Historical Research

By Donna Schlachter

Researching any topic in the past can be a fun and exciting adventure. Sometimes, however, it can also be a series of frustrating dead ends. You can even compile a history for places you make up. Simply base it on another town or area nearby.

Here’s my process:

Decide on the setting and the year for the story. Look for something interesting that happened during that time in that area. Begin with the internet, but look for several articles that agree.

Once you have the nugget of a story, locate newspaper stories, books, journals, and diaries to give you more background.

If possible, visit the setting before you start to write. See what the lay of the land is like. How would that impact the story and the characters?

Read books and watch movies set during that time, but don’t believe everything you read and see unless it was written/filmed contemporaneously. Sometimes authors and producers tend to don rose-colored glasses when looking back.

Keep notes. Print everything, especially web pages. Photocopy everything. Record movies and other references you used. You might be asked by an editor to validate a fact that’s crucial to your storyline.

Once you start writing, don’t let research distract you from writing. If you arrive at a point where you don’t know a particular fact, insert a symbol (I use @@) in the manuscript, and carry on. Go back and look it up later.

In Double Jeopardy, because I wanted to include mining in the story line, I researched and found that the Colorado Gold Rush ended around the late 1870s, and the Silver Rush began in 1879. This was perfect for the backstory of how Becky’s father went to Colorado a year before the story began.

I’d visited the Durango area, and loved the landscape. I’d talked with people who lived there, went up some of the canyons, saw old mines, some ghost towns, and decided I wanted to set a story there. I created the fictional town and valley of Silver Valley, and I visited some museums in Colorado where I learned about sheriffs and law enforcement in the 1880s.

For specific details such as silver mining, I did online research then visited a mining museum. For minutiae such as when women began wearing dungarees (not until about 10 years later), when fountain pens came into common use (around that time, but they were still expensive and a luxury item), and Fourth of July celebrations and Indian relations, I relied on various articles from Wikipedia and history books.

So you can that much of your research can be done online from the comfort of your home, but don’t rely on any one online source.

Leave a comment to enter a random drawing for a free ebook copy of Double Jeopardy.

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Donna Schlachter lives in Denver with husband Patrick. As a hybrid author, she writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 30 times in novellas and full-length novels. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Writers on the Rock, Sisters In Crime, and Christian Authors Network; facilitates a critique group; and teaches writing classes online and in person. Donna also ghostwrites, edits, and judges in writing contests. She loves history and research, and travels extensively for both. Donna is represented by Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management.

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Story Ideas Come from the Darn-dest Places

By Donna L.H. Smith

Art Linkletter used to say, “Kids say the darn-dest things.” A few years ago, when I decided to write a novel, I asked myself, “What on earth could I write a novel about?”

Within a very short time, a confounding idea popped into my head, only a phrase actually. “Gunfight at Hyde Park.” I knew it was something from an obscure history lesson from my hometown in Kansas, something I learned about in fifth grade. I had to Google it to re-learn the details.

Honestly, I hadn’t thought about that history lesson in probably fifty years. I remembered nothing about it, except that phrase. How in the world can I work in a story, to include the beginning of a series of gunfights over a ten–day period that killed and wounded more people than at the OK Corral––for the climax?

Two guys named Billy Bailey and Mike McCloskey started the whole mess. Ten days later, a young, sickly fellow by the name of James Riley was the last person to be involved. He was on McCloskey’s side. He killed someone, someone on Bailey’s side, and then disappeared from the face of the earth. Nothing was ever heard about him again.

I began to weave a story about a spoiled, immature rich girl from Missouri coming to a newly established, wild Kansas railroad town to tutor the children of Santa Fe Railroad executives. And since I love romantic triangles, she met two very different men, eventually falling for one who would get in the way of a stray bullet from the beginnings of the gunfights. Throw in a contentious town political election, and let the gunfights begin.

For most of those, I read, there were two reasons a young woman launched out on her own, and she was forced to: 1) her father died, 2) her father was a jerk, and she had to escape a horrible arranged marriage. I wanted her circumstances to be different. I’ve probably read 150 historical romances in the last three years. Therefore, her loving father “requires” her to work for a year before marriage, to teach her fiscal responsibility and hopefully, develop some maturity.

Many other story ideas come to mind. How can I possibly write them all? They come to me in all kinds of ways. I’ll be watching a movie or something on television, and I’ll think, “Hmmm. That idea might have possibilities if I change this or that.” Or “I’ve not seen anything quite like that before. I like it. How could I use or change that and still be intriguing?”

Those little light bulb moments where we think “Aha!” is something we should pay attention to. We never know whether our next idea might just make a best seller.

Where do your ideas come from? What sorts of unusual scenarios come to your mind?

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Donna L.H. Smith is a Kansas prairie girl transplanted to Lancaster County, PA, writing on and off for forty years, including broadcast journalism, newspapers and magazines, marketing and public relations. She writes historical romance and love stories and serves as the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) Pennsylvania State Chapter President and Area Coordinator. Her novel, Meghan’s Choice was a semi-finalist in Operation 1^st Novel 2015, and placed in two categories of the 2015 Blue Ridge Advanced Novelist Retreat. She speaks at writers’ conference workshops, and leads women’s retreats. Her website is http://donnalhsmith.com where she blogs about writing and other things. She’s also involved in Almost an Author as a monthly contributor with The Writer’s PenCase. She can be found on Facebook: and her author page, Twitter, and LinkedIN.

How I Survived NaNoWriMo 2013 (Without Dying to my Family)

By Bethany Macmanus

With November 2013 come and gone, I'm 50K words into my romantic suspense novel, thanks to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). To say writing with a goal of 1667 words a day, every single day, was challenging, would be an understatement. Honestly, at this point, my family is hoping I don't do it again next year (maybe they'll come around—I've got a year to get them to see things my way!).

As the month and the novel both transpired, here are some things I found worked for me.

·        I used the “timed typing” function on my AlphaSmart to yank myself free of distractions like the Internet, and to focus on simply getting words on the screen, without my inner editor screaming its head off. True, there were spelling and punctuation issues I'd be embarrassed for even my mother to read, but it got the job done, and that's what's important in NaNo.

·        I lowered my house cleanliness standards, and then I lowered them again. I didn't let ANYONE see my house during NaNo, and I might have even walked around talking to the clutter to let it know it would meet its demise, come December. I also lowered my nutrition standards, letting my kids eat more fish sticks, frozen pizza, and mac 'n' cheese from a box than I would be comfortable admitting in many social circles.

·        Don't tell anyone, but for some scenes, if I wasn't hearing my characters' thoughts that day, I would just brainstorm description for the setting, dialogue, what the characters knew so far, and what they needed to find out. What their goals, motivations, and conflicts were for that scene; and reminders in caps for stuff I needed to change, that I'd written earlier.

·        I asked people on the social networks (namely Facebook) to hold me accountable if they saw me on there. I did, and they did. Enough said 'bout that...

·        I used inspiring sounds and smells liberally. Gomixit.com is a great white noise producer because it has variety, and it's free. I occasionally played my Celtic music while the timer was going on my AlphSmart, because the lively rhythms made me type faster. For scents, I used both candles and essential oils. If I found the setting of a scene difficult to visualize or get into, I would play YouTube videos of similar settings, whatever I could find to get those cogs turning.

·        I assigned a reward to myself, every day for the month of November. It might be helpful to write it on a calendar to yourself (I didn't do that, just thought of it right now). Some days, I asked my husband to hold my reward in safekeeping until I finished my NaNo.

·        I backed out of anything I possibly could, for the month. This included PTO, author meetings, critique partner responsibilities and chat time, etc. I apologized profusely to folks for my lapse in commitment.

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Bethany Macmanus lives in Houston with her husband, daughter and son. After practicing as an RN for five years, Bethany left the nursing field to pursue a fiction writing passion the Lord planted in her heart when she was a child. And as Nancy Drew mysteries were her guilty pleasure during those early years, so she naturally gravitates her pen toward the things that go bump in the night.She draws many interesting and perplexing facts from her former career. These come in handy when her characters get themselves into serious scrapes, and give a psychological spin to many of her plots. She’s allergic to milk, Sulfa drugs, and people who stop in the middle of intersections while driving. She has been a member American Christian Fiction Writers since Jan. 2011. She has been honored in 2011 ACFW Genesis contest Finalist for Mystery/Suspense/Thriller and 2013 RWA Daphne du Maurier (unpublished)contest Finalist for Inspirational Romantic Suspense. She has authored Six Solitude Road and Murdered Between Stalagmites. 

She blogs on her website, at http://bethanymacmanus.com/blog 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/bethanymacmanusauthor 

Twitter: @bgmacmanus