Historical fiction will always be a challenge for writers since your audience walks into your story with expectations sometimes centuries in the making. Most, if not all, of your characters may have died years ago, some of them so famously that your audience already has opinions on how they looked, acted, and spoke. I spoke with Giacomo della Quercia about this very issue, among many other strictly dialogue-related challenges. It's the first live podcast that we've have hosted where we focus primarily on dialogue and how best to deliver the words on the page.
We packed this hour and a half with answers to questions such as, How do you live up to the expectations of writing for historical or famous characters while also being true to yourself as a writer? And what can a writer do to research such historical figures in order to remain accurate?
We tackled these questions, plus many more, with the writer, educator, and historian. Della Quercia is a scholar for the New York Council for the Humanities and a novelist for St. Martin's Press. His novels have been praised by museums, historians, and literary critics for his profound use of history. And his Cracked.com articles are also among the most widely-read on the Internet. He was an impressive guest to have on and his insights on dialogue and research are priceless.
You should check out Giacomo and his newly released book, "License To Quill" - a James Bond-esque spy thriller starring William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlow during history's real-life, Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot. You can find what Kirkus calls, "An erudite tour de force" at all major booksellers and, as always, you can find our Curious About Screenwriting podcast on iTunes or through our website via the Resources section of the homepage. Enjoy the interview, and cheers to a successful 2016.