: Re: How much license is provided by artistic license? I am writing a novel of historical fiction containing a short scene in which the city of Kiev is bombed on the first day of the German invasion

@Jennifer354

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In a historical novel, you should not alter historical facts. What you do in your "fiction" is to insert fictitious characters into those factual events.

For instance, the backdrop of my Revolutionary War novel is the fact that some 40 guerrillas set free some 150 American soldiers taken as prisoners of war (POWs) after the British won the battle of Camden, South Carolina. You should not claim that the Americans won the battle of Camden when they lost it (badly), but you can insert your main characters in the successful POW rescue. Here, one of the rescuing guerrillas takes home one of the rescued POWs to meet his sister, and you have a story.

Similarly, you can have your hero as an aide to General George Washington. But make sure that Washington actually said and did the things your hero reports he did.

In a historical novel, only your main characters are fictitious; everything else is fact. In essence, you want the reader to "believe" the story about your characters. To create the necessary "suspension of disbelief," everything else other than your characters has to be accurate.

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