by Lynne | Jul 25, 2016 | Writing, Writing Tips
Writers understand that the space in which they create stories is vitally important. While some writers, I suppose, can do their work in a closet, I, personally, need a window to the natural world.
Cityscapes and high rises evoke creativity as well: gritty crime novels, hard-boiled detective stories, or futuristic Metropolis-like science fiction. But to me, there’s something uniquely inventive and inspiring about nature.
So when I moved (back) to a small town in Vermont from a big city in California, my writing world changed. I now look out on a green landscape, okay, brown and white in the winter, with the sounds of birds as the primary auditory backdrop. An occasional deer, moose, and, to my surprise, bear will be sighted in the distance.
I’m not a stranger to this environment. I taught in Vermont after my college days. It’s been many years since I’ve lived here yet it seems like yesterday. Some things are meant to be.
Robert Frost lived in Vermont. He became the official poet laureate of the Green Mountain State and wrote much of his verse in a log cabin in central Vermont. The State of Vermont has recognized him with a Robert Frost Wayside picnic area and a Robert Frost Interpretive Trail, (along which selections of his poems are posted.) There’s also a Robert Frost Memorial Drive, and, the Bread Loaf School of English that Frost cofounded, as well as the farm where he lived. (He actually owned five farms in Vermont.)
Rudyard Kipling, the English writer, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, moved here in 1892 and wrote The Jungle Book and other short stories. In fact, he lived less than a mile from where I now live.
Mystery writer, Archer Mayor, lives here and his mysteries do, indeed, take place in Vermont.
So, you ask, will my mysteries now center on tracking scat in the Vermont woods? Nah. I will continue to write historical mysteries and solve them with modern technology. Unless I can discover a true mystery in Vermont.
And there are some. Take the man who vanished in 1949 while on a bus trip to Bennington; or five people who went missing between 1945 and 1950, in the “Bennington Triangle” (really?) an area near Glastonbury Mountain; or a human skill found on the side of the road in Danby in 2012; or the disappearance of a Bennington college student in 1971 (there’s that Triangle again.) Then, of course, there’s Champ, Lake Champlain’s own Loch Ness monster. Over 600 people have claimed to see him. Jeez Louise, why not me?
I never expected this window in my office to give me plots or characters or even backdrops for my books. The beauty of my new landscape simply gives my imagination and inventiveness free reign to go where they will. Isn’t that what fiction writing is about?
by Lynne | Jul 18, 2016 | Genre Writing, Writing
Time Exposure is a mystery that takes place during the Civil War. I wanted readers to abandon the present and immerse themselves in those brutal, tumultuous years of the mid-nineteenth century. Scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Well, I wasn’t there, so how could I paint a picture of that time period, accurately, vividly, and with painstaking detail?
Research, of course, but research using primary sources whenever possible. What does that mean? There are many books written about the Civil War. About the battles, about the people, about the politics — the operative word being “about.” These sources are written today by historians looking back in time. I wanted to go back there myself. How?
Primary sources are the ones that deliver the information firsthand. Photographs are an excellent way to learn about the past. In my case, tens of thousands of Civil War photographs are available, yes, through books and online, but also at the Library of Congress, where there are drawers upon drawers filled with folders of photos taken back then. The originals, if you can imagine!
Other primary sources of an historic period are letters or journals. Using the Civil War as an example, there are books of letters to and from soldiers and their loved ones. If you use credible authors, ie: Ken Burns, you can be sure these are the true words of the people of the time. If you are really lucky, you may be able to track down a diary written from the time period. A friend of mine’s ancestor was a soldier in the War and he passed down some interesting paraphernalia (no journal, unfortunately.)
Very important primary sources are books written by someone of the time period. An example, which helped me shape my scene at the Union Hotel Hospital, was a precious thin book called Hospital Sketches, by Louisa May Alcott. Louisa May was actually a minor character in my book. If you ever wondered what it would be like to volunteer as a nurse in a hospital during the Civil War, listen to Louisa May:
“My three days experience had begun with a death, and, owing to the defalcation (I had to look this one up!) of another nurse, a somewhat abrupt plunge into the superintendence of a ward containing forty beds, where I spent my shining hours washing faces, serving rations, giving medicine, and sitting in a very hard chair, with pneumonia on one side, diphtheria on the other, two typhoids opposite, and a dozen dilapidated patients, hopping, lying and lounging about, all staring more or less at the new ‘nuss,’ who suffered untold agonies, but concealed them under as matronly as a spinster could assume, and blundered through her trying labors with a Spartan firmness, which I hope they appreciated, but am afraid they didn’t.”
From this one simple paragraph, I learned about the hospital, the patients, the illnesses and Louisa May’s (and other nurses’?) attitude toward them all.
In addition to Louisa May Alcott’s writings, I examined photographs, I read letters, poems and the words of songs written during the time. As I kept reading, I got a feel for the rhythm of speech of the period. I learned some of the basics: what the people of the time ate, drank, smoked, what they wore, how they amused themselves when they weren’t killing each other on the field, what their sex lives were like (there are some bawdy postcards out there!) Essentially, I learned how they lived and, sadly, how they died.
Bottom line: If you write historical stories, (or even modern stories about places you’re not familiar with,) what you don’t know can hurt you. The best way to find out what things were really like, is to do your research through the eyes of those who lived it.
There are no shortcuts. Ideas welcome.
by Lynne | Jul 4, 2016 | Researching, Writing
Writing historical mysteries is a juggling act. Writers must create a fictional plot with fictional characters around a historical time period with real people . . . and somehow suspend the readers’ disbelief.
Many writers of historical fiction choose a particular time period and stay with it. I’m thinking Anne Perry, Phillipa Gregory, Charles Todd. I, on the other hand, am intrigued by so many time periods, I skip around. Each of my mysteries takes place in a different place and time, which enables me to do the thing I love most: research. The risk, of course, is that I will know only a little about each time period as opposed to Anne Perry who knows a great deal about Victorian England.
Once I settle on a time period, I read and read and read about it. I visit the places in question, interview experts, historians, and read and read and read some more. By this time, I usually have a kernel of an idea for the plot and maybe even a character sketch or two.
Building fictional characters around authentic ones is key. Unless your character is transported from modern times to the past, he/she must act, speak, dress like the time period. In using real people from the time period, they must be as genuine to history as I can make them.
As the story develops and takes twists and turns on its own, I find I am bending the truth a bit – creating an “alternate history.” This is fiction, after all. My latest book, PURE LIES is a totally new take on history. It’s about the witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 and provides a different motivation for the girls’ hysteria. The backdrop and many characters are authentic, but the storyline meanders from what we know to be historically accurate.
The questions I ask take the form of “what if” and I let my imagination run free. It’s a rare writer that can devise a plot line that hasn’t already been done. But even a clichéd plot can be made new and fresh with unique spins, powerful characters, and exceptional prose.
As I read and re-read PURE LIES, I realize I have altered history to fit the story. That’s the advantage of fiction. And its strength.
It worked – PURE LIES won the San Diego Book Award for Best Mystery!
