Rule#7: Anticipate a Long Process.
Historical
novels usually take several years to write, as they require
research at every
turn. You won't always be able to anticipate what you'll
need to know for a
scene, and will constantly have to be returning to your
references. This is
entirely different from writing contemporary fiction. Take, for example, in my part of the world, a trip from
Austin, Texas to the
nearby town of San Marcos. If you are going to write a
present-day scene in
which your character makes this trip, you will simply
need to put him into a
vehicle -- a pickup, or a Volvo -- and head him south
for forty minutes on
the flat terrain of interstate 35, passing strip malls
and fields and the
town of Buda. He will then take the exit marked
"Wonder World", named for a
local cave and visitor's center, and
arrive in San Marcos. The only research
needed to write this scene will be to
drive the route yourself. But if your character takes this journey in 1906,
you will have to learn a
few things before starting him out, and learn more
things along the way.
First of all, you need to know where the road is, and
what's on either side
of it, and what kind of conveyance your character is
driving. If it's a
flatbed wagon, what's pulling it -- a horse, a half-lame
mule, two mules?
How often do mules need water? How much traffic will there
be? Any cars?
What kind of food or luggage do you have along? And what if a
wheel breaks,
and you have to fix it, and you cut yourself with a rusty tool
-- how do you
disinfect the cut? Do you even know about disinfection? When did
people
figure out where tetanus came from? And -- assuming that you eventually
make
it to San Marcos, what's in San Marcos, anyway? As for the Wonder World
exit -- when was the cave called "Wonder Cave" actually discovered? But here is where the magic comes in: you begin to
think, "Wow. The
discovery of Wonder Cave. Now that would make a scene .
. ." And then
suddenly you have a story, and a book to write. The only
problem, of course,
is that you will soon find out that Wonder Cave was
discovered in 1898
instead of 1906, so you will have to move your story back
eight years and
find out what sort of vehicles they drove in 1898 and along
what road, and
the rest of it, or else joggle the facts and sacrifice
credibility in the
name of literary license. Or ditch Wonder Cave. Writing historical fiction is like
trying to get to San Marcos when you have
no car, you don't know where the
road is, and you have never in your life
harnessed a half-lame mule to a
flatbed wagon. Assume it is going to be a while before you arrive.
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