Writing Historical Fiction with Hilary McCollum

Course Content

This six-week online course offers writers the chance to develop the skills needed to write a historical novel. Participants will learn about the key elements of writing historical fiction including how to research your story, build the world of the novel and develop historical plots and characters. The course will provide practical skills that will help you bring the past to life. Weekly writing tasks will support you to begin work on your novel and plan for how you will complete it. There will be opportunities for discussion and for giving and receiving feedback from other participants.

Course Outline

Week One: Developing your story idea

We will look at sources of inspiration for historical fiction and explore different approaches to writing it in order to help you develop an idea for a historical novel.

Week Two: Understanding and building your world

This session will look at how to research stories set in the past, using both primary and secondary sources of information. It will help you to identify the key things you need to know and where/how you might find the answers.

Week Three: Developing your characters

We will explore how to make memorable and complex characters that are authentic to their time period. We will focus in particular on your central character.

Week Four: Bringing your characters to life

We will continue work on your characters, including writing authentic-sounding dialogue and creating believable contexts for your characters to operate in.

Week Five: Plot, structure and outline

This session will look at creating the building blocks for your story. We will consider story questions, character arcs, conflict, points of view and linear/non-linear structures.

Week Six: Sustaining your writing

The final session will consider how you take your novel forward. What will help you complete the first draft?

Course Outcomes

Participants will come away with a better understanding of how to write historical fiction and a plan for taking forward a historical novel. You will complete a variety of short writing exercises aimed at helping you identify how you will research your novel, develop characters authentic to the chosen time period and develop a plot and structure for your novel. You will have the chance to give and receive feedback.

Hilary McCollum is a writer and researcher based near Belfast. Her novel, Golddigger, won the 2016 Golden Crown Literary Society Prize for historical fiction. Her AHRC-funded PhD in creative writing at Queen’s University Belfast focused on writing historical fiction. She was the Seamus Heaney Centre’s publishing fellow in 2022 and worked for the Society of Authors in 2023-24. She has taught creative writing for the Irish Writers Centre and Seamus Heaney Centre.

Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email info@irishwriterscentre.ie.