Tricky – in so
many ways. If you write you have to do some, even if you’re following the
well-worn adage, ‘write what you know.’ If you write fiction with any kind of
historical content, then you have to
do some.
What comes first?
The story, or the research?
In my case, it’s
the story.
Most of the time.
I write a very
basic, very rough first draft and
then research what I need to make it live - to make it feel authentic. I was asked
recently at a writers’ event how I made my writing feel of the period it’s set in. I couldn’t really reply. I suspect
the questioner wanted an easy solution, or a pat answer. Sadly, it involves a
lot of reading, a lot of leg-work and a lot of browsing on the internet.
There’s no short-cut. It helps, of course, if you have some prior knowledge and
an interest in the period in which the book is set. I believe you also have to love
that time in history. To use an over-used phrase, it must be a passion.
When writing While I Was Waiting, which is partly set
during World War 1, certain things resonated. A visit to a nearby stately home
set up an ‘experience room’ based around the time the three sons of the house
were fighting at the front. On the mantle-piece was a photograph. They were
posed in front of the house, sitting on their glossy horses, looking impossibly
glamorous and waiting for the hunt to begin. Horses and men both full of vigour
and energy. Four short years later all three brothers were dead, killed in
action, in service of their country. That photograph haunted me for a long time
and I included a similar experience in the book.
