The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [152]
RESEARCHING HISTORICAL FICTION: HOT DOGS AND BEANS
ethods of doing research for a novel are as idiosyncratic as are the methods of writing one. That is, there are general principles that are helpful, and basic skills that apply, but exactly how one goes about the process depends on the style and preference of the individual writer.
There’s no question that historical novels take lots of research. When I give talks on historical fiction, or the use of details in writing fiction, I usually take along a set of books to use as props: 1) a mystery by Agatha Christie, 2) a contemporary suspense thriller by Martin Cruz Smith, set in the Soviet Union; 3) a contemporary mystery by Elizabeth George, set in England; and 4) a historical novel by Gary Jennings, James Clavell, Colleen McCullough, or one of my own books.
I then display these books one by one and ask the audience whether they notice anything. Since the books are increasing in thickness by roughly one-half inch with each volume, they generally do—and laugh.
Okay. The first type of book—the Agatha Christie—is basically all plot. Setting is familiar, characters are stereotypical, and both are sketchy. Very little descriptive detail is included in an Agatha Christie mystery, because you don’t need to describe an English village, a vicar, or a train—everyone’s seen them often enough (at least in the movies) that you can get away with a bare minimum, and concentrate on the plot.
The thriller set in the Soviet Union is thicker, not only because the plot is more complicated and the characters drawn in more detail, but because the setting is unusual—the average reader has no idea what the streets smell like in Moscow, or what a black-market trading ground looks like, or what a Zil is. Since the setting and social background (also unfamiliar) are necessary elements of the story, a good bit of detail is necessary, in order for the story both to live and to make intuitive sense to the reader.
Elizabeth George books are about the same size as the Russian mysteries; not so much because of an unfamiliar setting— English country and cityscapes are not really offbeat—but because these books are essentially a combination of plot and relationships. There has to be a great deal of detail in the description of character and in the interactions between them, be cause the relationships among the characters and the development of their personal lives are as important as the overt “mystery” plot.
And then you hit historical novels; sub-genre BF “Big Fat”). These books tend to be huge, not only because they normally cover a substantial span of time and event (i.e., they have a lot of plot and a large number of characters), but because virtually everything in them will be unfamiliar to the average reader, and has to be “drawn”—setting, physical description of city, countryside, homes, details of daily life, social customs, and—most important—the characters. Historical characters are not the same as contemporary characters; they will have unusual (and sometimes incomprehensible, unless the author has been skillful) attitudes and relationships, and these too must be detailed carefully, so the reader will understand what’s going on.
Aside from the necessity of crafting a convincing historical milieu for the sake of the novel itself, many readers of historical novels are fascinated by historical trivia, and read such books in good part for the tidbits of information and insights they may gain into another time.
So it’s legitimate—and desirable—to include detail for the purpose of drawing an unfamiliar milieu, and for the entertainment of the reader. How one includes masses of detail without bogging the reader down in wads of stuff that sound like you cribbed it from the Encyclopaedia Britannica is a good question of technique, but the first problem is simply to find the stuff.
I mentioned Basic Skills and General Principles in doing research. Basic Skills include: one, knowing how to use a library, and two, how to skim a book for information. General Principles include: one, getting an