If you booked to attend a three-hour workshop on researching historical fiction, either because you already do, or as someone wants to try it but needs encouraging, what would you want to hear?

I find I'm one of three authors running exactly that, and I'm having a major, major panic. I've got to put together at 25-30 minute talk, and I really don't know what to talk about, or how to make it coherent, let alone interesting/amusing/inspiring.

Anyone who can give me an idea of the kinds of things they'd like (or hate) to have discussed, or questions they'd like to ask, would be helping to lower my blood pressure considerably.

Emma

I think I'd like to hear about attitudes to researching the period, specifically, how to avoid it taking over the writing. Good historical novels give you a sense of place, of the time, of its pressures and issues, but bad ones can all too easily read like Lonely Planet's Guide To Regency England, full of pointless details about how buttons were made or something.

It's an interesting topic, becuase it's relevant to sci-fi, too - another genre I like. The question is very much how to reveal a different world to the reader, and I always thought one of the pros for this is William Gibson. His characters inhabit a very specific world, one full of different concepts and technologies to our own, and yet they use them in a very natural way. Importantly, they don't explain what they do or the slang they use, which makes his worlds feel natural and real - after all, I don't turn on my computer and think "I am turning on my PC so that I can connect to the internet, which is a huge global network of computers and very handy for researching and communicating with other people." Yet the temptation for novelists - historical, sci-fi alike - to place this kind of stiled explanation in the mouths of their characters is huge.

Perhaps stuff on speech, too? The pros and cons of attempting to reconstruct a historically realistic/accurate speaking voice versus one that makes sense to the reader. How to balance the two, perhaps - Anthony Burgess' Dead Man in Deptford is very good for this, but TBH, it's one of the few books where I've really felt convinced by a very consciously historical style of speech. Usually I prefer a balance between the clarity of modern speech and historical accuracy.

Does that help at all?

I'd want to know how much you need to show the period of time your setting the novel, in say, indicating what they wear, their forms of transport etc. As in films that's sets the scene etc, is it the same for prose etc?

Alexandra

Thanks very much, Sifter and Alexandra. That's really helpful. And thanks for reminding me about Dead Man in Deptford, Sifter; I'd been wondering how to talk about voice, and there aren't many which work as well as that.

Emma

I'd like someone to stress the importance of being confident in your writing. I don't know how you could do that but I'm sure it's even more important in historical fiction when you can't really know what times were like then. People like Beryl Bainbridge exhibit a huge self-confidence in their historical fiction. Also, Julian Barnes' Arthur and George was a great page-turner with research 'worn lightly'. Is it to do with just getting on with the story, which is, after all, the important bit, and filing in the research as and when you need it? You could answer that question well, Emma. Since I've always been defeated by the thought of research - which sounds too much like school/uni work for me, so how could I possibly enjoy it? - I've only ever written short stories in the main! If I were in your audience I'd ask you how could I get over that hurdle.

Emma, it’s all in the detail, don’t you think? What I’d like to know is how to find out when, for instance, household items came into common use. Tea-drinking, a fountain pen, tobacco – it’s easy enough to find out when such things started/were invented/introduced to this country, but how do we find out when they became commonplace?

Take tea as an example. It used to be a high value commodity – hence the beautiful caddies made to keep it under lock and key – so how do we find out when it became available to those on a lower income? Did it happen gradually or was there a sudden shift? (Of course I'm now wondering if I'm the only person in the world who doesn’t know this! )

Dee

Dee, yes I think it often is, and yes, the slight shock of seeing something we take for granted afresh is very powerful - like tea being super-expensive (which I knew but had forgotten, and is a perfect example, so thank you!). But judging how much to show is hard. It's all so delicious and fascinating for the writer (if it wasn't, why would we be writing hist. fic. at all?) that it's hard to resist the perennial temptation of hist fic writing, which is to Put It All In. On the other hand, as Alexandra says, put in too little, and people don't feel it's 'historical' at all, or see it right.

Emma

I think that for me would be the bit that scares me off writing anything in the past, in the future, I can make it what I want, but in the past I have to know about everything down to the tea as Dee says. It's the not being able to take anything for granted fear-factor for me!!

Sounds like it will be a great class.

Alexandra

Hi Emma, I think I would just like to hear about your own approach. How you go about it. Personally, I don't think there is a right or a wrong in these things. What's interesting is hearing how different authors approach similar challenges in completely different ways.

For me, wearing my historical crime hat, it's always a battle between the story and the background (or texture). Story is the driver. The thing that motivates my research is the need to provide the details that drive the story forward.

Then again, there is a huge area of research conducted that will never directly find its way into the book, but is done just so I have a greater feel for or understanding of the period/place. It gives me the confidence to write it. For example, I recently contacted a guy at the St Petersburg Historical Society with a question about sanitation. He came back with some interesting information, but I don't imagine that it will end up in the book. But I feel better knowing it!

I don't imagine that it will end up in the book. But I feel better knowing it!

I think that's true. Part of research is building your own sense of background, your own intuitive response to the atmosphere, which I'm sure does transmit through the prose, though I'm never sure how. And after all, you never know, it might crop up in a later book - most research is better after going through the sieve of time and memory, I think.

I suspect there is a right and a wrong, but no one knows which is which until they see it on the page. One problem is that some readers lap up all the minutiae, for them it's part of the pleasure, and others are incredibly intolerant of it and feel preached at if you so much mention that a woman fell over her long skirts.

Emma


<Added>

Was there any sanitation in St Petersburg? If dying of cholera was so common they could say Tchaikowsky died of it when he didn't - well, not from drinking a glass of infected water, anyway - presumably their drains left a good deal to be desired.

If I were to attend (wish I could!), I'd love to hear something about the actual research. Some practical tips, some encouragement, some personal experiences. Where to start? How to start? Of course, reading books is one thing (though sometimes finding the right books is the hard part, or finding the right paragraphs in the right books), but sometimes you've got to dig deeper -- and sometimes it feels a bit overwhelming, I'm sure, feeling as if you were an historian without an historian's credentials.

(I'd be especially keen to know how you go about asking for permission to dig into archives -- sometimes private archives -- without sounding hopelessly amateurish and/or negligible. For an unpublished novelist it's especially hard: you can't pull out your publishing credentials to prove that you're doing something worthwhile, and it will result in something. As it is, you're just being a nuisance and wasting everybody's time. Humph.)

Fredgonde, I must admit I haven't yet tangled with archives. I made a decision ages ago that I could use anything written in a history book as a fact, even if it was contradicted elsewhere, because I'm not a historian and don't have to be bound by their rules. Well, that's the theory: I still live in dread of being told I've got something really spectacularly wrong by mistake.

I know exactly what you mean about being a nuisance. Doing an MPhil made it much, much easier to say, 'I'm doing a postgraduate degree and can you help...' Plus in theory it meant I could have access to university libraries, though in practice I only really seem to use the London Library.

If I were to attend (wish I could!),

You don't fancy a trip to Brisbane, then?

Emma

Some random notes on researching historical fiction and what people might want to hear:

Some basics on research technique; some people are new to research.

Any differences in approach between researching a period – for the zeitgeist - and researching a particular theme, e.g. slavery in 18th C Brazil.

When do you know that you have done enough research?

Tricks for blending research into the narrative without the reader being aware.

Some amusing examples of info dump, i.e. how not to do it.

How much to assume about readers’ knowledge of a particular period?

A summary of the main sources that you used for one of your own novels and some anecdotes from your own experience. Perhaps you could use this to give structure to your talk and work in the other themes around this narrative?

Hope this helps.

Tony

Thanks, Tony, yes, that's really helpful.

Emma

Although I think it is impossible for me to be in Brisbane to see you, I've put it in my diary anyway. I would love to be there and attend your talk. Your advice is always generous and constructive. Any chance of you coming the Sydney Writer's Festival next year? I'll put it in my diary to write to the organisers about you and your new book. I'll copy you in on the email so you know I've kept my promise.

While you are in Australia, have a look for Kate Grenville's book "Searching for the Secret River". It is a writing memoir where she tells the story of how and why she wrote her novel "Secret River" which is historical fiction. It is excellent and gives one a real insight into the method she applied to write her novel. I know this will be too late to be of any use for your talk but it's an excellent read and would be useful for the future.

Currently I'm struggling with some heafty research related to a botanist, Allan Cunningham who died in 1839. I ate up every word of her book. She writes beautifully. It was so good I read it in a couple of days.

Having read many of your comments over the last six months, I know your talk at the Brisbane Writers Festival will be generous and of great value to your audience.

Enjoy Brisbane. Australia is just warming up after a short winter.

Here is the link for Kate Grenville's book "Searching for the Secret River" :
When you get to the page, do a search for Author, Grenville, at : http://www.textpublishing.com.au/

Regards,
Di2