How to Write a Short Story or Novel

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No. I did not, for the first and most memorable time, approach reading the "The Betrothed", sitting, legs contracted, in front of a desk in a cold second-year gymnasium classroom.

At those junctures, sometimes, one is not in the psychic and mental condition of savoring a masterpiece, but, merely, in that of biting into a sandwich.

And, at other times, what makes one burn in anticipation is not the coveted conclusion of the chapter, in which an entire world, made up of women, men, peoples and histories, is condensed into the space of a handful of pages, but the ringing of the bell, which is perceived almost as a celestial melody.

It is not a merciless condemnation of the School, which I love immensely, both as a pupil, which I have been, and as a teacher, which I am.

But it is, instead, the realization that a book of a certain cultural depth, specifically remarkable, in order to be read, be narrated, and make us part of it, it must make us fall in love with it, win us over slowly, and wait for our personal times, like a good seducer.

I started reading the "Betrothed" around the age of eleven, almost twelve, to be exact. I reached out to that dusty tome, stored in the bookcase of my grandparents' house, and glimpsed there, on the title page, the signatures, still uncertain, of my aunts and uncles and my father. Evidently the same book had been passed from oldest to youngest, whenever one of the siblings entered the second year of classical high school.

I have loved and love Alessandro Manzoni, and through it, the genre of the historical novel, whose early masterpieces are attributed to the genius of Walter Scott, who introduced the principle of "immersion," a kind of plunge into the meanders of time through which thoughts and behaviors come to life that cannot be traced back to the historical context of the writer, but to theera taken into consideration.

And you, whether or not you appreciate Manzoni's work, considered a national pride, are about to embark on the writing of a short story or novel Of the aforementioned genre? If yes, you are about to engage in a work, of a purely nineteenth-century, of a narrative nature, set in the past, through which to make the reader relive not only past episodes or periods, but to evoke atmospheres, enunciate religious and philosophical beliefs and immerse, through the aid of a filter, in popular mentalities and lifestyles Who are no longer our own.

Examples:

"Each argued, pleaded, spoke aloud, blasphemed, sacramented sending the Cardinal and his guards to all the devils. A moment later Porthos and Aramis returned; only the surgeon and Monsieur de Tréville had stayed by the wounded man. Finally, Monsieur de Tréville returned in his turn. The wounded man had regained consciousness; the surgeon declared that the musketeer's state had nothing to worry his friends; his fainting had been caused simply by the loss of blood. [...] D'Artagnan said his name, and Monsieur de Tréville, recalling all his memories of the past and present, found himself aware of the situation. "Sorry," he said, smiling, "sorry and, dear compatriot, I had completely forgotten you. What do you want! A captain is but a father of a family charged with a responsibility greater than that of a normal father of a family. Soldiers are great children; but since I care that the King's orders and especially those of Monsignor Cardinal be carried out..." D'Artagnan could not dissimulate a smile".

Alexander Dumas, The Three Musketeers.

"When he joined in the singing, Lloyd felt that there, in that whitewashed chapel, beat the heart of Britain. The people around him were uneducated, dressed modestly and worked hard all their lives: the men digging coal underground, the women raising the next generation of miners. They had broad shoulders and sharp minds, though, and had created their own culture that made life worth living. They fed their hopes through the nonconformist church and leftist ideals; they derived joy from rugby games and men's choirs; in good times they were united by generosity, in hard times by solidarity. Those people, that city: that's what Lloyd wanted to fight for. And, if he had to give his life for it, it would be worth it".

Ken Follett, The winter of the world.

Ready?

Very well, we set off backwards, with the time machine, into distant eras, armed with the technical and narrative knowledge Able to keep you from wavering.

The material On which to write is certainly not in short supply! You have millennials at your disposal.
Choose the period which is most congenial to your education and studies, or about which you are most knowledgeable out of personal passion or with which you feel a special feeling, as if that era, so distant in time, were part of you.
Before embarking on the writing of a short story, and especially a novel, historical, prepare yourself as if for an arduous challenge: you are expected to travel, many hours in library to scrutinize yellowed documents and just as many to unearth hard-to-find ones, or even, with supreme luck, unpublished ones.
Now, having made the necessary bibliographic research, you have to make an extremely important decision, which you will have to, consistently, carry throughout the writing of your work: namely, the degree to which you will blend between reality And invention and of skillful amalgamation between macro And micro story.

You can develop a narrative that is the result of mere fantasy, placing it in the background of an unspecified history or in which different times and places are intertwined with each other.
You can create a merger between facts and characters that really existed, introducing elements from your imagination, to fill in unaccounted-for parts or to make them narrative voices, rich in feelings and opinions.
You can, finally, give the leading role to minor characters, who really existed but are not celebrated in the canonical tomes, obviously giving them a well-rounded image through the power of your invention skills.

Examples:

"There is only this as consolation: an hour here or there, when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to open up completely and give us everything we imagined, even though everyone but the children (and maybe even they) know that these hours will inevitably be followed by much darker and more difficult ones. And still we love the city, the morning; more than anything else we hope to have more of it".

Michael Cunningham, The Hours.

"On the same day that George V was crowned in Westminster Abbey in London, Billy Williams went down the mine in Aberowen, South Wales, for the first time. It was his father who woke him with the usual effective but not very gentle technique: he gave him a few firm, insistent slaps on the cheek. The boy, deep in sleep, at first tried to ignore them, but felt a surge of anger when they continued relentlessly. Then he remembered that he had to, indeed wanted to, get up, so he opened his eyes and snapped to his seat".

Ken Follet, The Fall of the Giants.

"A crowd of bearded men in dark suits and gray pointy hats, and women in hoods or bare heads, stood gathered in front of a wooden building, whose solid oak door was garnished with iron bolts.

The founders of a colony, whatever Utopia of virtue and human happiness they may have originally divided, always recognized among the first practical necessities to allocate one part of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another as a prison".

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.

Often a historical novel contains, in its incipit, the Discovery of an ancient original document, a narrative device repeated several times to project the reader into the right predisposition for the reception of the sequence of events that will follow.

Examples:

"But the account of this genre to which the author of Ivanhoe owes gratitude goes back two centuries before those mentioned above. It was first made known to the public through that curious archive of ancient literature collected by the joint efforts of Sir Egerton Brydges and Mr. Hazlewood in the periodical entitled "The British Bibliographer." From there it was taken by the Reverend Charles Henry Hartshorne, M.A., who edited a most interesting volume entitled "Ancient Tales in Verse, Printed Chiefly from the Original Sources",1829. Mr. Hartshorne provides us with no other account of this fragment than the article in the "Bibliographer," where it appears under the title of "The King and the Hermit".

Walter Scott, Ivanhoe.

“But, when I have lasted the heroic labor of transcribing this story from this washed and scratched autograph, and have given it, as they say, to the light, will one then be found who will last the trouble of reading it?"

This doubtful reflection, born in the travail of deciphering a scribble that came after accidents, made me suspend copying, and think more seriously about what was appropriate to do. "Well it is true," I said to myself, as I unwrapped the manuscript, "well it is true that that hail of conceptions and figures does not continue so at a stretch throughout the whole work. The good secentist wanted at the beginning to show off his virtue; but then, in the course of the narrative, and sometimes for long stretches, the style walks far more naturally and more slowly".

Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed.

Place extreme importance on the dialogues: they will not only have to bring to light opinions and mentalities that are by no means common today, but above all they will have to make use of a language appropriate and likely to suit the circumstance. This work requires great literary skill, but, reading expertly many of the texts penned in the era of your interest, you will be able to put yourself in context and master the scene.

Examples:

"The boy became serious: his triangular face took on an unexpected manly expression. "I'm leaving, zion, I'm leaving in half an hour. I've come to say goodbye." Poor Salina felt his heart clench. "A duel?" "A great duel, Uncle. Against Franceschiello Dio Guardi. I'm going to the mountains, to Corleone; don't tell anyone, especially not Paolo. Great things are being prepared, zione, and I don't want to stay at home, where, besides, they would catch me right away if I stayed there."[...] "You are crazy, my son! Go and get involved with those people! They are all mafiosi and swindlers. A Falconeri must be with us, for the King." [...] "If we are not there too, those people will combine the republic for you. If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must be changed. Do I make myself clear?".

Giuseppe Tomasi of Lampedusa, The Leopard.

"Sorry, if I am importunate. By a friend of mine was lost today a white dove, beautiful as the sun-kissed clouds, pure as the snows that winter lays on the ridges of the Limbara. My friend is inconsolable; and I come here to seek the treasure he has lost."

"I regret the misfortune that has befallen your friend, but I must tell you that here he has no dove for you."

"Brother, do not flatter yourself if I am forced to disbelieve your word. A dove was seen by some to take flight toward this stand. It must be here".

Enrico Costa, The mute of Gallura.

Alongside the historical genre, the last thirty to forty years have seen the emergence of the genre "neohistorical", symbolically inaugurated in 1980 by Umberto Eco, with the celebrated "The Name of the Rose." Today's strand differs from the nineteenth-century one in the absence of the idea of the History as evolution. Contemporary writers, standing up as merciless critics, denounce the coeval and dramatic distrust of ideologies, try to escape from the unacceptable present by heading into a past that turns out, however, to be as corrupt and rotten as the present.

Examples:

"Rocco spiega che si diventa ricchi solo derubando qualcun altro. Non è necessario rubare i soldi. Si possono rubare tante cose. Il tempo di un altro, la sua health, la sua giovinezza, i suoi sentimenti, la sua dignità, la sua anima. Ciò dimostra che in ogni caso la proprietà è un furto e il lavoro il grimaldello di cui si servono i ladri per scassinarti la vita".

Melania G. Mazzucco, Life.

"Recovering the historical truth of facts is impossible. Not only because each man's memory has different extents, but because what attracts the attention of one escapes that of the other. Even admitting the good faith of each, each remembers what attracted his attention, not what actually passed under his gaze".

Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Ides of March.

"I had the impression that William was not at all interested in truth, which is nothing more than the adjustment between the thing and the intellect. Instead, he enjoyed imagining as many possible".

Umberto Eco, The name of the rose.

Finally, ask yourself, the deepest why that prompted you to write such a work and what message I would like to convey to you.

Argue, for example, that history is magistra vitae or that there are cycle routes from which there is no escape, that there is no real progress Or that it is the very pivot of existence? The one that today we are Is it the result of what once, happened? Is publishing a historical novel a subversive act, through which to denounce what has happened and is still being repeated?

You do not have to formulate answers explicitly. It is a novel, not an essay with scientific and hermeneutic pretensions. But your characters will speak for you, and the reader will perceive, more or less consciously, depending on his or her level of astuteness, your thinking.

Examples:

"Here is the moral of my life. And since this moral was not I but the times that made it, so it occurred to me that naively describing this action of the times over a man's life might be of some use to those, who from other times are destined to feel the less imperfect consequences of those first influences enacted".

Ippolito Nievo, Confessions of an Italian.