Breshly News

Today’s post is by author Lindsay Marie Morris.

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Tales of adversity, star-crossed lovers, buried secrets, and critical decisions keep readers glued to the page. Why? Because in many cases, these stories don’t just feel familiar; they’re part of our own family lore.

For me, it was the story of my grandparents, separated for eight years across an ocean during World War II. When my grandmother emigrated from a Sicilian fishing village to Milwaukee in 1938, she left behind my grandfather, believing their separation would be temporary. But within two years, Italy entered World War II, and my grandfather was deployed to Sardinia. Just 17 months later, Italy declared war on the U.S., and my grandparents’ only form of communication—love letters—abruptly ceased.

Years later, I began penning their story in a creative writing class. But I hit a wall. My grandmother had shared few details about the war years. My grandfather, even fewer. I feared I couldn’t adequately tell the story until my teacher suggested I write it as fiction, using the facts as scaffolding and imagination to fill the gaps.

That advice changed everything. My grandparents, Concetta Marino and Gaetano Agnello, became Concetta Balistreri and Gaetano Alioto with real timelines reshaped through fiction.

My grandmother’s love of math and her garment factory job and my grandfather’s treasured copy of The Divine Comedy and family-owned tabaccheria found their way into the manuscript. The result was The Last Letter from Sicily, a novel “inspired by a true story.”

That debut took years to research and write, but I learned a lot along the way. By the time I began my second novel, Beneath the Sicilian Stars, I was able to complete it in just eight months. I’d refined my approach, developed a repeatable system, and now, I help other writers turn real family stories into emotionally gripping historical fiction.

In the sections that follow, I’ll show you how to do just that.

Start with what you know

Every family has its stories (and in some cases, secrets). Pick a shared memory, a found letter or photograph, or some other detail that has sparked your curiosity. Examine why it stands out and whether there could be more to the story.

As you start digging deeper, ask yourself:

• What do I already know about this anecdote or person?
• What details are missing or unclear?
• What questions does it raise?
• Does this memory or object connect to a larger historical event or theme?

As I’ve mentioned, my grandmother worked at a garment factory when she came to the U.S. But in a conversation with my uncle, I learned she’d also sewn parachutes there, a small detail that added unexpected depth to her story.

I’ve also noted how my grandfather was stationed in Sardinia while serving in the Italian Army. Whenever it came up in conversation, he’d quickly add that his loyalty was to the king and not Mussolini. But my uncle later shared that both of my grandparents had belonged to Fascist youth groups. This was news to me.

And then there were those letters. My grandmother saved everything my grandfather wrote, but his messages stopped after three years.

As these examples demonstrate, I started with the known and realized I needed research to fill in the gaps.

Research what you don’t know

We’re fortunate to live in an era where research is just a keystroke away. Genealogical research has evolved from family trees scribbled in a keepsake Bible to rich databases like Ancestry (sub required) or the free FamilySearch.org. If your ancestor arrived through Ellis Island, Heritage.statueofliberty.org helps you uncover when and from which ship that occurred. And there’s even a site called Find a Grave, which displays not only burial plots but also your ancestor’s date of death and, in some cases, headstone photos.

Armed with those resources, you can build on family history. Filling the remaining gaps requires additional research.

Wikipedia is a natural first destination, but that can only take you so far. Ideally, you want to seek out primary sources. You can often find these in the resource section of a Wikipedia article. But don’t overlook valuable offline resources. Your local library offers a wide selection of nonfiction books, many of which contain recorded oral histories, as well as physical and digital copies of newspapers and magazines. Museums also hold vital keys to historical questions.

In my quest to understand why my grandmother started sewing parachutes, I began with a standard search engine query that led me to the Department of Defense website, where I discovered an article about the Wartime Production Board, which transitioned civilian factories to wartime production. Suddenly, switching from dresses to military equipment made perfect sense.

I similarly embarked on a search for more information about Fascist youth groups. Online articles revealed that involvement began as early as age six with membership in the Figli della Lupa (“Children of the She-Wolf”). At eight, boys moved on to the Balilla and girls joined the Piccole Italiane. By fourteen, they graduated into the Avanguardisti and Giovani Italiane. While participation was initially encouraged, it later became compulsory. No wonder my grandparents were involved! This revelation helped me see them in a more complex light.

However, as my grandparents had passed away by the time I began my research, I had to turn to another source for a first-person account of the experience of being part of such a group. I found it in Sicily on My Mind: Echoes of Fascism and World War II by Joseph Cione. The author provided vivid descriptions of singing and marching in Sabato Fascisita, the Saturday political pageantry of the Fascist regime.

But what about those missing letters? My internet search took me to discussions on Quora about how communication between warring nations was nearly impossible. Further results took me down a rabbit hole to the workarounds people found by sending mail to recipients in neutral countries. These details were later confirmed by an exhibit at the Historical Museum of the Landing in Sicily 1943, which I visited in Catania, Sicily.

The more I delved into the geopolitical history surrounding my grandparents’ story, I realized I had enough material to shape plot points, characters, and worlds.

Talk to the people who were there (before it’s too late)

I often regret not asking my grandparents more about their experiences before they died. Fortunately, their children have helped contextualize some of their anecdotes and asides. That provided me just enough of a foundation to build a story.

For my second novel, Beneath the Sicilian Stars, I sought out and found Italian people who lived through those same war years, who helped me better understand what it was like to walk in those shoes. I set up formal interviews, during which I recorded their memories using Zoom and Rev. (Zoom is free for up to 40 minutes, but I pay a subscription for Rev transcripts of those meetings.)

This time, I not only had access to primary sources, but I also had the opportunity to ask the right questions to elicit the richest responses. Here are a few examples of poor questions versus those which will get you much further.

Poor Questions	Better Questions
Did you enjoy the war years?	What memories do you have from the war years? What made them particularly special?
Was your childhood happy?	What was a typical weekday like for you as a child? What did you do on weekends?
Was it hard to find a job?	Describe your first job and how you got it.
Did your family cook traditional meals?	Who in your family cooked, and what kinds of meals did they prepare?
What was Sicily like?	Describe what you saw, heard, or smelled when you walked outside of your home. What was your favorite place to visit?

By asking the right questions, you’ll encourage your interviewee to share experiences and feelings, not just the facts. Your goal is to explore senses, emotions, routines, and personal reflections to really bring the story to life.

Build characters from real people

Just who will vivify that story?

When crafting characters, family history provides a solid starting point, offering names, dates, and significant life events that can be incorporated into the narrative. But that’s just the foundation. From there, we must use our imagination to develop fully realized protagonists who grow and change through their own journeys. Your goal is to blend fact with fiction in a way that feels authentic and relatable.

I’ve put this into practice by developing character dossiers, compiled using memories, interviews, and archival research. This process helped me transform real family members into characters.

After gathering the basic facts, I created a parallel version of Concetta. I based her loosely on my grandmother, but I chose to make her a year younger, adjusted her arrival date to 1939, and added new challenges to make her story even more compelling.

I used a similar approach for Gaetano’s character, starting with genuine family details, such as his birth year, occupation, and long-distance relationship. From there, I shaped his story around the challenges I envisioned Gaetano Alioto would face, including war and the loss of a parent. I created protagonists who are grounded in reality but come alive through the power of fiction.

Use your imagination, and see where it takes you. Don’t limit yourself to just the facts. It’s more than, “She was born in April, had wavy brown hair with light brown eyes, and arrived on the Rex,” or “He was a soldier with dark eyes and black hair.”

Yes. But what did they really want? What did they fear? Who or what stood in their way?

Once you’ve defined their passions and motivations, you can begin to shape their respective arcs and truly build a story.

Use history as your scaffolding

So, what does all of this have to do with that scaffolding metaphor my creative writing teacher used? Scaffolding is the framework that holds up your narrative structure as you build a story. It supports your hero’s journey, adds tension, and ensures emotional beats land where they should.

One of the most effective tools for building that scaffolding is a timeline. Start it before you begin to write, charting key events (both historical and fictional) that shape your characters’ lives. I use Excel to list dates in one column and brief event descriptions in another, but a pen-and-paper grid works just as well.

Your goal is to combine historical milestones (such as wars, presidencies, policy changes, and economic shifts) with fictional ones (including births, deaths, marriages, and breakups). This matters because historical fiction is grounded in real events that affected real people, some of whom (or their descendants) may read your work.

As you weave your characters’ lives into actual history, take care not to distort key dates beyond recognition. Instead, let your characters inhabit history’s established framework.

That’s what scaffolding is really all about: creating something solid to support imagination within reality’s parameters.

Blend fact and imagination with care

Once your scaffolding is in place, the next step is striking a balance between fact and fiction.

Author Geraldine Brooks said, “The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.”

Writing historical fiction means walking the line between accuracy and imagination. On one side, you have real events and cultural details; on the other, plot and emotional depth. The story lives in the middle: grounded in truth, shaped by creativity.

Your goal isn’t to rewrite history, but to reveal its emotional core. Historical fiction thrives in the space between what happened and what might have.

In my grandparents’ case, I had to fill in some significant gaps. I knew so little about what happened during those eight years of separation. But once I let my imagination take over, the story was finally able to reach the emotional heights it needed.

Your family story deserves to be told

The stories we carry from our families may seem ordinary, but they shape us in lasting ways. Sharing them honors our roots and keeps them alive for future generations.

The Last Letter from Sicily doesn’t tell my grandparents’ story; it honors their unique experience while shedding light on the costs of war. My mother and her siblings have read the novel. And each has expressed how the characters remind them of their parents, while noting that it made them see their respective journeys in a new (albeit fictional) light.

I have heard the same from other readers, who recognize traits of their parents or grandparents and have commented that they’ve learned something. That’s what we strive for as storytellers: authenticity, relatability, and enlightenment.

So, consider tapping your family roots for historical fiction. It can be a powerful way to honor the past and even offer insight into the present. And who knows? That story you uncover may be the one someone else has been waiting to read.