More thoughts on historical fiction!

Living through history is no fun.

I read that in countless tweets and found a lot of memes about it, and I think that many people will agree, especially after last year. Seeing every social aspect of life and big parts of infrastructure breaking down and always having in mind that doing the things you deeply wish to do and seeing the people you miss would potentially kill people was a tough experience. What in history books may look like a few years of crisis with an interesting outcome feels incredible long, if you have to make it through day by day and you do not know whether it will be months, years, or decades. „I think it is interesting“, a good friend had told me right at the beginning. „This is just like living science. You gather every information you have and then have to accept the outcome.“ I have to say that my interest in this outcome has been weakened by dealing with loneliness, missing so many people, and still having some goodbyes on my lips that I will never have the chance to say.

But this one is about more of those thoughts on historical fiction that I occasionally have while working on my novel about the biography of a witch in Europe in the 17th century.

When I was a child, I loved to read historical fiction and was in general interested in history a lot. I was reading until late at night, and was used to stories about unfulfilled love, waiting for wars to end or hoping for revolutions to succeed, having dead parents and friends. But with growing older, I also grew distant to these stories. Things that I had gotten used to when I was younger were suddenly too sad to take. Maybe, because I suddenly understood more of their consequences.

I kept myself from relating deeper to those stories and characters. I saw the heroes that survived disaster, escaping the fire of their burning realities, but I could think them as human beings as I was one.

While living through these terrible times, where do you find a place to put all these other feelings and musings and needs that humans tend to have?

With recently certain events taking place, I began to enjoy that challenge.

While researching, drafting and writing my historical fiction novel about a woman sentenced for witchcraft in the 17th century, I want to understand what kind of person she might have been.
When was she happy?
When did she laugh?
When was she in love?
When was she in a bad mood? Really! How did she swear in the morning when leaving the bed to step over her night dress and almost fall, before having her first cup of tea? It’s those details that I love!

And as I was reading all kinds of things about the early modern days that this potentially story will take place in, I came across another dark figure.
The plague doctor, the person hiding in a suit and a scary bird mask, always appearing right there were death and disease had taken hold.

The witch and the plague doctor are two images, two narratives so closely connected with death and suffering – I wanted to get to know them.

Who was the man behind the mask?
How did he end up as a figure meaning death, appearing there where no one else wanted to be?
How did someone live a life after facing deformed bodies, all kind of body fluids, and piles of corpses?

This is something I want to feel and understand and put into the novel which I am drafting.

And since I am still stuck at home and lonely and bored and am never going to take any advantage of my best years, I also want to to pair them up.

The witch and the plague doctor. Two figures meaning horror and death. I think they are destined to fall for each other. Please don‘t laugh, my witch and I are deadly serious about this.