I like to think of myself as a historian, this book just tells you what I know. In this book, you can find a rough guideline of how to start a historical fiction book, how to keep going, and how to end it. I'll include everything I've learned over m...
The very first step in writing historical fiction is knowing where to look. While this book will be a one-stop shop for all your historical needs, it's good to have multiple frames of reference. To write any factually based story, you need to know every angle you can in order to tackle the topic correctly.
This website has a list of A-Z slang from the 1950s. One of my favorite parts about it is that it differentiates between the average slang and The Beats. This site also has 1960s slang, fashion reference, toy reference, popular culture, celebrity deaths, etc. If you're writing a story based in the 1950s/60s, I strongly suggest exploring this site.
The People History: http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/
Whatever facts you take from this site, I would suggest cross-referencing it with a better source. this site is not run by historians, but it gives a good jumping off point for a historical fiction writer. By browsing the various different times periods, you get a good idea of what life was like for the average person back in time. This site has music references, popular culture, important events, etc. While you should take each fact with a grain of salt, this is a good starting point to get an idea of what life was like and how to start your story before doing any serious research.
Radioooo: http://radiooooo.com/
Radioooo.com is the perfect site to make you feel like you really are in the time period you're writing about. This site plays whatever was on the radio going back as far as 1900 in every country in the world. You can sit in a coffee shop and listen to what was playing in England in 1930, or drive down the road listening to the Russian hits of 1980. This is a great site for background music, or for research.
Fantasy Name Generator: http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/
This site is good for more than just historical fiction. For me, the worst part about writing is choosing a name. This site has everything from modern names, to renaissance names, to dragon names. I always recommend this site to all of my writer friends because it has the greatest collection of names on the internet.
Food Timeline: http://foodtimeline.org
I just found this and had to put it here. This website has a full timeline of what people ate stretching all the way back to 10,000 BC. While eating is often not an essential part of a story, it does help to enrich the description of the time period. This site is definitley helpful for food references, mostly so you don't have a Grandpa in 1916 drinking Mountain Dew (trust me, I've been there).
Books
The New Yorker: 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s
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These books offer a great point-of-view of the decade from the people who lived it. They are an anthology of articles from The New Yorker written in that time period. They offer multiple different opinions on hot topics of the time. For example, the 1950s book talk about nuclear bombs and McCarthyism, the 1960s book covers Woodstock and The Beatles. This helps writers get the idea of the common political mindset of the times. It also offers different articles on music, movies, historic moments, and political leaders.
Our American Century
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It seems that every time I think I've found all of these books, more show up. Our American Century deals with each decade post-1900 as the average person would have seen it. They offer in-depth ideas of what teen culture was like, family roles, childhood, schools, work, politics, entertainment, cultural changes, etc. Some even go down to the minute detail of what types of shoe people were wearing. These books are a blessing when you're trying to figure out how to shape everyday life in the past for your novels. They offer photographs, quotes, common knowledge, and less than common ideas. I highly recommend checking these books out if you are writing a twentieth-century historical fiction.
Other
Antique stores
Believe it or not, antique stores are not just for grandma's anymore. They house a wide variety of ordinary to extraordinary items from the past to populate your latest novel. From kitchen supplies to toys, records to cassettes, anything you could ever want. Antique stores are an often forgotten about resource. A good writer always knows their characters inside and out, seeing everyday items used in your decade of choosing puts you directly in the life and head of your characters. It also helps you better establish the time period your story is in. You can better describe the difference between a 1916 handheld mirror and one from 1978. This doesn't sound like such a good resource, but, trust me, the tiny details are more important than they seem. Antique stores help you perfect those tiny details.
Libraries
As I've learned, plenty of libraries, specifically college campus libraries, offer articles and periodicals going back to the 1800s. They are a great, often unused, source for all your historical needs. If you need an article about slavery told from an abolitionist's, a plantation owner's, and a slave's point of view, the library is the place to go.
These are just a few sources of several thousand out there in the world. As I gather more, I'll update this page with my findings. Until then, these offer a foundation to start building your novel on.
