What genre would a fictional eyewitness account of a real historical event fall under?
I've written a short story about a true historical incident which involves a very famous person in history. The incident is true as are the people involved in it. But the story is a fictional eyewitness narrative of that incident from a person who was not mentioned in it, but could have been one of the principal witnesses.
What genre does this story fall under?
It can't be Alternate History because the narrative mentions an incident which actually happened.
Could it be Historical? Could be termed as Biographical?
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What you describe is mainstream historical fiction. There is significant piece of the historical fiction market that seems to value the historical accuracy not only of period details but of events themselves very highly. They want their historical fiction to be essentially a textbook, but with more sex.
I have a private label for this type of historical fiction. I call it diorama fiction. The reader is looking to learn history from a novel.
I'm of the school that the purpose of setting a story in the past is to create a setting that isolates those aspects of human experience that I want to examine. The historical accuracy of events is moot if this is your aim.
But I have never heard anyone in the industry make a distinction between these two uses of historical settings. It is all just Historical Fiction.
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