Grindstone

Getting Back to the Grindstone - Writing Other-whens.

As has been said, `The past is a foreign country', thus an essay on researching historical fiction has as much place on the Travelogue as any other, as the methods used can be applied equally to either case.

Having said that I am not going to give you instructions on how to do it, rather I will tell you how I do it because, like sex, there really is no right or wrong way to research and sooner or later you will discover what works for you.

My point of departure is always the plot. Occasionally it falls into my head complete, other times it's more of a feeling or an interest. Most often however it arises through something I've read or seen that sparks an interest. For example, the first story I wrote, Listening, came from researching the song Spike sang in Sleeper. Having spent several hours looking up `Early One Morning' on the Internet, I discovered that that version was `set' (written down) by Percy Grainger. So I looked up Grainger and that was when the plot was born. Grainger was rumored to have a less than healthy relationship with his mother, frequented S&M clubs and was fascinated by the blue-eyed English. In my mind this dictated that Spike and Grainger had to meet. Thus on to the research.

The first task was to look up the details of Grainger's life from several different sources. I'm not a rich person and living in the sticks means libraries can be tricky, so the Internet is my primary, often only, source of information. Luckily it's huge. Unluckily it's so huge that wading through the crap can be a time consuming business. When looking up specifics you learn to think laterally. You also learn to crosscheck hence the importance of locating several sources for specific information.

So - search engine, my tried and trusted friend alltheweb.com. Search terms "Percy Grainger" and biography. Over a thousand hits. At this point I try to download a couple of pages that give comprehensive information about my main players. There's not much point in reading everything then getting to a point in the story when you simply have to know how tall/what eye colour/ birth date, your protagonist has, only to have to read it all again. Make notes if you need to. It all depends on how good your memory is.

Now I have the plot, I have Percy and from his biography I know the time periods during which this story will be set. It will start in 1880 and have scenes from 1909 and 2003. And so the real research begins.

I am always hesitant to put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, until I have a `feel' for the time period/place I'm writing about. Personally I find maps help, as do photographs, novels published or about the period, newspaper articles, anything that can get me in the mood.

The next thing is an understanding of clothing and technology. Should your characters be reading by gas or candlelight? Would they own a carriage or servants? Were they wearing corsets then or not? Or underwear? What about fly buttoned trousers versus flap fronts? Should Spike be smoking ready rolled cigarettes? I have included a selection of links at the bottom of this essay to help you start looking, and the only advice I can give is, don't take anything for granted. Who would have thought that Vaseline was on the shelves by 1880? And yet tinned fish didn't arrive until much, much later. I certainly didn't until I looked it up and had to scrap `packed in like sardines' from the dialogue.

And speaking about speaking - language. Not an easy one when writing historical fiction. 'Okay' did not come in to common usage until the 1940's and many of my favorite Spikey-sults (i.e. wanker, nonce, git.) are also too modern for the Victorian era. Not that I'm averse to using them anyway, if I can argue that he would have come up with something equally cutting that either I'm not privy to or nobody but a Victorian would understand. For example calling someone a cad or a cur sounds dated but we can understand what is meant. On the other hand using the insults leg or macer means nothing to our modern ears (both actually mean cheat). The same things apply to phrases; many of the more popular ones are firmly rooted in the twentieth century. For example, blow job (1968) or the shit hitting the fan (1930s).

So we have plot, characters, a feel for the period and language. All that's left is to string them together and create some good, historically accurate, fun and sexy historical fiction. And that I leave to you.

http://www.victorianlondon.org/ - The Victorian Dictionary. Absolutely wonderful reference work. Don't leave home without it.

http://www.costumes.org/ - The Costumer's Manifesto. Huge amounts of information, more on women than men. Patterns, pictures, photographs, links.

http://www.victorianweb.org/ - The Victorian Web. More of a cultural/social focus. Excellent for context.

http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications/dictionary.htm - Charles Dickens Jr. Dictionary of London. Want to know where the buses ran, or where the closest policeman is likely to be? Look no further. An absolute goldmine of useless information.

http://www.tlucretius.net/Sophie/Castle/victorian_slang.html - Victorian Slang. This can be found all over the web in varying forms. Fun if used sparingly.

http://www.online-literature.com - Searchable classics.

http://www.backdrop.net/bdsm-history/timeline.html - A Complete Alternative Sexuality History Timeline. It does what it says on the tin - as they say. Fun and quite useful.

I would also recommend the following books.

Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. (This is huge and an excellent resource. If you can't find one I would suggest subscribing to one of the online dictionaries. What you are looking for specifically is etymology and the history of word usage.)

Roget's Thesaurus

New Words and Their Meanings.

Brewer's Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

Violators will be forced to ride in the trunk.

A FangedFour.com Production