters, conflicts, and themes. Use newspapers to find engaging narratives spoken around the time your novel is set, and explore Oral Histories (like those at the Library of Congress) to help you get your start.
Contextualize Historical Events: Use genealogical records, like maps, charts, paintings, and photographs, to place your ancestors within broader historical contexts. Use census data or immigration records to help reveal how your family was affected by societal changes like wars or economic shifts. Remember, a lot of people left the "Old Country" for extreme reasons, from poverty, war, revolts, and persecution, but they may have never spoken about it. Using these records, you can expand your research into the histories of the areas our ancestors once came from.
Develop Authentic Characters: Genealogical research can help you create multidimensional characters by exploring their motivations, cultural heritage, and emotional struggles. Ancestral secrets, like a hidden family, or legacies, like craftsman skills or even working as a double agent during World War II, can be powerful plot devices.
But remember to:
Balance Fact and Fiction: While genealogical resources provide factual grounding, use creative liberties to fill gaps and enhance the narrative. This approach ensures historical accuracy while keeping the story engaging.
Once you've gathered your historical and genealogical insights and research, you can begin structuring your novel using the three-act framework.
Act I: The Setup
The first act introduces the world of your story, its characters, and the central conflict. In a historical fiction narrative enhanced by historical and genealogical research, this is the moment to immerse readers in the historical setting and the familial context.
Introduce Characters and Setting: Use genealogical details to vividly depict the period, location, and social conditions using sensory words. For example, describe an ancestor's life in a bustling industrial city or a rural farming community during a specific era from the mindset of your character. Whether happy or depressed – these emotions will change how your antagonist perceives the world around them – and the descriptors you use will set the tone for your reader.
Establish Conflict: No conflict equals a dull story. Identify a dramatic question or central challenge tied to your ancestors' lives—such as the struggles of migration, survival during war, or overcoming societal prejudices.
Inciting Incident: This is a pivotal event or moment that disrupts your protagonist's normal life. This could be inspired by actual family events like emigration or a sudden tragedy uncovered in genealogical records.
Plot Point One: Conclude Act I with a moment where the protagonist commits to their journey—for instance, deciding to leave their homeland or confront an inherited family secret. This plot point needs to hook your reader as well as your inciting incident did. It should drag your reader out of the first Act into the second.
Act II: The Confrontation
The second act is where tension builds as your protagonist faces obstacles tied to historical events and personal struggles. This is the heart of your story.
Rising Action: Introduce challenges inspired by genealogical discoveries—such as navigating cultural assimilation or surviving wartime hardships. Use historical context to enrich these struggles.
Midpoint Turning Point: Include a significant event that shifts the story's trajectory. For example, your protagonist might uncover a hidden truth about their ancestry or face betrayal from someone close.
Character Development: Deepen your protagonist's arc by exploring their emotional growth and moral dilemmas. Like I said before, conflict makes a great story. No conflict makes a boring story. Make sure you push your characters boundaries through conflict in order to make them grow. Genealogical research can inform these moments—perhaps through grappling with ancestral legacies or reconciling conflicting identities.
Plot Point Two: Toward the end of Act II, RAISE THE STAKE DRAMATICALLY—such as through loss or failure—that propels the story toward its climax. It also draws the reader into the third act!
Act III: The Resolution
In general, the final act resolves the conflicts your protagonist had faced and ties together themes while showing how your protagonist has changed.
The third act is a combination of:
Climax: Build toward an intense climax where the protagonist confronts their greatest challenge. This could be inspired by a significant historical event (e.g., revolution, apartheid) or personal resolution (e.g., reconciling with estranged family or accepting what they couldn’t earlier accept).
Resolution of Subplots: Tie up secondary storylines involving supporting characters or historical elements uncovered through genealogy research. Unresolved subplots are really just plot holes and can detract from your overall story.
Denouement: Reflect on how events have transformed your protagonist and their legacy. Show how genealogical threads connect past generations to present ones.
End with Resonance: Conclude with a meaningful reflection on themes like resilience, identity, or family bonds that resonate universally. But also know, you can have an open-ended or ambiguous ending, a cliffhanger, a twist, or an unconventional resolution that leaves the reader pondering the characters' fate or the story's unresolved mysteries. Remember: it's YOUR story, only you know how it should end.
Tips for Writing Historical Fiction Using Genealogy
Remember to Research Thoroughly: Combine genealogical records with broader historical research for accuracy.
You Can Focus on Universal Themes, but it’s not mandatory: Consider highlighting themes like love, sacrifice, migration, or perseverance to connect readers emotionally, but also remember you can be less conventional and think outside the box.
Use Visual Aids and other sensory items: Incorporate maps, timelines, or photographs into your planning process to visualize settings and events. Consider making old recipes to see how they smell or taste. Seek out old perfume for similar reasons or go to a fabric shop and touch the textures of different fabrics to help enhance your writing experience.
Humanize History on a Street Level: Use genealogical and social history to create relatable characters whose struggles mirror universal human experiences.
Why Combine Genealogical Research with the Three-Act Structure?
Genealogical research adds authenticity and emotional depth to historical fiction, while the three-act structure ensures clarity and engagement. Together, they create a narrative that honors history while captivating readers.
By blending these approaches, you can craft a novel that not only entertains your reader but also preserves the historical legacy of those who came before us.
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