JUNE BLOG
A question one often hears from writers of historical fiction is: how do I know when I have done enough research to write my story?
Every historical novel needs to be solidly grounded in facts and those facts can only come from writers who thoroughly research the people, places, and events of which they are writing. Well, that seems obvious, but the level of research is what we are talking about here.
No doubt, you have followed your research trail down many rabbit holes as Jack and I did when we were writing The Bottle Conjuror, and, while rooting around in that rabbit hole you may even have discovered nuggets (rabbit pellets) of information that found their way into your story. Those nuggets were fortuitous accidents, but a writer can’t rely on accident to write his novel.
Tried and true research—the kind your school classmates hated but that you, history lover that you are, relished—forms the bedrock of your novel. This means digging through library and historical archives, trying to get to primary sources wherever possible. It means reading through newspapers and other periodicals, diaries, and letters. It means going to authorities in your subject matter and studying their scholarly works; I read, and used as key sources of information, no less than a dozen books about New England indigenous populations and their relations with English colonists when I wrote The Savage Apostle.
As we were writing The Bottle Conjuror, Jack and I knew there were some broad topics that we just had to get right to create the verisimilitude of 18th-century England: what were the names of streets in London at that time and how were they laid out? What were the important buildings in the city? What did they look like? Consulting 18th-century maps and architectural drawings gave us the answers to those questions.
We also dived deeply into Romani history, culture, and folklore to help us flesh out the characters of Cassandra and Stefan. We needed to know how they dressed and how they spoke, what they ate and what they believed in. And all that had to be set against the history of Romani people in England at that time, which meant understanding how the Romani fit—or didn’t fit—into English society, how civil authorities and lawmakers viewed them and what were the consequences for them of those views.
As we researched those broad topics, the rabbit holes became more numerous, and we fell down many more than we really needed to write the Bottle Conjuror trilogy. But they were fascinating! We learned about horseracing and bare-knuckle fighting and how gin became popular in English taverns. We learned the parts of a flintlock pistol and the formations of British Army riflemen and dragoons. Who knew that forks were only just then coming into vogue? We discovered the contents of an English apothecary shop and the cure for flap-dragon.
In short, we became near-experts in a wide range of subjects.
So, returning to the question at hand—when did we know that enough was enough?
We didn’t.
There was an extensive period of research before we wrote one word, but we found out that, as we started to write, more questions would pop up about the history and people we were trying to capture on paper.
The rabbit holes.
How important was it for me to investigate if men wore tricorn hats in 1749, or what kind of face powder the ladies used? Would my readers have known? Or cared? It seemed important for me to get those sartorial details correct, but perhaps it wasn’t all that important.
Only you, dear reader, can tell us whether you gave a fig for those details or not.
Jack and I clearly “erred” on the side of having more historical facts at our fingertips than were necessary to write the story, but I believe that was the way to go. From that mountain of facts, we hewed out the story line, but we also uncovered little gems that made the story line sparkle.
Let us know if we succeeded.
Tell us about your research process.
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