This document provides guidance for writing historical fiction by outlining important ground rules and questions to consider. It states that a historical fiction story must accurately portray the values, beliefs and motivations of characters for the time period within the major events and context supported by historical sources. Authors should use language and dialogue to authentically capture the time period from the historical perspective of characters. When researching, authors should form hypotheses about clues and ask questions to prove or disprove theories about a character's gender, nationality, occupation and other attributes to fully bring them to life for the setting and time period. The writing process should be recorded in a blog to document ideas and research.