Writer's Gramps

Following on from the last note about how to use historical incidents in fiction for a Writers Magazine story, sometimes a story comes from history and needs only some good publicity; the whole plot is there for the taking. When I was preparing for a talk on the influence of trade on Anglo Scottish relations, I came across the following quote of Strabo in a book called The Tin Islands by Arthur Eedie:- Anciently, the Phoenicians alone, from Gades (Cadiz), engrossed this market, hiding the navigation from all others. When the Romans followed a certain shipmaster, that they might discover the market, the jealous shipmaster wilfully stranded his vessel on a shoal, misleading those who were travking him, to the same destruction. Escaping from the shipwreck by means of a fragment of the ship, he was indemnified for his losses out of the public treasury. I have no names for either the ship captain or the Romans, nor does it say how any of them got back to Phoenicia or Rome, but it cries out...

There are two ways of writing historical novels, or even short stories; you follow the historical incidents with accuracy, or, you do as Wilbur Smith has done and set the story at the time of the incident and let it grow. In Shout at the Devil, Smith uses the incident of the WW1 German battleship hiding in the East African river as a setting and general plot idea and weaves a tale around it. That compares with Bernard Cornwell, who takes Sharpe through the Peninsular war step by step, making the actual events influence Sharpe's decisions throughout the story. The trouble with the Cornwell system is that it is easy to begin to write a history book rather than a story about fictional people. For example, in the Charge of the Light Brigade, one must remember the lieutenant has a sweetheart and the tale is about their relationship and not where the Russian guns are sited or who gave the order to charge. All the lieutenant knows is that the charge has sounded and he hasn't had a let...

Historical tales is in my genre and I was delighted to find Writing Magazine's next competition was for just that. Now I need a plot line that meets the editors requirements of:- Something forewarned about. A menace that hangs over the protagonist. The bomb is set to explode in ten minutes but the disarmer doesn't know and is being deliberate. The tsunami is coming to the beach. He's trying to make a big sale but doesn't know he'll be made redundant if he fails.  A ticking clock. A deadline to meet or a delivery to make before the closing time for the contract, or the organ being transported dies. High stakes. I doubt if the type of high stake that Bertie Wooster experiences would qualify. I assume it is life or death type of thing. Maybe an important job interview, or getting Brexit done or stopped. A moral dilemma. Should the sniper fire when he knows the armistice is due in ten minutes? Should he keep the money and let his pal take the blame...