You've provided some great ideas on how to work on something set in another period. I was just saying yesterday to a friend that I find historical fiction the most difficult thing to write, and yet it is what I most love to write. Perhaps because it provides me with an excellent excuse to escape into another world? It's a wonderfully complex puzzle to create a vision of a world for others and hope it works for them, but it can get overwhelming if you let it. (I often let it.) When you write something contemporary, even if it's about someone very different from you living a life very different from yours, it's still a world you have a grasp of. You know more than you realize you know.
The main setting for my first novel was a 5000-year old megalithic tomb, the walls of which are covered with Viking runes. I could NOT get myself in there, so I got a roll of brown paper and I drew the stones and the openings in the walls and I wrote (in English) the runes exactly where the Vikings had etched them. Those were the walls of my kitchen for a few months. The students I tutored in my kitchen thought I was losing it. When I really couldn't get 'there' I wrote by candlelight, as my characters would have been seeing only by firelight.
At the moment I am revising two novels set in 10th century Ireland. I began research for them in 2006 and, as I work through them again, I am revising story and prose, but also historical detail because I've learned a lot more about Ireland since then. Turns out the Irish didn't make hay for their much-loved cattle! They didn't need it because grass was available through both seasons (they only counted two.) The challenge became not being able to tell the reader the Irish didn't make hay (they had no concept of hay), while describing why the cattle starved the winter of 917 because of horrific snow and ice storms when the modern reader would be wondering why they didn't just give them hay! Like I said, a complex puzzle. But man, when someone tells you that you took them 'there?' It's worth it.
That's so good--surrounding yourself in the runes and candlelight!
And you've hit on a real problem: that issue of "going forward," and how to explain what would not have been explained at the time. Or simply not explain, and let the reader puzzle through.
Was that what you did in the end? Describe, and leave it at that? Let them know that the ice/storms were greater than they'd experienced to that date?
I set up the scene so that the reader would gather that the weather was unusual and worrisome. What happens (and this was in the Irish Annals, where I have lived at least a few weeks of my life at this point) is that there is a thaw and then a cold snap that freezes the surface of the snow which has yet to melt. The herds were decimated across Ireland. I have characters making suggestions, like digging out the corn stalks that were cut tall (this was kinda their wimpy alternative to hay) and resorting to ivy and holly, which were allowed to grow extensively for this purpose. I had someone read the chapter and only after she had done so did I ask her if she found herself scratching her head at the lack of mention of hay. She said she got it as the chapter progressed. But that I should add something in the author's note for the kind of reader who is going to accuse me of being such a city girl that I don't know that cows eat hay. :-)
This is one of the scariest challenges, actually: braving the 'experts' who will slash and burn you in online reviews after it's too late for you to make changes.
Brings new meaning to "The Holly and the Ivy, when they are both full grown..." (Maybe not... just a post-seasonal thing...)
Possibly, by the end of the novel, you'll have convinced the reader of your cred and research, and won't need the note. But good to have another set of eyes on it, right--before the busy reviewers!
"And if there is only one of those, it might have to be let go: such phrases need friends and cousins." This is just the advice that I needed. I have way too many themes and ideas that are playing by themselves that break the coherence of the story! And having a firm grip on the spirit / voice of a specific historical time period is so hard. I guess it gets better with the 90% of the research that aren't explicitly used in the story, but still reside in writers' minds to help them immerse themselves more fully into their fictional world ... Today's lesson was so helpful, thank you so much Alison!!
I liked the imagining white buildings before you discovered that they really were white. Like Robertson Davies saying that the monks in one of his novels wrote with purple ink, and a monk told him later, "How did you know?" "I just made it up," said Davies, but somehow ... (of course, he was a Jungian).
For my historical novel I found it useful to read a set of diaries from the time, but yes, it's quite different to know a period in broad strokes and to know what they had with their tea. I thought I knew Victorian England, but ...
P.S. I also made it a point not to show my research. I absorbed it and told a story that I hope was believable for 1882, but I didn't stop to point out, This is how they did things then. It was just part of the iceberg beneath.
"This is how they did things then!" Yes, and yes to not pointing to research. Absorption and evocation is good. Those two words keep coming up for me. And I'm thinking a lot about how to describe that process... so as you "don't point out," there's a consciousness to that....
I’m researching 1946 -1960 New Westminster, British Columbia Canada in case anyone has suggestions 😃 I’ve got to find newspaper archives and I’ve got some info from the city, but all ideas welcome.
Does New West have a museum? I remember having a little one out in Ladner, that I loved, and it is on one of my kids' books. The museum was filed with photos and info.
I read Thunder Bay newspapers from 1870 (when it was Ft William and Prince Arthur's Landing) in the old UBC library. My eyes went buggy reading the microfiche... but it was there! You might want to phone UBC library system and ask...
I haven’t gotten to the museum yet but found a New West nostalgic photo Facebook group. It’s amazing! So many photos and people remembering precious things about different time periods. There was a thread about the yellow buses that people took in a particular era!
This is great, Alison!
You've provided some great ideas on how to work on something set in another period. I was just saying yesterday to a friend that I find historical fiction the most difficult thing to write, and yet it is what I most love to write. Perhaps because it provides me with an excellent excuse to escape into another world? It's a wonderfully complex puzzle to create a vision of a world for others and hope it works for them, but it can get overwhelming if you let it. (I often let it.) When you write something contemporary, even if it's about someone very different from you living a life very different from yours, it's still a world you have a grasp of. You know more than you realize you know.
The main setting for my first novel was a 5000-year old megalithic tomb, the walls of which are covered with Viking runes. I could NOT get myself in there, so I got a roll of brown paper and I drew the stones and the openings in the walls and I wrote (in English) the runes exactly where the Vikings had etched them. Those were the walls of my kitchen for a few months. The students I tutored in my kitchen thought I was losing it. When I really couldn't get 'there' I wrote by candlelight, as my characters would have been seeing only by firelight.
At the moment I am revising two novels set in 10th century Ireland. I began research for them in 2006 and, as I work through them again, I am revising story and prose, but also historical detail because I've learned a lot more about Ireland since then. Turns out the Irish didn't make hay for their much-loved cattle! They didn't need it because grass was available through both seasons (they only counted two.) The challenge became not being able to tell the reader the Irish didn't make hay (they had no concept of hay), while describing why the cattle starved the winter of 917 because of horrific snow and ice storms when the modern reader would be wondering why they didn't just give them hay! Like I said, a complex puzzle. But man, when someone tells you that you took them 'there?' It's worth it.
That's so good--surrounding yourself in the runes and candlelight!
And you've hit on a real problem: that issue of "going forward," and how to explain what would not have been explained at the time. Or simply not explain, and let the reader puzzle through.
Was that what you did in the end? Describe, and leave it at that? Let them know that the ice/storms were greater than they'd experienced to that date?
Thanks for sharing this, Cindy! All so useful.
I set up the scene so that the reader would gather that the weather was unusual and worrisome. What happens (and this was in the Irish Annals, where I have lived at least a few weeks of my life at this point) is that there is a thaw and then a cold snap that freezes the surface of the snow which has yet to melt. The herds were decimated across Ireland. I have characters making suggestions, like digging out the corn stalks that were cut tall (this was kinda their wimpy alternative to hay) and resorting to ivy and holly, which were allowed to grow extensively for this purpose. I had someone read the chapter and only after she had done so did I ask her if she found herself scratching her head at the lack of mention of hay. She said she got it as the chapter progressed. But that I should add something in the author's note for the kind of reader who is going to accuse me of being such a city girl that I don't know that cows eat hay. :-)
This is one of the scariest challenges, actually: braving the 'experts' who will slash and burn you in online reviews after it's too late for you to make changes.
Brings new meaning to "The Holly and the Ivy, when they are both full grown..." (Maybe not... just a post-seasonal thing...)
Possibly, by the end of the novel, you'll have convinced the reader of your cred and research, and won't need the note. But good to have another set of eyes on it, right--before the busy reviewers!
"And if there is only one of those, it might have to be let go: such phrases need friends and cousins." This is just the advice that I needed. I have way too many themes and ideas that are playing by themselves that break the coherence of the story! And having a firm grip on the spirit / voice of a specific historical time period is so hard. I guess it gets better with the 90% of the research that aren't explicitly used in the story, but still reside in writers' minds to help them immerse themselves more fully into their fictional world ... Today's lesson was so helpful, thank you so much Alison!!
And as you know, I always say, "Don't start cutting until the first draft is complete... and then wait a bit, too..." !
Thank you to the people who comment on these articles. Your comments are as helpful as the articles. And glad the articles trigger the comments!
The comments and discussion make all the difference, yes! Thanks, Amy--you have a big role in this :)
I liked the imagining white buildings before you discovered that they really were white. Like Robertson Davies saying that the monks in one of his novels wrote with purple ink, and a monk told him later, "How did you know?" "I just made it up," said Davies, but somehow ... (of course, he was a Jungian).
For my historical novel I found it useful to read a set of diaries from the time, but yes, it's quite different to know a period in broad strokes and to know what they had with their tea. I thought I knew Victorian England, but ...
P.S. I also made it a point not to show my research. I absorbed it and told a story that I hope was believable for 1882, but I didn't stop to point out, This is how they did things then. It was just part of the iceberg beneath.
"This is how they did things then!" Yes, and yes to not pointing to research. Absorption and evocation is good. Those two words keep coming up for me. And I'm thinking a lot about how to describe that process... so as you "don't point out," there's a consciousness to that....
Well, yes, Victorian times were tea-laden! But before mid-1600s... That a great Davies' story. Thank you for that!
I’m researching 1946 -1960 New Westminster, British Columbia Canada in case anyone has suggestions 😃 I’ve got to find newspaper archives and I’ve got some info from the city, but all ideas welcome.
Does New West have a museum? I remember having a little one out in Ladner, that I loved, and it is on one of my kids' books. The museum was filed with photos and info.
I read Thunder Bay newspapers from 1870 (when it was Ft William and Prince Arthur's Landing) in the old UBC library. My eyes went buggy reading the microfiche... but it was there! You might want to phone UBC library system and ask...
I haven’t gotten to the museum yet but found a New West nostalgic photo Facebook group. It’s amazing! So many photos and people remembering precious things about different time periods. There was a thread about the yellow buses that people took in a particular era!
Oh, so good! Yes, I forget about FB as such a resource. But you're absolutely right! Thank you.