In an article for Writer’s Digest, Aurélie Thiele offers advice on writing fiction about real tragic events.
While drafting her World War II novel The Paris Understudy, Thiele avoided depicting the Vél d’Hiv, an infamous roundup of French Jews who were deported to German concentration camps. “I didn’t write about the Vél d’Hiv roundup not because it wasn’t relevant to my novel but because the weight of history was too daunting,” she says. “I didn’t want to use this immensely tragic event just to create a gratuitous, fictional plot twist.”
However, once she began revising her draft, Thiele found that the roundup could provide a significant turning point for one of her major characters. “I’d put enough work into the rest of the book that I could do justice to such a monstrous event,” she writes. “I was finally ready to add these scenes. In hindsight, I realize the book wouldn’t have been complete without them, but for a long time I just wasn’t ready to write them.”
Thiele offers three lessons learned from her experience:
- If you can find another way to add a plot twist to your novel, do it. The people who were directly affected by a tragic event shouldn’t merely serve as backdrop or flavor for your novel. If you don’t need to depict the actual event, create a fictional scenario that serves the same purpose.
- If you truly believe the tragic historical event is a central part of your novel, show in detail the devastating impact it has on your protagonist. If you depict a tragic historical event, make every word count. If the event doesn’t affect your protagonist, why is it there?
- Make the rest of your novel as good as possible first and write the scenes around the tragic event last. Your mileage may vary here, but Thiele recommends writing scenes depicting the tragedy only after you have drafted and refined the rest of your novel. “When you finally put your pen to the page, think of the reverence that surrounds a visit to Gettysburg or Arlington National Cemetery,” she writes. “You can’t be sure whether the reader will approve of your efforts, but you can fight to make your writing worthy of the departed.”
