The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [159]
Now, I certainly didn’t go looking for a hangman, but having met Monsieur Forez, I was thoroughly charmed. I was also determined to get the hanged-men’s grease into the story in some fashion. So I got what I’d been looking for—a general picture of French medical practice, plus interesting medical details—and something totally unexpected, besides.
Since I did now have this entertaining hangman, I was obliged to construct a place for him in the story. I could just have used him as part of the background personnel at the Hôpital, and in fact I did this to begin with. I didn’t want to waste the hanged-men’s grease in an offhanded way, though; I needed an occasion for its use—someone should be injured or suffer from rheumatism. I had already intended to use the stables at Argentan in some way (another accidental detail; my father-in-law, Max Watkins, a cowboy with a passion for horses, had visited Argentan and told me all about the Percherons and their history), so the notion of some accident involving horses arose—and thence the scene with Fergus and the stable-lads, in which Jamie rescues Fergus, straining a muscle in the process.
Having written the scene in which Claire applies the ointment to Jamie, and in which he makes a nervous joke about having come too close to being one of the ingredients, I began to think (well, actually, I think pretty much all the time when I’m writing, but it helps to have some specific direction).
Hangmen, being hanged, a traitor’s death—which is precisely what Jamie was risking by his actions. Enter Monsieur Forez again, for the purpose of pointing out—to Jamie, Claire, and to the reader— that while politics might be played as a game, it was nonetheless one with possibly fatal consequences. (As to Monsieur Forez’s scholarly lecture on the details of evisceration—well, I had one postdoctoral appointment in which my main job was butchering seabirds. People always ask me whether my previous education and experience as a scientist is useful to me in writing these books. Not often, but it comes in handy every now and then.)
In terms of the overall book, I thought that Monsieur Forez captured nicely the balance between the farcical aspects of the Rising (which were many), and the deadly serious outcome. He’s a minor note in the book, but an important one. And yet, I couldn’t have gone looking for him—I didn’t know he existed.
The reason I don’t take notes on the research I do is that as the story takes shape in my mind, bits and pieces of research material are incorporated into it. Sometimes a piece of research material will trigger a specific scene, or even a subplot; sometimes a particular scene will demand a specific piece of information, which I then go and find. In either case, though, the research information becomes part of the story; and from that point on, it’s in my head; I can’t forget it. On the other hand, I instantly forget anything that’s written down: phone messages, grocery lists, errands…
As for the things that I need to know… well, some of these simply have to be looked up before a given scene can be written. Most small bits of incidental information, though, aren’t really necessary to the shape of a scene or its events. In these cases, when I come to a spot where I need—for instance—to list the herbs that Claire is using for a specific purpose, or the name of a street in Edinburgh, or the height of a mountain—I just put a pair of empty square brackets—“[]”— in the text where that information should go. That way, I can continue writing without breaking my stride, and go look up the necessary bits of information later on.
“I took down my mortar and rubbed a handful off] into it. Adding [] and [], I pounded and ground while thinking what to do next.”
The next-to-last thing I do to a book before