Interestingly, it didn't start with that idea: I think it's been infected by the other half of the PhD, which is explicity about that. I haven't said as much to my editor - she's worried enough as it is about the baleful influence of academe on my fiction!

Emma

'I do find myself deliberately not trying to find things out, not just because it might take too long, but so that I'm not tied in by inconvenient facts.'

I think also, it's too easy to get bogged down in the research and then to use that an an excuse not to write the book. A couple of years ago, I wrote a short story about Poland during WWII. There's enough meat there for a novel and I did think I'd do the necessary work and travel and write it, but somewhere along the line, I lost the book to the 'facts'.

Maybe I'll think some more about the idea I had recently. Although it's been done, my treatment would be completely different. Thanks for the encouragement, Emma and to Dee for the original post.

What I'm doing at the moment's been done, but who cares? As I tell myself, no one's doing it the way I am!

I think you're right about the research. It can either be a genuine bogging down, where you're so paralysed by the effort to get everything you've found in (it's all so fascinating, after all, you want to tell people about it) and the seeming obligation to check everything out, even thoug even real historians have to decide what they're going to pursue, and what not. (Have just been reading Middlemarch, Mr Casaubon is a warning to us all!) The darlings I have most trouble murdering are usually really tasty historical stuff.

Or it's very virtuous-seeming and hard to spot kind of procrastination...

Emma

I'm most interested by the periods that get sandwiched *between* more momentous eras. Both the children's book I've got coming out in '09 and the adult fiction I'm currently developing are set in the 1930s - so, many of the characters are still living under the shadow of one war, while another looms on the horizon. I'm also a sucker for belle epoque/Edwardian stuff.

I might quibble with the suggesiton that the further back in history one goes, the harder it is to get inside characters' heads. Look at what Robert Graves did for the Romans, for instance. We still share an awful lot in common with the Victorians, who were very similar in many way to the Romans at the height of their empire - more, certainly, than with medieval man! Byzantine culture makes more "sense" to me than the world as Chaucer reveals it (to take one example)...I think it's mostly a matter of identifying the essence of an era (apologies for the dubious Ranke-ian terminology) in order to establish the empathy necessary to bringing it to life. The same might be said (??) for writing about different cultures...

Sarah Waters says she couldn't write anything set earlier than Victorian - couldn't get into their heads well enough.

One of the many ways in which I differ from Sarah Waters (the main other one being that she's got talent). I find the Victorian period particularly challenging because there's a sense of being so near and yet so far from our own society.

On the one hand, there's a huge leap from the 18th century, with the advent of railways, factories, anaesthetics, germ theory etc. On the other hand there are concepts such as humourous taxidermy and posed post-mortem photography, which to the modern mindset (mine anyway) are completely alien.

Although it's been done, my treatment would be completely different.

Just about everything’s been done already, Zoë, but that’s no reason you shouldn’t bring your own eye to it. Go for it.

Fascinating detail about the Great Fire – were you doing this in London? Could that have been a factor?

I think I’m leaning towards the civil war now. Partly because I want to explore the culture shifts and how many people really embraced the new ideals rather than paying lipservice to them. And partly because a lot of it happened here in the north. There’s a beautiful old house less than half an hour away where, legend has it, two roundhead soldiers were murdered by the royalist gamekeeper (or gardener – can’t remember exactly) and their bodies hidden beneath the floor of a great barn… mmm… I feel a story coming on.

Dee

Nope, not in London. The first time I did it was with an online group of 15 writers from all over the UK. Next time was in Oz, a group of 10, and two of them chose the Great Fire, which struck me as really weird. Since then I've done it both face to face and online with groups, and the Great Fire always seems to be resurrected. Very strange.

Very interesting subject, Dee.

Yes, of course research is fundamental when writing fictional history. Roger puts his finger on a very fundamental aspect - the enjoyment of the research and Caro's point about the need for everyday facts underlines this.

I love the short story form where there is always the need for research, but this need applies to all genres, periods and subject matter.

However, in the short story form one can overburden the reader with one fact after another which can get in the way of the story itself.

One skill in writing anything is to know which facts to use or embellish and which to leave out.

Len

Very true, Len. The real skill is to write with such authority the reader accepts the detail as fact. I hate it when the research shows.

On the other hand, there are successful writers who never let the truth get in the way of a good story, a practice which isn't new. Yesterday we went to Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, famed for its huge windows and collection of embroideries. It was built by one of the most powerful women in the Elizabethan era (so I'm now thinking that might be the most interesting period ). There is a bedroom there called the Mary, Queen of Scots Room where she is reputed to have stayed during her long imprisonment, and even a painting showing her being led down the great staircase to her execution. In truth, she died several years before the building of Hardwick began.

Dee

Good point Dee.

I used to have a history master who emphasised the point that the facts in history depend a great deal upon the style and opinions of the writer.

However I do so agree that some writers never let facts get in their way... I suspect we are all guilty of this at some time.

Len

There is a wonderful short story of Susanna Clarke's (publ. in The Ladies of Grace Adieu), called Antickes and Frets, where she weaves fact and fiction about Mary Queen of Scots and the Countess of Shrewsbury to great effect.

- NaomiM

Thanks Naomi, I’ll have to read that. The Shrewsbury’s did play host to MQOS at Chatsworth but she was never at Hardwick Hall. Apparently the myth was started in the eighteenth century to raise the profile of Hardwick and make it more exciting for visitors.

Dee

Sounds like political spin is nothing new, Dee
And lets not forget Edward I hyjacking the legend of the Arthurian round table, constructing the copy (currently on display in Winchester) that was subsequently repainted with Henry VIII's image.

- NaomiM