GenresFiction
Historical Fiction
The past, researched and inhabited.
Historical fiction asks you to put people in a time they didn't choose and then let them want things anyway. The research matters, but a pile of correct facts will not save a novel whose characters only exist to wear the costumes. Readers come for the feeling of being somewhere else, and they stay if the people there have private lives that the history books wouldn't have bothered to record.
You do need to know how the world worked: who had money, who could leave a room, what a letter took, what a doctor could and could not do. Once you know that, you can stop proving it. A good historical novel uses the period as pressure on the story rather than as a lecture. Pick a time you are willing to live with for a year, because the details you get tired of are the ones the reader will notice you faking.
The kinds of book inside it
Ancient world
The distance is large, so the book has to make daily life concrete, and it helps if the plot isn't only battles and rulers.
Medieval
Faith, land, and obligation do a lot of the work, and a character who thinks like a modern person will feel like a tourist.
Tudor & Stuart
Courts and religion give you danger that is also social, which means a conversation can matter as much as a sword.
Georgian & Regency
Manners are a system, not decoration, and the interest is often in who is allowed to want what in public.
Victorian
Cities, science, class, and respectability are all pulling at once, so a private decision usually has a public cost.
First World War
The war is not only the trenches. Letters, hospitals, and the people left at home are often where the longer story sits.
Second World War
Readers know a great deal already, so the book needs a particular corner of the war rather than a summary of the whole thing.
Twentieth century
Close enough that some readers remember it, which means you should get the texture right and resist nostalgia that sands the period smooth.
Biographical
A real life is the frame, and the novel's job is the private hours the record doesn't have, without pretending you were there for all of them.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a story summary in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.