Research Tips for your Historical Fiction Novel— From a History PhD

You don’t need a PhD in history to write historical fiction. Grad school, after all, trains students to ask and answer historical questions, not to craft airtight plot-lines and breathe life into the dead.

Still, if you’re working on a historical fiction novel, solid research is as indispensable to your craft as a lifelike protagonist and a compelling voice. Without it, all you have is some strangely staid fantasy — albeit with a sepia filter.

To really ensnare your readers and bring your story to life, you have to dig into the details of your setting, rendering it faithfully with not a hair out of place and not a hairstyle out of time. So, where should you go to find out whether your roguish anti-hero wears his sandy curls long, or whether your femme fatale keeps her underarms smooth — to say nothing of the less hairy questions you’ll encounter as you research your novel?

You can start with Wikipedia, do some poking around on Google, and take your library card out for a spin. But if you want to build your story on a solid historical foundation, consider looking beyond all that — at peer-review journal articles.

Written and evaluated by expert researchers, journal articles are more trustworthy than (most) websites. But they’re also shorter and more focused than books — better for addressing the targeted questions you’ll want answered, in the fine-grained detail you’ll need. Think of it this way: if you’re trying to figure out what a medieval abbot might eat for supper or how a Roman house should be laid out, would you rather find out in 300 pages, or 30?

With that in mind, here are some of the best places to find scholarly articles online — giving you access to top-shelf research without having to leave your desk. Over the past few years, these websites have bailed me out of more historical conundrums than I can count. Of course, I wasn’t working on a novel but a dissertation, as a PhD candidate in Chinese history at UC Berkeley. Still, they’ll serve you well as you dig into researching your book — you won’t need a costly subscription or a university affiliation to take advantage of them.

1. JSTOR

Since its launch in the mid-90s, this sprawling database of academic journals has been a lifeline for academic writers at all levels, from tenured professors to freshmen tackling their first college papers. But you might not realize that much of its content is free to use, making it a perfect place to get into the weeds of novel research. You can download plenty of open access articles without even making an account. And if you sign up for a free one, you’ll be able to read six per month from its vault of subscription access content.

2. Academia.edu

Known as a LinkedIn for academics, this social networking site is also a treasure trove of PDFs, all uploaded by scholars who wanted to make their research available for free. To get access, sign up for an account using your Google or Facebook login. From there, you’ll be able to search for keywords related to your novel. When you click through to promising papers, more reading suggestions will appear right in the sidebar.

3. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

This community-curated directory of free-to-read research lets you run targeted searches and browse by subject. With its 13,000-plus journals and more than 4 million articles at your fingertips, you just might stumble on some serendipitous tidbits that will really enrich your story. Just be sure not to get too lost in the research — after all, you have a novel to write!

I hope these sites will help you craft an excellent historical story.

Lucia Tang is a writer for Reedsy, a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the book industry’s best editors, designers, and marketers. To work on the site’s free historical character name generators, she draws on her knowledge of Chinese, Latin, and Old Irish —  learned as a PhD candidate in history at UC Berkeley. You can read more of her work on the Reedsy Discovery blog, or follow her on Twitter at @lqtang.