: Re: Should we avoid writing fiction about historical events without extensive research? I was thinking about writing about the Holocaust, but I am not sure if it's a good idea since I am not sure

Just don't.

You have a good ten thousand years of (semi) recorded history to choose from, in what is now hundreds of countries and multiple continents. There are many places and times you can pick that most people would know nothing about and you can get away with making stuff up.

Don't pick an event that has deep meaning for a very large number of people and is studied and commemorated by a good subset of them. If you're lucky, the worst that will happen is that people will think you're disrespectful.

Remember, a fair number of people out there believe the Holocaust never happened (or was a fraction of what it was in reality) and so they make up stories to downplay it. It doesn't matter if you think you're going to make it seem worse, the fact is that you'll be making up stories (and I don't mean ordinary fiction) and calling them history, and that's not okay.

Also, if you don't do the research, how do you know if your version is "worse?" Chances are, as other answers have pointed out, that you can't fathom the horrors of the actual Holocaust. I doubt anyone can without having lived it or learned about it from people who have.

As for other historical events, it depends. For events without a lot of attached emotion, if you get some things wrong, most people won't notice and some people will and will laugh at you. If you can live with that, then go for it.

Every author will mess up here and there and nearly every author will also make choices they know are wrong. I just posted a question where I am using a song written in a language that didn't even come into existence until a good 400 years after my setting.

But that's very different from deciding to be ignorant. Why would you want to use a large important event so recent that living people were actually there, as a...backdrop? tragic setting? life lesson? I can't even fathom what makes you think this is a good idea.

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