What types of resources and primary sources are helpful for getting into historical character?
When you are developing characters for fiction, and particularly historical fiction, what kinds of resources do you find most helpful in establishing a distinctive voice?
Two suggestions I've heard have been:
looking for personal correspondence and diaries of real people who are substantially similar to your character (date, age, gender, place of origin, social status)
reading books, particularly fiction, published in the time period you wish to write about
What types of resources and primary sources are helpful for getting into historical character, and why?
I am particularly looking for sources to facilitate making characters' voices (in their direct speech, as well as their writing and thoughts) both distinctive and authentic to their historical context.
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As readers, we think of the "voice" of certain historical periods in terms of the literary styles of those times. The "voice" of a person who has lived in the 16th century is that of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The "voice" of a person from the 14th century is that of Chaucer.
So when I want a narration to sound like it was told by a person from a certain time, I emulate the style of the most eminent writers of that time. I do supplement this with published journals or letters, if they are available.
And when I attempt to write in the "voice" of a time from which audio and video recordings are available (e.g. movies), I use those.
I do not generally use sources unfamiliar to my readers. I write fiction, not a linguistic study, and I have 6 months to finish a novel if I want to make a living, and cannot spend months on research. The quickest and easiest way, therefore, to induce the image of a historic period in the minds of my readers is to use their preconceptions to awake it.
And in fact, the literary products of a time are usually a quite accurate rendering of that time's "voice". And they have the benefit of already having transformed the actual manner of speaking (as it might have been partially preserved in letters and other private writings of non-writers) into a literary style that is ready for me to use as is.
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