Research-o-rama: Fictional world building in an historic context

To me, the essence of fiction is the magic that produces characters and settings that the author has never experienced personally.

Historical fiction must be one of the most challenging exercises in this arena; there are plenty of authorities, professional and amateur, on any era who will read your work with a critical eye. Yet many details – particularly linguistic idiom – are based on pure conjecture. The greatest trial is choosing a setting in an age just bordering on the modern, where sufficient records in story, surveys and simulacrum survive to set obstacles in the path of invention.

An age like, say… the Regency era (1795 and 1837).
Which is when I want to write one of my stories.

In fantasy, you can define your own rules and paint a unique portrait of a world that has never existed. Contemporary fiction allows for research and observation that can inform your text. But historical writing is a difficult fusion of established rules, regimes and records and a total lack of ability to put yourself into the space as it was then.

Some authors skirt the pitfalls of period detail by glossing lightly over the why’s and wherefore’s, adding a sprinkling of authenticity by dropping a popular name (Byron, Brummel) or well-known location from the period (Almack’s, White’s), and building characters that are transported from the current day and given a coat of paint that presents them in petticoats or redcoats, as needed.

A popular way to “research” if you’re not really into reading historical texts about the 18th century and Napoleonic war is to just crib notes from Austen, who published P&P in 1813, and Georgette Heyer, who wrote a slew of excellent Regency romances, and whose passion for including “minutiae of dress and decor” invests her novels with the “tone of the time” – so said feminist critic Lillian Robinson.

Other writers treat research differently. The best example I can think of for a gung-ho historical researcher is Diana Gabaldon, whose Outlander Series has sold about a gazillion copies, and who researches her time period as only a computer-database nerd with a B.Sc. in Zoology, a M.S. in Marine Biology and a Ph.D. in Ecology can do. This woman lives in libraries. I imagine that after researching for her dissertations on hermit crabs and pinyon jays, reading up on Scotland in the 1700s was a blast.

I am trying to find a happy medium between detail-oblivious and detail-obsessed.

When I came home from the library on my first day of reading up on Brown Bess muskets, dueling pistols, and the evolution of technology in war from 1800-1850, DC was concerned that my “light Regency romance” might evolve into a thousand-page behemoth, more closely resembling a volume from a Neal Stephenson cycle than a Heyer romp. Well, I can think of worse things to have my work compared to, but I doubt I have the stamina to expand my story to Mr. Stephenson’s prodigious lengths.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to gather my little nuts of intelligence, including these puzzling little enquiries:

1. What are the standard tools and equipment used in a stable or horse stall in 1790?
2. What is the difference between straw and hay?
3. What was the state of plumbing in 1800? How did the upper class fill their bathtubs?
4. Were nicknames common in the Regency era? Would a teenager call a boy named Jeremy “Jezzer”?
5. What was the average age of boys when they were sent to Eton, then Oxford, or off to a regiment, vicarage, etc?
6. Were towels used in 1790? By whom? What were they made of? If not towels, how did people dry themselves?

If you should happen to know the answer to one or several of these questions offhand, feel free to save me time and agony and post a response. In the meantime I’ll probe the Internet and plunder my local libraries. Research ahoy!

Where to Begin: Opening lines in novels

Starting a novel is a nerve-wracking endeavor.
In a few lines, you must:

• set the tone for the whole book,
• capture the interest of your prospective audience,
• impress them enough to buy your work, and
• avoid millions of cliches (“It was a dark and stormy night…”)

Around 1995, I remember Penguin Books ran a contest, giving away an entire library of Classics to the person who correctly identified 50 opening lines taken from selected novels under their imprint.

The contest was challenging as it required people to go to the library or bookstores, since e-books at that time were limited to Gutenberg.org, which had less than 1000 public domain works available online before 1997 – ’95 was not exactly “pre-Internet”, but early days to be sure.

Luckily, I was working at a bookstore at the time, so I slaved away during breaks, scribbling authors and titles on my entry form, trying to decipher which words belonged to whom. For an English nerd, it was a fun game, exposing me to tidbits of great literature, and showing me how Melville, Joyce, Woolf and Flaubert kicked off their stories.

With the proliferation of e-books, Kindles, Kobos and Nooks in the last few years, text is easier to find online, and many authors have websites that give readers first-chapter excerpts. So, I rounded up the opening lines from a wide sampling of popular romance writers, and created a miniature contest of my own. Here is the result: a short, silly quiz.

CAVEAT: I know many of you don’t read romance. It doesn’t matter – take the quiz anyhow. It’s very fast, just ten questions, and I promise you’ll get a laugh out of some quotes and most titles; and yes, they’re all real, I didn’t invent anything. Wait ’till you get to the rutabagas. No cheating please!

Romance Novel “Opening Lines” Pop Quiz: if you get all 10 right, I will buy you a timbit.