By Allison Pittman
It was a simple
enough scene: a woman visiting her sister. She takes the train, then walks the
few blocks to her sister’s house, climbs the steps, and rings the doorbell.
Wait.
Doorbell. Doorbell?
It’s
1922. Do people have doorbells?
And
that’s when Google becomes a historical author’s best friend. After way too
many rabbit trails and Reddit holes, I learned that yes, people had doorbells
in 1922. Not everybody, but some. Not most, but a few. And just like that, a
tiny bit of doorbell trivia made this character come alive. Of course, she
had a doorbell, because she always wanted everything that “better” people had.
She loved the sound of the chiming bell in her hallway and loved even more
knowing that all her other poor friends heard only knocking.
Those of
us who weave our tales in the past are subject to rules that authors in other
genres can skip. Contemporary stories aren’t likely to slip in a technology
that doesn’t exist; science fiction and fantasy writers can pretty much invent
as they go along. But give a character a wristwatch before wristwatches were an
expected accessory? That’ll get you a two-star review on Amazon (true story).
But
sometimes—rarely, and for a very good reason—a writer just
must give history a nudge. My new novel, The Seamstress (Tyndale),
takes place at the cusp of the French Revolution, and I desperately wanted my
rebel Marcel to wear the iconic red cap. The only problem? I couldn’t find a
source that would place that cap on anybody’s head during the years in which my
story was set. Was I going to let a little thing like historical fact get in
the way of Marcel’s rebellious spirit? No. Marcel got his cap, and I addressed
it with a quick mea culpa in the author’s note, lest the same reviewer who gave
me two stars for a wristwatch proved to be an expert in all historical
accessorizing.
Beyond
matters of technology and costume, however, looms the responsibility of
accurately depicting the people of history. I’ve had lots of
cameos in my novels: Brigham Young, Aimee Semple McPherson, Lottie Moon, Martin
Luther. Admittedly, in Loving Luther, Martin has a slightly bigger
role, but I approached that project with a purposeful focus on Katharina. Why?
Because Luther’s life is documented to the core, and Katharina has little more
than a bullet list on Wikipedia. I could play with her life a little, staying
true to the years and playing loose with the moments.
Breathing
fictional life into a historical character, for me, is a matter of taking what
is known about a person and giving it a manifestation within
your narrative. For example, it is known that Marie Antoinette, who lives as a
minor character in The Seamstress, spoke French imperfectly. (This,
according to her detractors, who might have had a bit of a bias.) It was also
known that she wasn’t exactly thrilled with her life with Louis.
So, I ran with
that. I had her lapse into her native language during those moments when she
was out of the public eye. I made her accent more pronounced during moments of
high emotion. When she wrote, she had misspelled words and an awkward, forced
hand. No big trick there. Then I read in a book dedicated to her fashion that
she was not allowed to ever wear black and yellow together, as those were the
colors of her Austrian family crest. I admit to running with this a little. In
my story, when the rebellion was in full force, Marie Antoinette instructs her
seamstress (The Seamstress, Renée) to add tiny touches of yellow
and black to her gowns, stockings, shoes, hats.
Now, did the real queen ever do
this? To this question, I respond: show me that she didn’t. And no. That didn’t
get a line in my author’s note. The important thing is, I don’t have Marie
Antoinette doing anything outside of her character. Because, really, all our
choices must come down to what brings life to the character on the page.
Allison Pittman, author of more
than a dozen critically acclaimed novels, is a three-time Christy
finalist—twice for her Sister Wife series and once for All for a Story from
her take on the Roaring Twenties. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, blissfully
sharing an empty nest with her husband, Mike. AUTHOR LINKS:
https://www.allisonkpittman.com/
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