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| where guests can have their say about... anything they want! |
Thank you for having me as a guest today, Helen! I always love having a chance to talk about history.
[Helen ... history? me too!]
Whether the setting is contemporary, historical, magical, or completely alien, a story’s world must feel real to the reader. It needs enough detail to give the reader a sense that the characters are walking through an existing place. So how much detail is enough for that? And how does a writer find that information for unfamiliar places or times? This post attempts to answer those questions.
I’ve had writers tell me they would love to write a story or a book with a historical setting but feel intimidated by all the history they don’t know. Even though I’m a lifelong history geek, I get it. The first book in my Boar King’s Honor trilogy, The Herald of Day, is set in England during the reign of Charles II, also known as the Restoration era. Even though I had general knowledge of the period from my history courses, I didn’t feel equipped to write about it. I knew the basics of the political conflicts but didn’t know how people lived or the particulars about social conflicts. So I tackled it the way I would any research project, one step at a time.
There are several steps for researching a historical period. I’m listing them in the order that works for me. Others favor different approaches and so may want to change that up. As with any writing-related process, each of us must do what works best for us.
Step 1: Paint the Background. Read a general history of the period. A chapter or two from a survey text (one that covers several hundred years) about the country in question will do. That offers an overview of what was happening in the time and place of the story’s setting. So will a book focused on that period, such as David Ogg’s England in the Reign of Charles II—very handy for my purposes!
Some writers may prefer to do this last as a way to find details they can incorporate into plots they’ve already conceived. I like to do it first so I can work from the general to the specific and because knowing the politics of an era sometimes gives me ideas. It can also help refine character sketches.
A note here about the internet. It holds vast quantities of information, of course, but it’s a good idea to cross-check any information online because literally anyone who can buy a domain name and pay the hosting fee can set up a website. Managing one doesn’t mean the person who runs it actually has valid information.
Step 2: Color in the Era’s Details. If a plot involves a particular event or controversy at the time, reading one or two books focused on those issues is enough background to start. If that issue is central to the story, reading a bit more might help. The climactic action in the second book of the Boar King’s Honor trilogy, The Steel Rose, takes place at the Battle of Waterloo. Since the battle was crucial and not incidental, I read a great deal about it so I could find the most effective way to build it into the story. If I hadn’t wanted to tackle that, I could have framed the story to put the battle more in the background.
Questions may arise later but can be dealt with when they do. A biography of a prominent figure of that era can also provide valuable information about the period’s society.
Step 3: Add the People. Once the period backdrop is established, the scene is ready for people. For me, as it is for many writers, plot and character are intertwined, so having the main characters generally sketched out is an early part of the process. Then I look at them against the setting of their time. As research continues, it offers ways to refine and shape those characters and their beliefs and conflicts so they’re tied into their era. For example, people during the Restoration era believed in witchcraft. An accusation could be fatal. In 1735, though, Parliament passed a statute ending prosecutions for witchcraft and related offenses.
Another aspect of characters’ lives that helps ground them in their era is their clothes. There are numerous books on clothing from different periods. Unless something about those clothes matters for the plot, knowing how the clothes were constructed, cared for, donned, or removed doesn’t matter. Dropping bits of those actions into a conversation can prevent a scene from merely being talking heads, if the writer wants to use those details, but there are plenty of ways to do that.
Step 4: Put the People in Their Places. Once we know what people wore, we need to think about the rest of their lives. What were their homes like? Did they have servants? Did they eat lavish meals or scrape by? Those factors are determined by the characters’ jobs, if any, economic resources, and social rank. For The Herald of Day, I found Liza Picard’s Restoration London and Sara Paston-Williams’s The Art of Dining: A History of Cooking and Eating, with its chapters on how people ate in different eras, very useful.
There are books and websites about houses during particular eras, and a history of London (or Paris or New York or any major city) during the relevant time will usually offer a look at how people lived. City or area maps are also useful and can often be found on the Web or in local libraries.
Step 5: Dive Into the Story. Don’t worry about having all the information that might possibly be relevant before writing Chapter One. Do the research until you feel comfortable, and then start. That’s a different degree of study for each of us. Advance research won’t prevent questions from arising during the writing process. I keep a running list of things I need to check, tending to them every week or two.
Step 6: Put the World on the Page. The upside of research is learning a lot of interesting information. The downside is that we have to pick and choose which bits to include. Readers focus on the story and don’t want it bogged down with every intriguing or impressive fact the writer discovers.
So how much is enough, and how much is too much? Where’s the line?
As with so much else, that depends.
The story’s genre plays a big role in determining how much historical detail to include. Most historical romance readers seem to like history primarily as a backdrop, neither needing nor wanting much period detail. On the other hand, readers of historical fiction, where the history is the story’s spine, expect to be immersed in the era. So do readers of historical fantasy. Historical fantasy readers want a world that’s clearly drawn and is other from their own in significant ways. Mystery readers seem to fall somewhere in between, focused on the mystery but wanting the history to matter.
A good way to gauge what the story needs is to read our favorite books and/or those by highly successful authors in the story’s genre and see how much those writers include. Why not take our cues from those who’ve found a winning combination?
The canvas of history can seem daunting. There’s so much of it, after all, and diving into a new part can be like jumping into the deep end of the pool. Breaking the process of research down, though, can help focus on what’s necessary instead of the vast, baffling sea of facts and get the story moving.
Nancy Northcott is the author of the Boar King’s Honor trilogy. It follows the descendants of a wizard who unwittingly helped murder Edward IV’s sons, who are known as the Princes in the Tower. Tormented by guilt when King Richard III was wrongly blamed, the wizard cursed his entire line to not rest in life or death until they cleared the king’s name. Each book in the series sets the family’s efforts to lift the curse against a cataclysmic historical event.
Book 1:
The Herald of Day: https://www.amazon.com/Herald-Boar-Kings-Honor-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B07RYW35DX/
Book 2:
The Steel Rose: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B092V1RYLC
Book 3:
The King’s Champion is slated for release in 2022.
Website: https://www.NancyNorthcott.com
Twitter: @NancyNorthcott
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/nancynorthcott/
Facebook: https:// www.facebook.com/nancynorthcottauthor/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3468806.Nancy_Northcott
Thank you again for having me, Helen!
[my pleasure!]
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Helen's Latest Release
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A new edition with new additional scenes |
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| The first in a new series of quick-read, cosy mysteries set in the 1970s. A Mirror Murder https://getbook.at/MirrorMurder |
Eighteen-year-old library assistant Jan Christopher’s life is to change on a rainy Friday evening in July 1971, when her legal guardian and uncle, DCI Toby Christopher, gives her a lift home after work. Driving the car, is her uncle’s new Detective Constable, Laurie Walker – and it is love at first sight for the young couple.
But romance is soon to take a back seat when a baby boy is taken from his pram, a naked man is scaring young ladies in nearby Epping Forest, and an elderly lady is found, brutally murdered...
Are the events related? How will they affect the staff and public of the local library where Jan works – and will a blossoming romance survive a police investigation into murder?
“Lots of nostalgic, well-researched, detail about life in the 1970s, which readers of a certain age will lap up; plus some wonderful, and occasionally hilarious, ‘behind the counter’ scenes of working in a public library, which any previous or present-day library assistant will recognise!” Reader Review
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Helen