Guest Blogger: Naomi Rawlings & Give Away!
Thanks, Angie, for inviting me back to the Writers Alley today, and thanks to you other Alley Cats for having me. My debut novel, Sanctuary for a Lady released on April 1, 2012, and is set during the French Revolution.
Most
novelists and aspiring novelists know that unless you set a book in
your hometown or state, you probably won’t be taking a trip to
research your novel’s setting. That’s doubly true for me, the
mother of two young boys and the wife of a pastor, who hasn’t the
time nor the funds to take off to Europe on a research trip for a
story that may or may not ever see publication. In the case of
Sanctuary
for a Lady,
the novel did get published. But I had no idea that would be the
result when I started writing the book in the summer of 2010.
So
then the question arises, how can you accurately portray a country or
time or place you’ve never visited?
Well,
you’ve really only one option: Research.
I
cringe as I type the word “research,” because research is and
probably always will be my least favorite part of writing. But here’s
a few pointers, per Angie’s request.
1.
Study the mindset of the time and place you’re writing about.
With
all the information so readily available on the internet and through
inter-library loan books, one can easily loose himself or herself in
studies on vegetation, climate and the like. Would you believe I
spent very little time studying the climate and vegetation of
Abbeville, France? At most I put two hours into it, and no one who’s
read Sanctuary
for a Lady
has come back and said, “But you didn’t describe the trees very
well. I really needed to know whether those thick trees your heroine
hid behind were maple or oak.”
Studying
mindset, on the other hand, allows you to know how your characters
think, which in turn leads to deeper and more realistic characters.
If you can make your characters think like a Kansas farmer from the
1880s or a Wisconsin logger from the 1890s or a ship captain from the
1810s, your characters will come alive. They will have their own
opinions and views of things relevant to their lives. You will be
able to naturally incorporate details and events from the time period
without digressing into long paragraphs of explanation and boring
your readers.
There
are two ways to study mindset. One is to dive into original sources,
which is the most accurate and best way to get a feel for a time
period. Journals, diaries, classics written during the time period in
which your novel’s set, can all help. Google Books is a great
source for this. You can used the “advanced search” feature to
find books published between certain years, limiting your search to
things published around the time your novel is set.
The
second way to study mindset is by using a broad overview approach.
Find current research and sources that give you an overview of the
era your studying. For example, I might have two or three books on
the French Revolution. Even though I only needed to know about early
1794 for Sanctuary
for a Lady,
understanding the events that led up to 1794 France was crucial. Then
maybe I would have a book on peasant clothing during that period.
And a book about French Revolutionary soldiers, and a book about
local governments of the French Revolution, and maybe even a book
about the Reign of Terror. As I glance through this stack of books,
I’ll look for individual examples and scenarios that will help
explain how the people living in that time period would have thought,
and provide glimpses into everyday life.
This
is the method I tend to favor, and it’s actually the weaker of the
two. But given my hatred for research, I count myself lucky to endure
even this much studying. I actually think writers’ research methods
go back to the type of learners they are. I’m a global learner. I
need to have a broad picture and be able to see the end of the road
before I start my journey. So I find current research books, even
research books with just a chapter or two overview on my time period
very helpful. Then I’ll dive into a few original sources simply to
ease my conscience.
2.
Have your setting affect your characters.
For
Sanctuary
for a Lady,
instead of going into long, boring details about how the revolution
was affecting France, I created characters that represented different
factions of the revolution. My heroine, Isabelle de La Rouchecauld,
is a royalist. My hero, Michel Belanger, is a federalist (the side I
would have chosen, had I lived through the French Revolution). And my
villain is a radical.
By
using characters with opposing mindsets, these personalities clashed
naturally as the book unfolded (which also provided an extra source
of tension). Plus I was able to give readers a good flavor of the
French Revolution. So my setting and the mindsets from that era
actively affected both who the characters were and their interactions
with each other.
For
further study, Donald Maass has a really great section on this in his
book, Writing
the Breakout Novel.
He uses an example of an author doing this with the Civil War and
creating a cast of characters on both sides of that conflict.
3.
Focus on the aspects of setting that affect conflict and your story
line.
Doing
this not only keeps both tension and setting at the forefront of your
novel, but it also allows you to decide what historical details are
worth keeping and which are worth skipping over. If you find yourself
writing a story about a dressmaker in New York City or Boston, then
fashion will be an integral part of your story. For someone writing a
story about peasants in northern France during a war, fashion was the
last thing on my mind. (And it’s a good thing, too, as it’s
rather difficult to find information on what peasants wore in the
middle of a war. Information abounds on what the upper class wore,
but I’ve found virtually nothing about peasants.)
One
way I did this in Sanctuary
for a Lady,
was with wood. You’ll find specific woods mentioned. Not the kind
that describe the forest, but specific woods used for FURNITURE
MAKING. You see, my hero wants to be a furniture maker and is always
working on one project or another. This furniture making is a source
of conflict, because at the beginning of the French Revolution, local
and national governments used guilds to regulate how many people
could work a particular trade. So my hero, though he’s an excellent
furniture maker, isn’t allowed to actually sell anything he makes.
And tada! There you have the setting affecting the conflict in an
active, non-boring way. Furthermore, when my hero and heroine fight
and get mad at each other, guess where my hero goes to work off his
steam? That’s right, his workshop. So now I’ve got the romantic
thread in my story also affecting the setting and vice versa.
If
you have any further questions, I’d love for you to ask them. I
should be around for most of the day, and I’ll try to answer you as
best as I can.
Would you like a free copy of Sanctuary for a Lady? Let us know in the comments section and we'll enter you in the drawing!
