Doing Research

My work in progress is a historical fiction piece, and I am currently moving from character development into research.

An excellent teacher and author of historical novels told me once: don’t do research until after 3pm.  This was a wise and helpful statement, underlining the (obvious) notion that one could get so lost in the history that she cannot get words written on the story.

It’s true that sometimes that happens, but with my five children I have found that my research must be crowded into certain days where I can leave home, settle into a library, and find out new tidbits about life.

That’s exactly what I did this week, and I did it before lunch.  I went down to the library, sat by the very river that flooded in 1874, and tried to imagine what the little town looked like so many years ago. This, as lovely as it was, wasn’t extraordinarily helpful.  Instead, gathering the books that map the town, the diary that outlines the experiences of a teenager, the video of a play in the church that was the temporary morgue – these things are more helpful for providing inspiration and images to my story.

While writing historical fiction, the accuracy of the details is key but the power of the narrative is the frame.  If I am to give my readers an experience to help them remember these people who perished, I must give them a mix of the two.  

So I go back and forth, flip-flop, writing poetry, taking notes, listening to the rhythms of the songs written in honor of the flood.  And sooner or later, I will have enough to share, to have answered those whispers that filter up through the dust:

“Tell my story.  Don’t let them forget.”