I’m a bit of a research geek. I love learning new things. Facts. Theories. I don’t get it when a writer complains about all the research that has to be done.
But I’ve found that researching the stuff I don’t know is easier than researching what I do know. Because it turns out that many things I know are simply wrong.
For a story about 17th century Ireland, I huddled over maps, read the histories of the region, the politics of the time. I based the specific locale on a town and place I’d actually visited and on a castle in which I’d spent a couple of nights. A pretty good grounding. On my side as well, if I got a few details wrong probably only a handful of people in the entire world would know. Piece of cake!
Contrast that with something I might write about the 1960s or 70s in rural Florida. Something conjured from my own memory, having been a kid and teen during those respective decades. Write what you know! Piece of cake, once again.
The problem is that memory is a tenuous thing, especially going that far back. I wrote a short story titled “Double Effect” a few years ago. I set it in the summer of 1968, on board a fishing boat near my fictional Florida town of Brigands Key. I grew up in a small Florida town. Spent plenty of time on boats. I would have been eleven years old in ‘68, so I could lean on personal memories and experiences. The rock and roll. The TV. The long lazy days of heat and humidity.
But could I rely on experience? How accurately do I know my own details?
The two young guys in the story work a beat-up commercial fishing boat and search for the wreck of a Confederate blockade runner—and its treasure–in their off hours. When they at last hit the big score, the Tommy James and the Shondells song “Mony Mony” is playing on the radio. A quick Internet search shows that the song was released in May of 1968. Shot up the charts. I originally used a different song, but it hadn’t even been released yet.
What slang would they toss about? “Groovy?” That checks out; the term had been around long before 1968. But maybe not so much in fishing villages. I dropped “groovy.”
The guys celebrate with cans of beer, so I checked when pop-tops actually became a thing (even though I didn’t write specifically that they were pop-tops, that’s what I saw in my mind). Turns out they were indeed in widespread use in 1968, but only by a very few years.
So many things to consider. What about brand names? Bestsellers like Stephen King and Gillian Flynn incorporate them liberally to plow an every-day common ground with the reader. It’s easy for the here-and-now, but not so much for the there-and-then. What tennis shoes would my guys wear in 1968? What baseball caps? Is one of them a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers? Yikes. The Seattle Pilots didn’t move to Milwaukee and rename themselves the Brewers until 1970.
You get the idea. Memory is fallible. Belief is fallible. My own recollections of a time and place I knew intimately are fallible. Research to confirm or refute what I know, or think I know, becomes imperative. Get a detail wrong and someone out there will notice and tweet to the world that I have no idea what I’m writing about.
So research the small stuff, the mundane. Don’t look at it as a chore. Look at it as an illumination of your own memories and thoughts, and therefore a celebration of them.
Karen Cooper
I write history and am challenged to comprehend the past all of the time. My first almost snafu occurred long ago when I came across ordnances having been pulled out by settlers in Hartford to scare the Dutch away from passing up the river. I just wanted to assume they’d misspelled ordinances and wondered why the Dutch would have been frightened away by a few sheets of paper (or parchment) in those early days. Luckily a friend let me know that ordnances were cannons. Writing history is like a minefield sometimes. So many things are easily misconstrued. But, I also love the research, and can easily forget every other chore in life that should be done.
Ken Pelham
Minefields! That’s a good way to put it, Karen. A quick bit of research–again, the geek in me–reveals that “ordnance” and “ordinance” share the same etymological DNA, although the modern meanings are not even close. Ordnance is still used in modern military lingo, but refers to stores of munitions rather than artillery.
Thanks!
Niki Kantzios
Is this ever true! My cousin and I disagree all the time over what song was playing the year we graduated, etc. Memory gets blurred, even in the very short term, and research never goes out of style.
Ken Pelham
Niki, you understand my point exactly! Memory is arranged in blocks of time for most of us rather than by specific dates. I have a pretty good idea of what songs were popular in my life roughly by year, but “roughly” can mean two or three years.
Thanks!
Bonnie Bell Sauve
Hi Ken Pelham, I graduated from Pelham Memorial High School in Pelham, New York. Remember the book and movie, “The Taking of Pelham 123.” Your last name conjures up so many memories of my teen years. And speaking of Groovy, Felix Cavaliere was one year younger than I, but he wrote the song, “Groovin on a Sunday Afternoon,” in 1967. Felix had the group called the Young Rascals and appeared quite often on Ed Sullivan. I had an open house party in Pelham Manor one Saturday night in 1959 and Felix was there. He had always wanted to play the organ and seized the opportunity that night at the party to play my Mom’s organ and he loved it! When he went on to become famous, he always played the organ instead of the piano. I like to think that playing my Mom’s organ that night influenced Felix to play that instrument instead of the piano. Felix is still playing for his loyal fans and has a following all over the country. Check it out, Ken Pelham.
P.S. Yesterday was Felix’s birthday. He was born November 29, 1942.
Ken Pelham
Bonnie, thanks for that drive back into memory and recent history! That’s exactly what I was writing about. I well remember the Young Rascals from the days of my youth. Always loved them. “Good Lovin'” remains an all-time classic.
I don’t really have a direct connection to Pelham, NY, but I’m sure there must be a genealogical tie somewhere. Near as I can tell, the name originates from a place name near London, and some Pelhams appeared in North Carolina. My tribe went south and I think another faction went north.