Thing the first:
In light of some recent events, I will admit I had second thoughts about posting this particular column, but you know, the subject matter is one I’ve been mulling for quite a while and forgive me if I sound a wee bit defensive, but I don’t want what’s going on in the outside world to stand in the way of my enthusiasm for talking/writing about a topic that I find fascinating.
Thing the second:
I know that there are a lot of tremendously accomplished writers out there who are already aware of everything I’m going to write about and I know I’m going to come off like a baby who’s discovered his hands for the first time. “Hey, those funny things! They’re mine! And whoa, lookie there—look what I can make them do! Hey there, Mr. Hand!” So forgive me for sounding like an utter newbie—this is isn’t so much me trying to educate or anything other than trying to parse out what I’ve been going through.
Okay, all that said, here goes.
Recently, I started a new project. Yeah, yeah, I know—those of you who are writers are sitting there going, “Big whoop, Barb—I mean, it’s nice and all, but what makes this so special?”
Well, as I’ve mentioned in a couple of other places, it’s special to me because I’m stretching my wings. Pushing my own personal boundaries. Trying something completely new. I’m venturing into what, for me, has been the terrifying world of the historical. Sort of. It’s set in the 1960s, which I don’t think has quite been granted “historical” status within the publishing ranks (and yes, I was born in the sixties and the thought of it as “historical” is freaking me out), but at the same time, it’s not like it can be considered a true contemporary. Contemporary historical maybe? Whatever. So not the point. The point is, it’s a project that’s requiring tremendous amounts of research. Events, locales, social mores, dress, language, products used; music, television, film, any significant technological advances (and given that it was the 50s and 60s, hoo boy, were there loads of those). And conversely, because it lies within the realm of a time period where great technological advances were made, taking great care to be aware of what existed and what was still a gleam in their creators’ eyes.
Sidebar: That’s actually proving to be one of the most challenging things with writing within a time period that we’re not all that far removed from— remembering that so much of what we take for granted these days might have existed, but not in the manner with which we’re most familiar. Brewing coffee? Well, yes, but percolator, not Mr. Coffee. Zip codes, credit cards, making phone calls. All things that we’re all familiar with, but not necessarily in the manner with which we’re familiar. Yoiks.
Honestly, there have been times in the last few months where I’ve veered wildly from gleefully rubbing my hands together out of the utter Oooh! Shiny! of discovery to frightening myself into the fetal position in a corner, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material I’m sifting through (and my VISA bills from the Amazon.com charges).
But I always uncurl and crawl my way back to my notes and bookmarked Internet pages and most of all, the books, irresistibly lured by their contents, by the information contained within that will make my story better, stronger, faster. Because even if it’s the most minute detail, I want to get it right.
Thing is, that desire, the wanting to get it right, the inherent love of research—all of that has always existed for me. It’s part of what had me considering a career in academia (come on, a lifetime of Oooh! Shiny!) until I realized I had trouble playing well with administrative types.
In writing, I discovered a natural outlet for the research bug, but since everything I’ve ever written has been contemporary, it’s never struck me as that big a deal—just a personal quirk combined with ingrained habit that I would spend close to two weeks researching acoustic guitars and performance methodology for Adiós or studying the law with respect to rape and assault in the state of Ohio for Accent. Cancer, dance, theatre, drum and bugle corps, graphic design, cooking, knee injuries, separated shoulders, training therapy dogs, small-town living in coastal Maine—all of these things have consumed me at some point or another in the name of research for a story.
However, knowing my penchant for falling for the Oooh! Shiny! factor is part of what’s kept me from trying a historical novel. I was absolutely petrified I’d get so caught up in every bright, sparkly detail uncovered, that I’d feel compelled to put it all out there for everyone to see and enjoy and delight in the fabulousness of it all. Note, I say “it.” Not my ability to Show Off Great Research Abilities, but simply the nifty cool facts themselves, because yeah, I’m that big a geek and can’t imagine that everyone else wouldn’t find it incredibly interesting that El Vedado and Miramar were the old money neighborhoods in 1950s Havana while Santa MarÃa del Mar was totally nouveau.
You understand, my husband is rolling his eyes right now and feeling very sorry for you all because this is what he lives with on a daily basis. Random Fact Girl.
And hopefully, you can also understand why I was scared, right?
But see, the thing I’ve been discovering about research on any scale with respect to writing is that for me, it has to do with the immersion factor. Or, as one of my writing friends would say, absolutely rolling around and getting intimate with it in a way that would make nuns blush.
You absorb the information and allow it to live in the back of the lizard brain and integrate with your characters’ histories and lifestyles and the story they’re going to tell. It’s not research to these characters; they’re not facts. It’s simply their lives and the world that they inhabit.
And then when it finally comes out, all that research, all those facts, they emerge within the context of the narrative as naturally and effortlessly as breathing.
Long-winded way of saying that if I come away from this exercise with anything, it’s the knowledge that research done well informs—never overwhelms—the story.
If nothing else ever comes of this story, at least it’s a good lesson to have learned.
So what’s been one of the most memorable lessons you took away from either writing or reading?
No related posts.
“So what’s been one of the most memorable lessons you took away from either writing or reading?”
To never doubt my instincts.
(speaking of 60’s research, have you ever watched Madmen on tv- it’s actually set in the 50’s possibly early 60’s and is so full of atmosphere you can taste it. Everyone, heck everything has the the look and texture of that time- they even smoke like chimneys, even the pregnant women! THAT’S the kind of setting thorough research can gwryou!)
eh him- can GIVE you.
David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green is set in the 70s. (Lovely book.) At one point he mentions, in passing, the protagonist eating Findus Crispy Pancakes for tea.
I’d forgotten entirely that Findus Crispy Pancakes ever existed – they were dreadful things – but that one spot-on reference was enough to evoke the time period precisely – I could remember coming home from school and having them for tea, and thinking them just lovely.
I don’t know if there’s a lesson in that: maybe that it doesn’t take much to convey a sense of period – that the reader’s brain can fill in round the odd anchoring detail.
Heh—Zeek, I knew what you meant. And I absolutely adore MadMen. I have every episode Tivo’d and the “Making of” downloaded onto my iTunes, because, as you rightly said, it’s an invaluable tool. It’s actually in 1960, begins in March and goes through the Presidential election of that year and it was in the making of, that I got some insight into being precise with research—they wanted to have the kids playing with a toy—I want to say it was a Slinky, but Slinkies weren’t introduced until July or August of 1960 and this was one of the earlier episodes, so instead, they had them playing with Etch-A-Sketches. Or it was the other way around, they wanted to use Etch-A-Sketch and wound up using Slinkies instead. Regardless, that’s the sort of attention to detail that I absolutely value.
As far as trusting your instincts, right on. That’s one I tell people whenever they ask me about writing—it’s that no one can tell your story better than you can.
Marianne—that’s exactly what I’m talking about and the balance I’m hoping to achieve. That one or two things can be enough to evoke the sense of place and time. It’s just choosing judiciously that’s tough. I’ll have to look for the book, too.
I’m not one for research (unless it is digging through Citigroup’s financials to find the stock’s true book value but lets face it, that goes right in the outright fun category) which is why I LOVE reading historical romances.
Here are novels with key historical happenings and great love stories too! Entertaining and educational. Can’t get much better than that!
I’m not one for research (unless it is digging through Citigroup’s financials to find the stock’s true book value but lets face it, that goes right in the outright fun category)
Kimber, you’re a deeply disturbed individual, babe. I really like that in a person.
I love historical research too, but I try to pretend the sixties, seventies, and eighties never happened.
Well, except for the Beach Boys and landing on the Moon, of course. 
Where’s edit function on this site?
I love how, in a historical, the Telling Details are such a sneaky way to work in one’s research. They’re tiny, they whizz by at the speed of reading, but I think they accumulate in the reader’s brain as the story progresses.
LOL Kimber An and Barbara, you may be right, I might be a bit disturbed.
What? Pretending the eighties never happened?
But then we wouldn’t have classic songs like Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go or Karma Chameleon or better yet, Ghostbusters.
(I’d burst into song but then I’ll get nabbed for copyright infringement.)
And we won’t even talk about the movies…
I had a great meme yesterday over on my home blog about music during the years you were in high school. Used the Billboard Top 100 charts and you had to choose the song you loved best back then, the one you think is best now, and the worst (or most despised).
Music was thiiiiiiin when I was in high school.
And Breakfast Club is a classic, man. As is Fast Times and Real Genius and we are sooooo going off track, aren’t we? it’s all because of Kimber Chin and those danged numbers.
Oooh, there is nothing so much fun as research (I will put my collection of Black Plague trivia and 1960’s cocktail dresses on the table), and our poor, long -suffering families. I’m always reminding myself not to sound like Cliff, from Cheers, at parties. (Stop. Now.)
The sixties are especially cool. I spent delirous months on Las Vegas 1960 for Lady Luck’s Map of Vegas, and at least three weeks on the cocktail dresses. I still have pictures of some of them on my hard drive.
Luscious period. So glad you are writing there.
Barbara
And Barbara Samuel brings us back to topic with the Black Plague. LOL
Only on one of Barbara Caridad Ferrer’s posts can we go from the Breakfast Club to the Plague in one comment.
Yes! Cliff from Cheers! My husband has called me that! God love ‘im.
My office is at the front of the house and it’s open, so whenever anyone walks in, they’re immediately hit with the objects of my current obsession.
What guests see
It’s actually sparked some fun conversations when people sit in my nearby leather chair and start leafing through the pages of the books.
And it is a luscious, luscious period. I’m happily swimming through all the divine material I’ve uncovered, my coup de grace so far being a 1964 Texaco road atlas (thank you, eBay), since there is a cross-country road trip involved and I had no idea what the state of the highway system was in 1965.
Oooh! Shiny!
Only on one of Barbara Caridad Ferrer’s posts can we go from the Breakfast Club to the Plague in one comment.
You say that as if there’s something odd in that.
Research is history buff porn. I get lost in it for days too, and it’s the minutiae that’s orgasmic. (Like in My Big Fat Greek Wedding with the windex and how it had the depressor pump?)
But to do 60’s research all I have to do is ask my Mom.
Or my Aunt-she would be better, she was in her late 20s then.
It sounds like it’s a fabulous story!
I read a jarring fact in one of Beverly Jenkins’ wonderful historical novels. It had something to do with voting preferences among blacks during Reconstruction. I could be wrong, but I believe a registered Democrat scandalized the town. I hadn’t known that most blacks at that time went with the party of Lincoln, the Republicans.
I go back to the 50s, and my earliest memories are of the 60s (not my favorite decade). In my spare time, I’m working on an uncontracted project that begins in 1938. I’ve seen enough old movies to get an idea of what a typical kitchen looked like in those days, and I also have my mother, aunt and uncle to serve as technical advisors!
“Less is more, but what you do, get it right.”
I’m sure everyone who’s addicted to historicals has suffered through the multi-page info-dump, where it’s clear that the writer spent twenty-six months researching every single detail pertaining to Devonshire in 1802 and by god she’s going to get Every Single Bit of it into the book because that time and effort will be wasted over her dead body.
Or at the other end, having Countess Taylor Stephanie Beaufort dining on turkey in her huge stone castle in 718 in Cornwall, on a tray in her bedroom of course. [sigh]
There’s a fine line between enough and way too much, and it’s easy to fall onto the wrong side. And of course, “historical” writers who just make stuff up, or who take what they’ve seen in movies or on TV or in other novels as gospel, just make me want to e-mail them a smack.
Angie, who majored in history
Eva—history buff porn! Ha! I love that, especially because it’s SO true.
Bettye—real people are the absolute best resources, aren’t they? I’ve been quizzing both my mom and my in-laws about all those little things that add the patina of authenticity. My other favorite resources are cookbooks with anecdotes.
There’s a fine line between enough and way too much, and it’s easy to fall onto the wrong side.
You know, I think this is why, as much as I love Gabaldon’s Outlander series, my least favorite book in the series is Dragonfly in Amber—it seemed as she needed to give us Every Single Fact she’d uncovered about the French court and events leading up to the Rebellion. It just went on and on and on when I was more interested in the relationships and character interactions. And that’s considering how much I love history.
So if I ever do that, feel free to e-mail me a smack. *g*
I always dread research – until I get into it. Then I’m struck with Ooh! Shiny! and come up for air many days later.
The last Bombshell I wrote – bought but never published – was about a woman who specialized in killing oil well blowouts. A large part of the story was set in Saudi Arabia, a decision I regretted when I realized how awesomely confined humans with vaginas are in Saudi Arabia. It’s damn hard for one’s heroine to go out and save the world when she can’t drive or go out by herself. And it somehow killed her kick-ass persona to say, “Hey, Hero, I gotta go save the world, wouldja getcher pants on and go with me?”
I worked around it, but whoo damn, was I glad I did the research. I honestly didn’t realize the Sauds were THAT restrictive.
I learned a lot about the Middle East, read passages from the Koran, spoke at length with a petroleum engineer who worked over there for many years, and discovered one shouldn’t pack Bailey’s Irish Cream chocolates as a gift for your host – which you are required to have in order to visit the country – because the authorites will confiscate it when they check your bags at the airport upon arrival. No alcohol – even in candy. I read message boards of people who live there on American compounds. I read daily logs and diaries of men who were there during WWII, and military personnel who remained through the fifties. I read a million words about oilwell blowouts and the equipment used to kill them.
I was especially bummed when Bombshell closed down and the book had to go in the closet. All that work, up in smoke.
On the reader side of things, I love it when I learn something from a novel, even if it’s some random tidbit.
Barb, I hope this project of yours is something all of us will get to read – I’m a total sucker for the sixties.
I already can’t wait to read the book
I’m still unpubbed, but so far most of my research has been contemporary, looking at real estate sites to find the characters house so I can print and save and have the layout handy so the kitchen doesn’t become the laundry room when the characters are moving about. I do have a historical idea simmering somewhere in the back of my mind and thinking of all that research, definite mix of woohoo! and scary what all I’m going to have to know to pull the story together
Oh Stef—oh, man… how that must have SUCKED. And it sounds completely fascinating, too. Now I’m annoyed. What happens in that sort of situation, when you’ve sold the book, but it doesn’t get published? I’m assuming the publisher holds all the rights to it for X- number of years?
I really hope this project of mine gets to see the light of day—my agent is definitely excited by it and my CP is cracking the metaphorical whip, trying to get chapter 2 out of me.
Lis, that’s the kind of “everyday” research I do. I research houses and all sorts of “mundane” things, but again, I think it’s those mundane things that give a story the legs to set it apart.
Thanks, Barb! Actually, Silhouette was very gracious about it – they gave me back the rights and didn’t make me give them back the money. Not that it was a whole lotta money, and contractually I believe they kinda had to, but it was all done presto-chango, without any fuss, so that was nice.