Back in June, I spent a wonderful weekend in Las Vegas for my third in-person Historical Novel Society North America Conference. I recapped some of the quotable takeaways from fellow historical novelists in my Part One blog post, which I wrote on the plane on the way home.
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| Dressed as Miss Havisham for the costume contest |
But one of the best things about HNSNA is that the conference isn’t over once we all return to our respective cities. Since we waved goodbye to Vegas, I’ve been working my way through the recordings of the panels and talks I didn’t hear live. Today, in my Part Two post, I’m highlighting some of the most memorable moments.
I was particularly excited to catch up on the session on biographical fiction, which dwelt on the challenges of this sub-genre (Gill Paul: “Part of the problem with biographical fiction is what you have to leave out”), as well as the ways writing about a real person can provide the author with helpful scaffolding (Heather Webb: “In biographical fiction you have a map—the person’s life”). In other sessions, though, the historical fiction community remained divided on the question of outlining vs. “pantsing.” Renee Rosen told us, “I can’t outline. I work everything out on the page.”
Speaking of maps, Christopher Cevasco gave us a spirited defense of starting your novel with a map and a prologue, gifting us this great analogy: “If we compare reading a novel to fine dining, the map is like the menu, and the prologue is like an appetizer.”
As usual, there was plenty of research chatter. Tracy Barrett warned that, “it’s easy to fall prey to research rapture,” and Jonathan F. Putnam noted that “your family history doesn’t necessarily have intrinsic interest to a stranger.” Just like our keynote authors, other speakers emphasized research gaps as pivotal to the novelist’s process. G.J. Berger: “The further you go back in time, the more you can make it up.” Shelley Blanton-Stroud: “We chase facts but more importantly we chase truth.” And Alan Smale said of the alternate history genre, “[it] holds up a mirror to our known timeline.”
One of my favorite craft tips came from Gill Paul, who advised us to, “write your most emotional scene in first person, then switch it to third,” if you’re writing a close third person perspective. Other suggestions related to characterization included those from Judith Lindbergh (“You want to take pauses in an action scene to reach into your character’s emotional state”), Elizabeth Boyle (“The archetype gives a character a place in the story and a role to fulfil”), and Kate Quinn (“If the antagonist is going to be a true threat to your hero, then they can’t be a dumbass”).
During a session on getting “unstuck,” Susan Meissner told us, “If you’re really stuck go back to your premise and realign yourself with it, because it’s where you began. It’s the heart of your story that gave you to gas to begin,” while Eliza Knight made a helpful distinction between abandoning and taking distance from a project: “Don’t let it go. Set it aside.”
In discussions around writing characters who are part of historically marginalized groups, Samantha Rajaram told the crowd, “We are more than our queerness, so we need to make sure we’re not flattening our characters out and reducing them.” While Joan Fernandez reminded listeners that, “language is our currency in writing, and just because a phrase was in common use it doesn’t mean that we automatically use it.”
Finally, the “market” and the salability of our passion projects remains top-of-mind for many conference speakers and question askers. Tracee de Hahn suggested that we all, “evaluate [our] log lines even if [we] started from a family story,” while Weina Dai Randel left us with two options: “When it comes to trends you can try to chase them, or you can keep being the writer you are.”
Thank you so much to all the speakers at HNSNA 2025—if I owned a time turner, I would have listened to all of you live in Vegas. Here’s looking forward to the UK society conference, which will be in Maynooth in Ireland in 2026!
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