A Word or Two about (Shudder!) Research

I’ll be completely honest: Doing research is not one of my favorite pastimes. There are lots of things I’d rather be doing than pore over some dry and musty tome with almost as many pages of footnotes as of actual text But as a writer of history-based fiction it tends to come with the territory. Over the years I’ve learned to accept this as a “necessary evil” — and also to develop some less tedious ways of finding out what I need to know.

But first let me explain why it matters so much in the kind of writing I do (and to an extent in all works of fiction):

Picky, picky?

Louis L’Amour once said, “My readers ride horses, herd cattle, and shoot black powder weapons. I can’t afford to be wrong about such things.” This was brought home to me just a few months ago by an e-mail I received from a new reader about a novel I wrote a number of years earlier. I’d inadvertently made reference to raising an Arabian mare “from a colt.” Of course I should have said “filly,” and the reader was justifiably put off by my mistake.

“Picky, picky,” I hear someone say. But here’s the point: That reader, unless assuaged by my immediate and profuse e-mailed apology, will never pick up another of my books for as long as he lives! I’ve done the same kind of thing myself. A novel about early Gainesville, written by a close acquaintance, remains unfinished on my shelf to this day. Not only did he have his hero jump on a horse in 1870s Cedar Key and ride straight to Gainesville (clearly unaware that the town was then on Atsena Otie Island over a mile offshore), but he consistently reversed the meaning of “muzzle-loading” and “breech-loading” weapons throughout the novel! That drove me crazy!

I also (temporarily) laid Patrick Smith’s A Land Remembered aside because his characters went into a general store in the 1840s asking for “shotgun shells.”

Readers want to believe an author knows what he or she is writing about, and many of them are at least as intelligent and well-informed as the writer. If you don’t know your subject well enough to avoid obvious goofs, you’d darned better start learning!

Now how do you do this? Books are useful, and sometimes essential, in gleaning lesser-known items of information. So is the Internet, with the caveat that many sites (like Wikipedia) are full of misinformation. But there are other (and for me more enjoyable) ways of learning. Among those:

Go there and look the place over.

The setting of a story is key not only to establishing mood and atmosphere, but it’s also important for the limitations and possibilities it presents to the characters. And there’s no substitute for first-hand experience. I’ve spent many pleasant or interesting hours traveling down dusty (and muddy) roads in back country Florida.

Do it yourself.

f your characters use weapons, tools, etc., or perform tasks you’re not familiar with, take the time to get some hands-on experience. You might be surprised by all that’s involved – especially if your story takes place in a different time or location.

Cultivate a group of knowledgeable acquaintances.

Like many other people, I have friends who are doctors, accountants, Ham radio operators, etc. If I need to know something about their specialty, I simply ask. If my immediate circle doesn’t include the kind of expert I need, I seek one out — and, if possible, spends a little time with him or her. This might include tradespeople, scientists, business owners, etc., etc. I’ve also consulted native speakers to make sure my use of foreign phrases doesn’t sound like high school Spanish (or French, or whatever). I’m not shy about asking, and no other writeer should be either. .

Most people are flattered and happy to share their expertise.

If you must resort to written matter, seek out primary sources whenever possible.

There’s nothing like old letters and diaries for capturing the “flavor” of a period you’re writing about. It helps you to see the world through the eyes of those who actually lived in that time and place.

I’ve one final word of advice. If you’ve done your “homework” diligently, you’ll know far more about the background of your story than you’ll ever need to use. Be selective, and stick to the narrative. Just because you’ve gone to all that trouble doesn’t mean you have to inflict every iota of knowledge on your hapless reader. Moby Dick and Omoo aren’t likely to fly in today’s market (and Melville, after all, got paid by the word). It’s enough that you know, and have created a world that someone who was actually there might say, “Yes, it was like that.”