Researching a novel. Write what you want to know

If you wonder why no one comments after you detail the particulars of wood grain, or how tornadoes form, chances are you may also be in danger of inserting too much research into your novel. Maybe 1% of what you (think you) know should make it into the writing. (And is not a bad model for conversations either).

Too much minutiae can be as lethal as backstory, stopping a narrative dead in its tracks.

I write what I want to know

Whatever the subject, it will never sustain your reader’s interest if it doesn’t sustain yours. So I enter a strange world in which I know very little, but one that I am fascinated with. In some ways I am better off writing about what I want to know rather than writing what I know. I may have a better chance of making fresh observations, if I enter as an explorer without my own preconceived notions.

Lately I have heard many people refer to place as a character in its own right. Well, yes, but hopefully it is a minor character. Pages and pages about the wonky charms of Key West are just a big yawn to most readers regardless of how fascinating they may be to the writer. But some are almost essential to a story set here.

So here’s how I am approaching No Name Key:

First stop, the Internet

I always expect more than I find, have to scroll through reams of text before spotting the buried gem. I save these bits and pieces from disparate sources  in evernote. It’s free, friendly and versatile. Before I discovered this program, my bookmarks were crazy!

A cautionary note: If you are looking up names for your character or maybe a song that would be on in the background, do not use names or songs popular in the year your novel is set. This sounds obvious on the face of it but it’s surprising how many make this simple mistake. A woman who is thirty years old in 1935 would have a name that was chosen thirty years earlier. Also, unless your character was a hip, young, urbanite, they are probably not familiar with the latest song. These seep into the collective unconscious over time.

On to the library

Then to the library to plead with the heroic guardians of the past, the librarians. Usually they cannot do enough for you, happy that someone is interested in opening up those dusty files. Have you ever felt the thrill of being in a back room with a few unruly folders of newspaper clippings, bad photocopies of photos, court depositions? It is so exciting to watch this come alive.  So take the time and try not to rush through this experience. Even if you don’t get exactly what you think you need, immersing yourself in the world of your story will add to the atmospheric quality of the work. And something will shake out if you just hold the story loosely. Maybe something better than what you thought you wanted. Be open.

In my case I went to the unprepossessing Islamorada Library, pretty well ground zero for the hurricane of 1935.

And found these, handwritten first person accounts of the storm.

I like to keep a few printouts laying around, maybe one or two images on my wall. The librarians let me take photocopies of these incredible photos.

After my initial foray into research, I like to stay away, fearful of getting too wrapped up in information about the hurricane, the era, the depression. It can become so heavy that it makes me feel inadequate. What can I say about this that hasn’t been said before. Who the hell do I think I am??

Then I take a deep breath, put away the tomes, the photos, the yellowed and very important papers, facts and figures and imagine a woman, alone, desperate. I am not the chronicler of an era. I am however, the world expert on one thing. The soul of the woman I am writing about. I am her voice, the one ultimate authority.

People who do this very well

Megan Abbott is an author that chronicles era and place beautifully. She gets detail right. If it wasn’t there and she says it was, then it probably should have been.  I read her debut novel, Die a Little and felt every bit as ashamed about sex as they were back then. O the wonderful, illicit thrill of it all. She got every beauty mark, every drink menu correct in 1950’s Los Angeles and it added tremendously to my enjoyment.  I totally bought into the set of norms, expectations and accepted roles and sayings. Even better, I felt that she had a big giggle staging the whole show.

Thanks be to Megan and her ilk, I feel better and can stop asking Who am I to write about Florida, the 1930’s and the great hurricane that shaped much of this place?

I remember an interview with a woman who found herself writing about an 18th century shoemaker in Rome. Somehow the story had taken her there. She had a moment of what she thought of as clarity and it stopped her cold.  What did she know about the inner workings of this character? How much research would it take to make this man come alive? But she went back to her old friend, human nature.

And if you’re not interested in that, maybe you’re in the wrong line of work.

Next: Go to the place it happened.

Nothing like going to the actual place if you can. Walk around, smell it, have breakfast there. Every bar and diner has an expert who is happy to share the mythology of the place.

Read contemporaneous work.

This includes catalogs, newspapers, to get a feel for the times. I have a book entitled Charlottes Story  that  chronicles life on an isolated Florida Key in the mid 1930’s. Written by Charlotte Arpin Niedhauk, she details domestic minutiae that I have never been able to locate anywhere else.

Write a Scene

Stop it all and write the damn scene. I’m in a house in a storm. No electricity, I imagine the weak points in the house and hear the wind batter it. I want it to stop. I think of people I know and worry about how they are faring. A hurricane is a hurricane is a hurricane and this is not a history lesson. This is Elle’s story, the story of a woman who gets caught up in a section a small corner of a large event.  After reading many accounts of more recent storms, I realized that they all behave in similar fashion. Katrina, Camille, Andrew, all sounded like trains, all scared the hell out of people.

Read modern work about the era

See if you love that period. Probably the best advice I have gotten about writing a novel is that you have to love or be mesmerized with the character, era, place because you will be in it for a long, long time.

This week I wrote another 5000 words, which brings me close to the halfway mark at 34000 words.

My story isn’t about the detail. Detail brings it alive but the story is about what happens to my character. If I keep this in front of me at all times, detail becomes less important and actually more interesting, the fishnet stocking on a perfect leg.