In the third part of her series on creating women characters in historical fiction, MK Tod discusses the final elements in her list: plot, world-building, and theme.
- Plot. “The challenge with history is that so many of its events feature what men did in history. But what were the women doing?” Tod asks. Consider the agency a woman had during your time period and consider how historical events would affect them or drive them to action.
- World-building. As with setting, you should pay attention to the spaces women occupied – where they were accepted, where they were merely tolerated, and where they controlled. Consider the influence of women into your era’s politics, family environments, religious practices, and social mores, and vice versa.
- Theme. Your theme is your central idea but also what you have to say about it. As you develop your idea and your thoughts, consider how your concept would be reflected differently in women’s lives throughout different eras and locations. A coming of age story in one era will be dramatically different from that set in another.
“Since history has been written mostly be men, finding female voices and sources requires creativity,” Tod writes. “In history, a woman’s agency was different from a man’s, and yet they were influential in their own spheres and their own lives as well as in subtle and indirect ways in the broader and more public spheres.”
