Now you need to add the historical information. Fleshing out your character should already give you a fairly clear direction for development. For example, if your character is a Member of Parliament, your historical information will probably include high-profile politics, but if your character is a factory worker in Leningrad, you will be depicting conditions of the urban poor of industrial Russia.

The following historical elements need to appear in your work:

• A direct quotation from a primary source. This can be done in a variety of ways: a speech delivered or overheard, a document read, a newspaper article, etc.
• The appearance of, or at least mention of, two historical persons from the time period.
• An identifiable location: the House of Commons, Chiesa del Santissimo Nome di Gesù all’Argentina in Rome, the Gdansk shipyard, etc.
• Two historical events (include the dates); remember what E.H. Carr has to say about what constitutes a historical fact.