Yes, that’s called laziness. I’d always written fantasy
before, and the joy of fantasy is you can make up your own reality and no one
can tell you it’s wrong. But, at some point I decided it had to be done. My
novel wanted to take place in the real world. Still, I decided to write out a
first draft before doing any historical research. I didn’t want my story to be defined by my research; I just
wanted the research to make the story believable in the time period I was
writing it.
What helped me about writing my draft before I
researched is now I know exactly what I’m looking for. I made a lot of notes as I went
along of things I was unsure about, questions I had about what technology
existed at that time, what clothes were in style, what they did for fun, what
people did for work, etc. I had vague ideas from
things like A Room with a View and Downton Abbey, but
sometimes you get really specific in a novel and you don’t want to get it horribly wrong.
It’s kind of terrifying sometimes, that that one history expert one day will
read what I’m writing and just be horrified at me. So I try.
Now that I’m closing in on finishing my first draft (I think
my personal NaNoWriMo is going to be making myself just get that done!), I’ve
started gathering some books. Wikipedia only got me so far. My time period is
late 1890s-early 1900s England, so the very end of the Victorian era and the
very beginning of the Edwardian. Turns out, not the most popular era to write
educational books on. It’s been harder than I thought to find the material I want.
I don’t know what people did before the days of Amazon and Goodreads, because the
library and the bookstore did not come through like I thought they would. Thanks to the internet, I've found some good books and some of them got sent straight to my Kindle.
The Boer War also factors largely into the story line of my novel. It
was actually amazing how well the Boer War fit into the story line I had already
made up with knowing at all what I was doing beforehand. It’s like it was
meant to be. The Boer War took place in Africa, most of the soldiers died of diseases,
and it was just a badly planned disaster—perfect for my narrative purposes.
Hurrah. But, I found a total of two books at the library on it. A little bit
depressing, except that one of them was written by Winston Churchill. Did you
know he was a journalist in the Boer War before he was prime minister of England? I sure didn’t.
Some of my history-related questions are getting so specific
I may have to go find myself a history professor someday and bombard him with
my author craziness. I wonder if he’ll even know everything I want to know.
Probably by that point I should figure that no one will know and be satisfied.
Then I will have to begin the task of deciding what needs to be included in my
story and what will just be exhausting info-dump. I hope that having already
written my first draft will help with that too. I’ll just be inserting the info
I’ve found where I already know I need it. Wish me luck.
2 comments:
I like the idea of writing the story first then doing the research.
I'm working on my second story that requires a lot of research. I immerse myself in the time period so I can try to reflect how it felt as much as what life was like. I always end up putting way more of my research into the story than is desirable, but when I strip it out, some of the sense remains. At least in theory. Some research can be added after the main story is written, but some period stuff affects the story itself and can't be separated. Not just the plot, but also the characterization. but most of my research is more for my own insights than actual use in the story.
I like the idea, though, and I do that to some extent because I continue my research even after I start writing, so there's always stuff to add.
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