Real historical events, padded with fictionalized dialogue OR straight out non-fiction

Considering that you've parked yourself on a site dedicated to writing a novel in 30 days, why are you asking this? Seriously, do you want to spend November prepping to write an academic history book, or do you want to crank out a fun little novel? Nobody can tell you that. As for predicting the future success of either project, nobody can do that, either.

gastropod

I gotta agree with gastropod. Ask yourself why you're here.

If you're writing about a real event, that's fine. If you're trying to create a realistic account of that event, without the creation of fictional characters or anything beyond imagined dialogue, you're in the wrong place, at the wrong time. You want Script Frenzy, which is held in the spring, where you can write a script that only involves creating dialogue for factual characters.

NaNo is about fiction, although we all know there are exceptions here and there. If the only thing fictional about your book is the dialogue, then by all means write it. Who would know? But know that you're walking a fine line. As a NaNo project, it's great. As a publishable book, it's probably questionable, although I'm certainly not going to make judgments based upon what little I know.

NaNo is about words. NaNo is about speed. NaNo is about getting off the dime, getting your butt in the chair and writing words. Like mad!

GP
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2006 NaNo winner - Berlin, Witnesses at the Crossroads of History, Book I
2007 NaNo winner - Berlin, Witnesses at the Crossroads of History, Book II
2008 NaNo winner - Berlin, Witnesses at the Crossroads of History, Book III
2009 -

Go for the historical events padded with fictionalized dialogue and such!
It gives you such a wonderful opportunity to try to put yourself in the historical figures' shoes and experience, see, feel what they experience, see, and feel. :)

Have a go at the nano, for fun, then see if that raised any questions you didn't expect. Use it as a jumping off point for some serious research if you still love it after a month of intensive writing about it. You'll need to do the serious research to turn it into a publishable novel eventually, but nano seems like a good, fun way to start writing about something without getting too serious about details and accuracy. Than can be edited in later. Or you might learn that don't actually like writing fiction and would prefer to stick with the academic writing.
I'm nanoing my serious research, which I have doing a PhD on for 2 years now, and so far it is a great stimulus to think about the research material in different ways, and is making go back and check some stuff I was hazy on and discovering new plot ideas and details at the same time. And this is only the third day! Woot!

Yes the pic is a stavechurch, in case anyone wondered!

Some very excellent thoughts!

I actually just came back online, changed all my Novel Info to a different idea I have long had brewing for a novel. But now, I'm even second guessing that. I like your suggestion Stavechurch, about exploring the topic fictionally to gain new insight into the hard research part. Interesting thought. But, I'm torn... perhaps the hard research should come first, and then I can boil that down into a fictionalized version during Script Frenzy. I think that might be the way to go.

My historical event is actually a family legend, and more and more information is coming to light. I would like to end up with a publishable non-fiction version of events, which I think would be awesome script material. So, in the end, I think the other poster was right. This is better left for ScriptFrenzy.

I'll be going back to my novel inside me that has to get written before I can move on to another...

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone, it was really helpful!!