Come on in! Welcome to IHUK – The Imagining History Programme UK. We are the only workshop organisation that supports young people writing Historical Fiction in English.
Grab a piece of paper and something to write/draw/doodle with and read on!
We create writing and thinking environments in which you can explore the social, political and emotional worlds of past worlds. You devise and create your own inspiration source based on your research. And you enrich your writing at the same time. Our aim is to develop your writer’s mind.
historical fiction is……?
Historical Fiction is the genre established by the Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott. As a young writer, he took his inspiration from the land, people and histories of his homeland.
Historical Fiction has come to mean a form of story-telling that is grounded in historical detail. Historical novelists immerse themselves in this kind of detail, before allowing their creative inspiration to take flight to create their stories. They take readers on journeys in time. They will often report that they started their story with one thing in mind, but the historical evidence uncovered new and fascinating directions for them to take.
If you are exploring, or thinking of exploring history as the source for your writing, this is the place for you. You can find out more about our own history here: The Imagining History Programme UK.
But for now, we have a few first thoughts for you:
As you write, or even if you imagine yourself writing, new worlds open up as your thoughts take over. Using history as a source means that you literally begin to move around different worlds in your mind. Just think of visiting a place where you were happy in the past – it is a well-known fact that what is now happening is that the part of your brain associated with moving is now firing up. Your imagination is never static, it is always in movement.
During our online and in-person workshops, we share with you ways to source, create and develop fiction that is based on a fascination with history. The best historical fiction keeps readers reading, opens up new areas of thinking and inspires them to do their own exploring.
What do you want to write about?
Where do you want to take your reader?
At IHUK we want your writing to reflect your most creative possibilities as a writer.
Here are the four characteristics of good writing according to us:
Trust your writer’s instincts.
It starts with your new thinking.
Open a new door.
Draw us in
Let your writing take YOU somewhere different.
Let it take US somewhere different.
Make us curious.
Put yourself into the world and discover.
Let your writing astonish you.
NOW TRY THIS…
If you haven’t tried writing historical fiction before, here is a short workshop to try for yourself. Give it a go. Take a bit of time to think it through. See what you come up with.
Share your writing with us….. we’ll give you some feedback.
If you would like to know more about how we would help you grow your skills of exploring history to find the stories that are waiting for you, click here.
You can find examples of the writing of previous IHUK workshop participants here. And you can check out the prizewinning and shortlisted stories to the Young Walter Scott Prize here.
If you are a teacher or a heritage venue manager looking to develop a workshop with us, please click here to find out more about the way we develop and deliver our inspirational workshops and projects.
title image: Safaa Alfahel on Scopio