York, United Kingdom

Writing Historical Fiction

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: humanities
Qualification: MA
Kind of studies: part-time studies
Master of Arts (MA)
University website: www.yorksj.ac.uk
Fiction
Fiction is a story or setting that is derived from imagination—in other words, not based strictly on history or fact. Fiction can be expressed in a variety of formats, including writings, live performances, films, television programs, animations, video games, and role-playing games, though the term originally and most commonly refers to the narrative forms of literature (see literary fiction), including novels, novellas, short stories, and plays. Fiction is occasionally used in its narrowest sense to mean simply any "literary narrative".
Writing
Writing is a medium of human communication that represents language and emotion with signs and symbols. In most languages, writing is a complement to speech or spoken language. Writing is not a language, but a tool used to make languages be read. Within a language system, writing relies on many of the same structures as speech, such as vocabulary, grammar, and semantics, with the added dependency of a system of signs or symbols. The result of writing is called text, and the recipient of text is called a reader. Motivations for writing include publication, storytelling, correspondence, record keeping and diary. Writing has been instrumental in keeping history, maintaining culture, dissemination of knowledge through the media and the formation of legal systems.
Fiction
In the form of the oeuvre, the actual circumstances are placed in another dimension where the given reality shows itself as that which it is. Thus it tells the truth about itself; its language ceases to be that of deception, ignorance, and submission. Fiction calls the facts by their name and their reign collapses; fiction subverts everyday experience and shows it to be mutilated and false.
Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (1964), p. 62
Writing
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
Gospel of Thomas, in Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2004), p. 37
Writing
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.
John Ruskin, A Joy for Ever, note 6 (1857).
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