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Plotting2I’m sure we all think that our own genre is unlike all others…

I remember, years ago when I first took one of her courses, trying to convince Holly Lisle that I couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t plot quite like her other pupils because I wrote historicals

Now, Holly was certainly right in insisting that I try her method the way she taught it, before adapting it to my writing needs – which I have done since, to much satisfaction, because her techniques are great – but I also still maintain that a historical novel, if history is to be more than a generic background and a set of costumes, calls for its own manner of plotting. Plotting

And of course there is no single right way to go about it, and things can be very different depending on how central the historical characters are – but for a glimpse of “our” specific set of challenges, you can read MK Tod’s post on outlining a historical novel, and Richard Denham’s thoughts on historicity and fiction.

And this barely begins to scrape the surface, of course… So I’ll amend what I said in the title: our plots may not be all that different, in the end – but our plotting certainly needs to be.