If I were writing historical novels, I would probably do a lot of research before I even committed to writing each book. My novels are written without an ourline or any idea how they will end up. This means I do the research for each scene when I get to it. While the novel in progress is set in 1955, the fact that I was an elementary school kid in that year doesn’t mean I know a lot about the time period.
So, it’s time to Google everything.
The last scene took place at a grocery store. Okay, when somebody entered the store, what kinds of posters, die-cut signs, and hand-written specials did they see on the window sill or window? I found a great Noxzema suburn cream sign, a nice Planters Peanuts poster, and a list of the meat prices per pound.- The current scene takes place in the backyard of some well-to-do people. While we had cheap pre-Weber metal barbecue, the fru fru people often had barbecue grills made of brick, 44 inches wide are larger.
What are they having to eat? I knew part of this already, but did a bit of online checking. The menu: porterhouse steak, corn, collards with ham hocks, baked potatoes, corn bread, and macaroni salad. The men are drinking either Jax Beer or Old Overholt Rye whiskey. I would enjoy all of this except for the Rye which I never liked.- The family wanted music. So, after verifying that long playing records were, in fact, available in 1955 AND that RCA
had a three-in-one (78, 45, and 33 and 1/3 rpm) record player, I needed to make sure they had something to listen to. Since the men in the family are KKK members, they won’t be listening to jazz, blues, or gospel. Glenn Miller seemed like a safe choice. - Now, if I can, I’d like to find out how long each of the tracks is so I can time the action with which song would be playing at five minutes into the dinner and ten minutes into the dinner, etc. (I did this once before when I timed the cuts on a Scott Joplin CD with a ride between Tallahassee and St. Marks, Florida. Probably nobody checks these things, but I wanted to know what song would be playing as Emily and her father (in Widely Scattered Ghosts) reached various landmarks along the way. Heck, I even check the weather reports for the dates and cities where my novels are set to make the weather in the novel the same as it was in “real life.”
Okay, I only have one more thing to check. What happens if somebody gets shot in the arm with a target arrow? There’s so little history taught in med school, that doctors can’t tell me what they would have done in 1955. I was e-mailing back and forth with a medical museum curator who admitted that doctors seem to believe that their speciality “rose like a Phoenix out of the ashes of ignorance” just before they got out of medical school. So, on treatment, I need to skirt around the specifics I don’t know. I’m not happy about that, but as Vonnegut always said, “so it goes.”
Malcolm's Round Table 
Is it shameful to confess that, even for historical writing (and I count the Eighties as historical for my purposes, let alone 1955, which is certainly vintage – nay, nearly antique!) I rely on what I’ve absorbed over the years and ‘the most likely scenario’ for most of it, only researching when I’ve got the first draft down. Then I’m looking for anachronisms, events to support plotting, attitudes – that sort of thing. I am always astonished how much I have guessed right! [preens]
Although, I did spend a year immersed in books about Genghis Khan, Chinese dynasties, Mongolia, the Gobi desert and Bhutan for the book I am *still* writing about the Khan.
So glad you’re writing again! 🙂
I like the synchronicity of writing and research. Research uncovers great ideas for punching up the story. Writing points toward research that I need to do or that I guessed right about. I consider everything that happened before I was born (if anything) to be history. Anything that happened years ago but after I was born is vintage.
Nice to be writing again. Thanks.