As a debut novelist, I’m far from an authority on the craft. Therefore, I’ll begin this post by invoking an established authority, a renowned author of historical fiction.

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

E.L. Doctorow

When we attempt historical fiction, we must evoke not only the timeless feeling of being rained upon, but also a feeling of being rained upon in the past, a particular past set in a particular place. Maybe your words match the same sensation your reader might experience in today’s world, i.e., simply that timeless feeling. However, do your imagined characters demonstrate modern sensibilities? Have you avoided the trap by which your words smack of inadvertent currency and cue suspicion in the reader’s subconscious? Is your reader’s subconscious standing alert as sentry, waiting to spot telltale signs of modernity amidst the detritus of prehistoric cave dwellers? Definitely.

The emotions and responses of each of your characters must align with their own world view; one you gave them, one that comes from their life experiences in their own time. To illustrate, let’s send your reader back in time to a cave in prehistoric France where your protagonist is about to observe wall drawings. Your protagonist enters the cave, stepping forward atop an uneven floor, feeling the moisture on their skin, hearing the drips that accompany their own breathing, smelling the dank air, listening for telltale signals of rockslide or beast, and straining their eyes into the dim light to capture the earliest artwork of homo sapiens.

Your reader is also present in that cave, unaware of being melded into their comfy reading chair or lounging supine in a swaying hammock with that good book of yours in their lap. Your reader must stay alert, lest they succumb to danger. They take in the wall art along with our protagonist and begin to lose themselves in your depictions. They, too, wonder what became of the artists; are they alive still, might they be nearby? Then, your reader hears a growling from a dark corner and suspects a sabretooth tiger. Their heart begins to race, despite sitting in their comfy chair or listing in that hammock. Your reader’s internal eyes move from the etched depictions on the wall toward the menacing growl. Their vision strains into the dark corner and their pulse quickens further. You, our writer, have respected Sol Stein’s admonition that “all fiction should seem to be happening now.” Your reader is frightened.

Is your reader frightened as would be a modern contemporary of yours, confronting a mugger in a dimly lighted alley? Or are they afraid as might be an ancient who had no defense against a natural predator, one they’d avoided their entire life? Does your reader feel the uneven floor through the rubber soles of hiking boots or the calloused skin of bare feet? Did you place them properly into the setting or have you merely exhausted your imagination depicting the external scenery, and then the interior of the cave? Does your reader sense with surety how your protagonist feels?

Suppose that your protagonist is among a cadre of time travelers with cobbled shoes who enter the cave and confront the voice of your prehistoric cat. Can you place such moderns in that cave, stimulate the sense of a dangerous alien environment, have them step about in their hi-tech footwear, cross the cave floor, and still internalize the dangers that prehistoric humans faced? Did you give the time travelers modern weapons or are they truly as exposed as the ancients? Do your time travelers fear as would the ancients regardless the surety of your modern character’s knowledge of science? Or do they study the situation and attempt to formulate a plan? Might they instead assume that the artists fled for good reason or that their bones are scattered in that dark corner?

Or suppose your protagonist is truly of the age; a lone pregnant teen in loin cloth, whose mate never returned from hunting after he left to find food days ago? Has she sought sustenance and refuge only to stumble into a tiger’s lair? Does she pause to reason or flee on bare feet, as would any self-aware prey without recourse?

If your modern reader is to feel the sensations that you intend, you must decide on a POV that fits the time, place, and character. Whether or not the protagonist in the cave is a time traveler, the writer must evoke a world when sapiens were not at the top of the food chain. It’s important not only to introduce danger, but to have the reader feel the persistent panic in a world that was far more dangerous for humans. The prehistoric protagonist—the abandoned pregnant teen—must feel the fears of her day, heightened by her superstitions, accompanied by a recognition of her personal location in the food chain. Your time traveler, with or without modern weapons, must still face your ancient, alien world; a world which threatens the reader’s sense of wellbeing. With or without guns, in hiking boots or on bare feet, your protagonist is about to face a sabretooth tiger!

Before your protagonist entered the cave, you might have depicted the world outside with verdant flora, tall mountains, water streaming, whistling winds, and the roaming terrestrial presence of prehistoric cats with long incisors. And herein lies the trap of exposition whereby a flailing writer toils to capture every detail of the setting. The reader might be able to report back all the details of your exposition. But without the sensation of having been exposed to specific danger the reader’s report falls flat; the observations had been made from a safe distance as the hammock swung.

You’re not taking your reader to the zoo. You’re placing them inside a prehistoric cave and drawing them toward their reward, which they will only reach if they endure a felt risk. Even with their reward in hand at the end of the scene, closing the pages of your book will not suffice to alleviate their fears. Their pulse will not subside immediately. They might not get to sleep right away if you’ve accomplished what you’d hoped. You’ve written a sensational scene which will take time to dissipate from the reader’s consciousness. They’ll return tomorrow to finish your book or, if reawakened by your haunting words, roll over in the dark, flip the modern light switch, and reach for your novel. If the scene in the cave marks your finale, they’ll look forward to your next book. They’ll seek such feelings, again. At least that’s the suspicion and hope of one novice in your cohort.

How do we evoke time and place?

I searched my collection of treatises on writing craft to understand “how they did it.” The experts were reticent on this front. I don’t think they were hoarding secrets of the craft. There’s as much mystery as mastery in the writing art—mystery, not trickery, not magic. That said, I hope you’ll find the following thoughts helpful.

Write as an authority—not to inform, rather to evoke sensation. Authorities can be efficient with their words; they know the setting, this place. They know its dangers and its gifts. They write so that their reader, too, will have breathed its air and walked its ground.

Don’t count the raindrops. Don’t take an inventory of the setting and report everything in detail. Your reader might not return to your book after slogging through your exhausting—albeit brilliant—depiction of time and place. Remember “why” you put your reader there. They’re there to feel. Show them what to feel; show them your story.

Don’t tell your reader what or how to feel. Write to evoke intended feelings even if your reader can’t explain later what caused their feelings. The reader’s subconscious will do a lot of the heavy lifting if you’ve taken a light touch.

Avoid adverbs. When rewriting, cut adverbs. Consult Steven King if you’re compelled to defend adverbs.

If you, like me, tend to get lost expositing details, try rewriting in monochrome to discover if you’ve evoked the desired sensations. Next, before adding back color, try eliminating sounds, then smells. Strip your work to the bones and feel for yourself what’s missing. I posit that you won’t be lamenting your abandoned darlings—pages upon pages of exposition. As you rewrite, seek subtle evocation of sensation.

One of my favorite chapters in The Sorting Room has less than seven hundred words. An old man is standing on a dock at the edge of a Swedish fjord. Without intention, I had written almost the entire draft of that scene in monochrome. I had noted the presence of the Swedish “colors” to set the country’s flag on the mast of a departing freighter, but I didn’t mention either blue or gold. When editing the book, I was never tempted to insert more color into that brief chapter. In my opinion, it would have attenuated the desired sensations I had hoped to evoke for the reader. It was gray, wet, and cold at dawn a century ago as my character stood on the soaked planks of that dock. Brr—I pull my sweater tighter every time I read that chapter.