Is it okay if I wrote a story based on true historical events?
I had a story in mind that basically came from a true historical event in the 1930's. I won't be using real people for the characters but the main storyline is somewhat based on what actually happened. I'll try making it a little different, a little modern, but I think it'll be obvious where the idea about my storyline came from. Will that be considered rude or insensitive of me since actual people did die during those times in the past?
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3 answers
Yes, this is commonly called "Alternate History"
To cite from Wikipedia:
Alternate history or alternative history (Commonwealth English), sometimes abbreviated as AH, is a genre of fiction consisting of stories in which one or more historical events occur differently. These stories usually contain "what if" scenarios at crucial points in history and present outcomes other than those in the historical record. The stories are conjectural, but are sometimes based on fact. Alternate history has been seen as a subgenre of literary fiction, science fiction, or historical fiction; alternate history works may use tropes from any or all of these genres.
What you want to do is perfectly normal.
As long as you are not trying to make it a comedy and thereby being insensitive towards the groups of people that have died in that time you are free to write whatever comes to your mind.
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What you describe, if I understand it correctly, is historical fiction. That's a genre with a long and proud tradition. It includes works as diverse as Ivanhoe, War and Peace, The Three Musketeers, and All Quiet on the Western Front. It can be close to historical events, which, as Mark Baker points out, is the modern trend, or it can be as imaginative as Dumas' works. How true you stay to historic events is entirely up to you.
I would draw your attention in particular to Catch 22. It's hilarious (in parts). It's a satire. And it's about the soldiers in WW2. People died during those times. Quite a few of them, in fact. The tragedy doesn't mean you have to treat the time period like it's somehow sacred. You can write about it, people should write about it (otherwise, it would just be forgotten), you needn't be afraid to find the beautiful, and the funny, and the grotesque, in a hard situation.
If you go and imply that nobody in fact died in the ugly period you base your story on, or if you go "it's great that they died", people might get upset. Otherwise, have fun.
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Historical fiction based on real events is a huge part of the genre of historical fiction. In fact, the taste today seems to be for stories that are as close to historical events as possible, with authors often basing their stories on one particular character (famous or otherwise) and often including notes almost apologizing when they rearrange actual events to make the story work more neatly. Historical fiction, in other words, is increasingly becoming documentary fiction.
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