 |
| Historical research: time-consuming but rewarding. |
This isn’t strictly true. What I actually decided to do was write about a set of characters whose story wasn’t set in the present day. Although I love reading historical fiction I’ve always consciously avoided writing it, because the necessary research seemed time-consuming, unwieldy and difficult. But one character, in particular, has niggled at me for a while. She’s a woman whose husband survived the First World War but might as well not have done. He’s physically healthy but the war broke him and he’ll spend the rest of his life in an asylum.
Where does this leave her? In her early twenties with a young child, she’s effectively a single mother. The ring on her wedding finger means her reputation is intact but she’s trapped in a limbo made for her by her own loyalty to her husband and society’s expectations. What if she wants more children? What if she wants to marry again?
This character was my starting point. Once she’d settled in my head there was no option but to write a historical novel, but the process is overwhelming. I’ve read extensively about the period so that gives me a good start. Much of the area in which she lived is relatively unchanged since the inter-war period and if you can close your eyes to anything post-1939 (there are historic maps which help) it’s easy to envisage the location.
I’ve read a lot of books about the social side of it and I’ve spent time reading old newspapers, which taught me that people don't change. Some men fell out in pubs, others were abusive to railway staff, and their counsels appealed for mercy on the grounds of their background. (“On the Saturday immediately previous he had been discharged from a Carlisle hospital where he had been for five months suffering from shell shock.”) Young women tried to kill themselves and left heartrending little notes. (“Please forgive me, Granny, for all that I have done. Everything is against me and there is nothing left to live for.”)
The big picture, then, is fine. People were pretty much the same as they are now. So I cracked on, only to fall down over the details, not of what my characters do or think or feel but of how they actually lived. So far I’ve completed 1000 words and the following questions have stumped me:
What was a first World War demob suit made from?
How much was a country bus fare in 1920?
How big did a village have to be before it had its own policeman?
It’s going to be a long process. Historical novelists….how do you do it?
I feel your pain, Jo. In fact, I think it is harder to write an historical where those who lived through it are still alive. Yet if you get those little things right, it adds so much more to the story than the more well known historical facts. Good luck!
ReplyDelete