Research for historical fiction / may focus on / under-documented ordinary people, events, or sites.

Fiction helps portray everyday situations, feelings, and atmosphere / that recreate the historical context.

Historical fiction adds “flesh to the bare bones / that historians are able to uncover / and by doing so / provides an account / that while not necessarily true / provides a clearer indication of past events, circumstances and cultures.”

Fiction adds color, sound, drama to the past, as much as it invents parts of the past.

And Robert Rosenstone argues / that invention is not the weakness of films, / it is their strength.

Fiction can allow users to see parts of the past / that have never ― for lack of archives ― been represented.

In fact, / Gilden Seavey explains / that if producers of historical fiction had strongly held the strict academic standards, / many historical subjects would remain unexplored / for lack of appropriate evidence.

Historical fiction should, therefore, not be seen as the opposite of professional history, / but rather as a challenging representation of the past / from which both public historians and popular audiences may learn.

While historical fiction reconstructs the past / using insufficient evidence, / it provides an inviting description, / which may enrich people’s understanding of historical events.