ARE YOU A YOUNG WRITER INSPIRED BY HISTORY?
by Alan Caig Wilson, director of the Young Walter Scott Prize Imagining History UK programme
Historical fiction is the genre established by Sir Walter Scott. As a young writer, he took his inspiration from the land, people and histories of his homeland, Scotland. He wanted people to know about the past of their country, and for history to be useful to them in the present.
Historical fiction has come to mean a form of fiction that is grounded in historical detail. Historical novelists spend a lot of their time immersing themselves in this detail, before allowing their creative inspiration to take flight. They take readers on adventures in time travel.
We cannot know what people in history actually said. Some have written their thoughts down, and we have letters and biographies, but we can’t know anything about the sound of their voice, the rhythms of their walking, thinking and feeling. Excellent historical fiction adds the work of imagination to the recorded facts of history and opens up new avenues of thinking for readers. Perhaps readers are then inspired to find out more about history as a result.
There is no culture on the planet that does not have a history. Sometimes this is written down, sometimes it only exists in stories that have been handed down, or sung, or recorded in paintings and drawings. Your history is preserved and respected somewhere, and it is waiting for your writer’s mind to find it and to begin a journey of imagination, a journey of inspired speculation.
For a writer of fiction, however, history is only the beginning. It is the important first hook that sets your writer’s mind alight. What then carries you forward is developing your skills to really take advantage of the rich source that has been opened up by history.
So, if you are exploring history as the source for your writing, The Imagining History Programme UK is here to help you.
In our workshops, we create a writing (and thinking) environment for young writers aged between 11 and 19 to explore the social, political and emotional worlds of their past times. We work live with groups of young writers in schools, and we work online with writers who have entered and have been shortlisted for the Young Walter Scott Prize. In our live workshops, we take young writers out to a historical place for a day and share ways of soaking up the stories that exist there, just for the finding!
Perhaps you have already found that you are interested in particular period in history, from your work in school. Or perhaps you have your own private interest that you would love to explore more. Whatever your starting point, we have ways of deepening and enhancing your passion for history and your writing.
The Imagining History UK team is made up of writers, historians, art historians and specialists in the development of new ways of thinking. We share ideas to start you off, and to keep you moving onwards and upwards in your writing and imagining skills. We believe that there are four factors that make a difference in good Historical Fiction. They are:
- Individual Voice – how your sense of yourself shines through your writing. This is the basic quality of good writing that makes us sit up and take notice. Your writing reflects your views about things. Can you convince us with your writing that we should be listening to you? (The answer is yes! You only have to begin to find out how….)
- Bite – this is the quality of good writing that is more than plot, character and setting – bite is what mesmerises readers, hooks them in and keeps them reading you.
- Somewhere different – readers are drawn in to worlds that fill them with curiosity. But curiosity starts with you, the writer. If you are going somewhere different, you can take the reader with you.
- A taste for the unexpected – even in a story that readers think they know, there is always a new a angle, a new direction for a writer to take us in. As a young writer, you have a fresh view of the world. Be courageous and explore it!
Here is a link to a story, written by Atlas Weyland Eden and read by the actor, Luke Treadaway. Atlas won a Young Walter Scott Prize in 2019. He has just won the BBC Young Writer’s Award for 2023.
Atlas is now 18 years old. He began the ideas for this story when he was 14 years old. His central character lives in a past time when language was just beginning. His winning story for YWSP We wolves reached even further back in time to when wolves were about to become dogs. Listen to the ways that Atlas hooks you in and keeps you listening!
More about us
At www.imagininghistory.org you can find more about us, how we think and what we have been doing since we began in 2015.
You will also find a short series of online writing ideas to start you off, or give you some new ideas about where to go next. This will give you a taste of the kinds of ideas and inspirations we share. It should give you enough to start writing an entry for YWSP – then you are on your way!
In 2023 we worked with schools in Edinburgh, Suffolk, Cornwall and North Wales. In the past we have worked with schools in Norfolk, Northamptonshire, West London, the Isle of Man and the Scottish Borders. Perhaps you could pass the website link to one of your teachers, who might then be inspired to set up a workshop so that you and your friends could do some live exploring in a historical place near you.
Email us: ImaginingHistoryUK@outlook.com