Let me tell you a little about how I came to write historical fiction, and I hope you'll see what I mean. It was my granny who first told me the story the of the English invading Scotland and a battle at Dunbar when the Scots were defeated and dragged in chains to dungeons.
What made a story, a novel, was something else.
You see, in that far away Scottish autumn, a young Scot named Andrew escaped from his dungeon and looked at an English flag flying over his father castle. He was no great knight, but suffering had filled him with an unquenchable determination. His father was in the Tower of London and everything had been lost in the war. But he had made an oath. He'd sworn that somehow the hated English would be driven from Scotland. That somehow they would pay. So with half a dozen men, they began a great adventure. An adventure that became a story of courage, of determination to fight for freedom no matter what the cost. And what storyteller could resist a story like that?