Research, research
I'm currently working on a multigenerational story of family secrets, which I knew from the beginning would present numerous challenges. There are always facts to confirm, little things like names of the local schools or pertinent local history (i.e., you can't write about Boston in the early 1970s without mentioning the busing crisis). It's tricky to write about a timeframe when you either weren't born yet or were too young to have memories.
Case in point: I read a book a few years back that was loaded with errors, references to songs before they were recorded, stating how the characters "finally" got a color television (in the late 1950s, when these were very rare), etc. Since this book was published by a mainstream publisher, a good line editor should have caught these errors, but that's a column for another day.
An ambitious project like this is going to require plenty of research, and even seemingly simple things have to be questioned. When mentioning what is today known as the Kenosha Chrysler plant, it occurred to me that maybe this was known by another name in 1952. I checked, and sure enough, at that time it was the American Motors Corporation.
Just a few pages later I was writing a scene at a graduation party when I suddenly realized that I haven't the faintest idea what music was popular in 1952. I do know that this pre-dates the rock-and-roll era, which began around 1954. Since this scene is set on the South Side of Chicago, I figured blues would have been the "in" thing. A little digging and I found that one of my favorites, Big Mama Thornton's version of Hound Dog, was out in the early 1950s. Then more digging found that Big Mama didn't record this song until the spring of 1953, over a year after the party scene in my story, so I skipped it in favor of a hit by Ruth Brown and another one by someone I never heard of that apparently topped the Billboard R&B charts that spring.
I kind of hope that my next reference is to a movie. I can come up with a movie title from just about any year without having to look it up! But something tells me I'm going to be doing a whole lot of research...
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4 comments:
I applaud your effort to research your work. It's easy not to, and if information is location-specific, like that Chrysler plant, the vast majority of readers may never know if you get it wrong. Perhaps this is why some authors forgo or lightly address the research.
You might have something there, Patricia. One of my projects is set in Bismarck, ND, where I've never been, and I'm tempted to just write it the way I want without checking facts. But I know that it's very, very easy to let your standards slip...not so easy to pick them up again, so I guess I'll keep checking!
I really hate research. Well, that's not true, I hate when I get something wrong in my writing and have to do it again because I didn't research it fully the first time. That's the problem I'm running into now, not researching enough in the beginning. So keep at it, and you will get all your facts straight in the end.
I guess it boils down to each individual writer's method, Katrina. I tend to write a completed book the first time out that needs polishing, but most of my facts are checked. Other writers can write much faster, but their final manuscript needs more done to it. I hate writing so slowly, but I guess we writers are never completely satisfied, are we?
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