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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Getting Past our Writing What-Ifs

by Heather Day Gilbert

A couple months ago, I wrote a blogpost entitled Who Cares What’s Hot for my friend and fellow blogger, Julie Cave.  It was chock-full of the swagger and confidence that comes from being a newly-agented author.

We’re two months into the submission process on my Viking novel, and the swagger has swagged on outta here.

I chose to write about a historical time period I’m particularly fond of, since I’m supposedly related to Eirik the Red. The story of my main character, Gudrid, shows up in the Icelandic sagas, and I felt strongly that someone needed to write about this woman.

She came with her third husband (the other two died) to the “new world” of North America. She had the first European child born on this soil (his name was Snorri, not Virginia Dare). She grew up steeped in paganism, but rejected tradition and became a Christian. Icing on the cake: she was a ward of Eirik the Red.

A story worth telling, no?

I enjoyed bringing Gudrid to life, writing in the first-person, present tense to make it more immediate. She’s a realistic, believable character, not some weird Viking from Hagar the Horrible. She struggles with temptation in her marriage. She fights slavery. She has to survive while caring for a baby.

I’ve received mixed responses from publishers, but one that was particularly discouraging indicated that though the writing is sound, people won’t want to read about Vikings because they don’t know much about Vikings.

What? I thought the purpose of reading books was to open new worlds to us. I know many people knew nothing about the nature of black “help” in the South until The Help arrived on the scene. People knew little about Johannes Vermeer until Girl with a Pearl Earring came along. And The Mists of Avalon has single-handedly colored the way we look at King Arthur and Guineviere.

Fiction can change the way we view an entire time period, for good or for bad. I believe there’s enough evolutionary (Clan of the Cave-Bear), pro-pagan hype out there. I felt it was time time to show how Christianity changed an entire group of people for the better.

I’m nothing, if not passionate about this book.

But what if no one wants to publish it (my husband assures me this will not happen, and he hasn’t read the book…bless his heart). What if these years of research/revising/checking the Old Norse dictionary for word choices are worthless in the end?

What if Gudrid’s story is never told?

I’m trying to have faith. Trying to leave this in God’s hands. But, at the end of the day, God will choose to prosper this book or not. I did it for His glory. I was born to write, simple as that. Every time I try to stop writing, God sends me numerous messages that I’d better stick with it.

****How about you? Where are you in this writing process? What are your What ifs? And how do you feel about reading about new historical time periods?****

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Heather Day Gilbert enjoys writing stories about authentic, believable marriages. Fifteen years of marriage to her sweet Yankee husband have given her some perspective, as well as eight years spent homeschooling her three children. Her historical fiction novel, God’s Daughter, is rooted in the Icelandic sagas. It tells the story of Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, the first European woman to have a baby on North American soil. You can find out more at Heather’s blogspot, or at her FB page. She’d also love to chat on twitter @vikingwritergal. 

Mayday! How Can We Help You?

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director

While universally recognized as a distress signal, “Mayday” is also what today is, and I’ve mock yelled it at least once every year on this date, usually to some tolerant friend who pretends to appreciate my often groan-worthy puns. Perhaps broadcasting it to the blogosphere today will finally get it out of my system.

Meanwhile, it’s appropriate that this attention-getting term is derived from the French phrase m’aider (“help me”) because today the magazine staff’s attention is focused on two things intended to aid our fellow writers.

First of all, being May 1^st, the newest edition of Southern Writers Magazine hits the virtual streets (online and by mail) today and it’s packed full of bestselling authors and topnotch writing advice.  Notable is the fact that this issue includes a special emphasis on research and historical writing, two areas you’ve been requesting.  You’ll find helpful insights on bringing history to life from Ann H. Gabhart, learn how to do reliable internet searches with Sheila S. Hudson, and get inspiring thoughts on writing memoirs from Kimberly Rae.  You’ll also sit down with Allison Chase, Robert Noonan, Dorothy Love, Mona Hodgson, Ed Southern, and others who share their secrets of artfully capturing history on the printed page.

Have I mentioned Viggo Mortensen?  A familiar face to moviegoers (Lord of the Rings is just the tip of the Viggo iceberg), you’ll discover a whole new side of this prolific poet in an exclusive interview with Sherry Perkins. And if you saw Courageous at your local cineplex you’ll especially enjoy Vicki Moss’ conversation with author and producer Michael Catt. Look over the shoulder of children’s illustrator Robert J. Blake, get a look at Vicki Allen’s private writing hideaway, and discover how daily discipline helps Irene Latham find publishing success.

There’s lots more and I could go on all day about the May issue, but you’ll see for yourself.  Just keep telling us what you want in the mag and who you want to read about, and we’ll keep delivering.  As our editor Susan Reichert said back in issue #1, this is your magazine, and you are helping to make it what authors tell us is their favorite publication for wordsmiths.

As for the other May Day event on our minds: Tonight at midnight is the deadline for our Short Story Contest 2012!  So you still have time to get your 1000-word opus into us for a chance to win cash prizes, subscriptions, and an appearance in a special short story issue we’ll publish of the winning entries.  Details and guidelines are a click away.  Thank you for participating, and good luck!

Well, this has turned out to be one big shameless plug for the mag and the contest, but today it’s all we can think about here so I hope my enthusiasm has been at least a little contagious. In any event, we all learned a little French today. M’aider!