Writing Historical Fantasy Fiction: Resources and Tips for Writers

The key to crafting a captivating historical fantasy is to submerge the reader’s senses.

Writing contemporary fantasy is easier by comparison because, in some way or another, we are simply recording the details of the world around us while we weave our fantasy story. Likewise, pure fantasy worlds are realities we ourselves shape. We make the gods. We make the men. We make all the rules.

When writing historicals, however, we have a duty to capture the details and the experience accurately. How does a writer capture the essence of a past era, whether 100 years ago, 300 years ago, or even millennia?

The answer: research.

As daunting a task as you may think researching your time period might be, if you write historical fantasy, you’ve probably been doing it for a long time without even realizing it.

Here are some sources and references that will be useful to the historical writer.

HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS: Yes, I will start by saying the vastest source of historical detail lies within history books. It’s absolutely true—but very daunting. Apart from earning your degree in history, what else can a writer do to get those necessary details?

FILM & SCREEN: This is avenue of research you’ve explored without really thinking about it. It may even be the reason why you’re interested in writing historical fantasy in the first place: you’ve visited a particular era and you want to go back and put your own spin on it. TV, movies, documentaries. If it’s on a screen, watch it. Get a feel for the way people move, their mannerisms, their speech. Beware, though—you cannot view one program and declare yourself a historian. You’ve got to watch a lot. Look for patterns—consistencies, oddities. Over time, you get a feel for what is perceived by most viewers as the norm. Anything outside it will be viewed either as uniquely difference or wildly inaccurate. Choose your path wisely.

TOURS: Visit the place where you’d like to set your story and seek out historical details yourself. Stop at a visitor’s bureau. Go on guided tours. If you cannot travel, take a virtual tour instead.

Those are what I consider the easy ways. Here are a few others I’ve learned from a wonderful author, Nomi Eve, the author of Henna House, a historical women’s fiction novel set in 1920s Yemen. I had the pleasure of hearing her speak at a writing conference and she gave amazing advice to authors on how to “breathe life into the past”.:

MISSIONARY & EXPLORER JOURNALS: These are first person accounts of strange lands and new places. Some were scientists, out to record every detail of a new land. Some were missionaries, eager to bring back the details of new cultures. You can collect their sensory experiences—taste, smell, sound, color—and wrap your readers in them.

COOKBOOKS: Did you just laugh at me? If you did, then stop, because one of my favorite cookbooks is one based on A Game Of Thrones. The feasts are massive, the food both eloquent and medieval. The cookbook puts me right back in the middle of George R. R. Martin’s world. My second favorite is a German cookbook that is perhaps fifty years old. I love it not only for the recipes but also the stories within, the introductions to each chapter, the side notes about preparation and serving. That cookbook transports me back into the kitchen of someone’s Bavarian great-grandmother and is a historical excursion all on its own.

Think on this a moment…how much of our lives are spend eating and drinking, alone or with others? Cookbooks will tell you not only how food tastes and looks, but how a house smells, how people prepared their meals. You know that one does not snap their fingers to have a feast appear. Work goes into food preparation, and life occurs while we do that work.

MUSEUM CATALOGS: Museums will publish and sell catalogs of their exhibits which you can purchase on-line or in museum gift stores. We can’t all travel to different continents to tour an exhibit, but we can buy the catalogs: they contain pictures of the items on exhibit, along with descriptions and explanations of their use. My favorite museum catalog is one I picked up after viewing a Leonardo DaVinci exhibit.

MUSIC & FOLKTALES: Both are wonderful sources of historical data. Lyrics are signs of the “current” times. Songs are part of a culture’s “oral tradition” and is accessible to all singers, all listeners. We even classify music by the era in which it was recorded. The language, the sentiments, and the “current events” used to write lyrics give great insight into the singer’s world at the time. The bardic tradition truly is alive and well today. Likewise, folktales are windows to the past. You can find folktale collections for sale anywhere you shop for books.

HISTORICAL SOCIETIES: The Internet makes contacting them easier than ever, and they are generally staffed by people who are passionate about the history they preserve. Nearly every town in my area has one. We have a rich coal mining history in my area and so our towns were established on the coal companies, the German and Welsh men who ran them and the Irish who worked them. Lots of history, both Old World and New, have been preserved by our local historians.

SOCIAL MEDIA: Crowdsource your contacts list. Ask questions on Facebook or Twitter. You may be surprised at who in your friends list knows the answer. Social media truly is a global community so you may find a lot of information about the world you are researching just by posting a question.

Five Tips To Improve Your Historical Fantasy Reader’s Experience
Some things to remember: when you set out to write a historical fantasy, remember that it’s a fantasy, first and foremost. You need to incorporate the proper types of plotting, characterization, and story elements necessary for the fantasy genre. The historical aspect should come secondary to the story—it anchors the story, it enhances the setting, it gives individualized details to your character, and it may cause you to alter story specifics to fit the era.

Historical aspects should submerge the readers in the experience so make sure you provide a sensory experience: sight, taste, smell, sounds, and touch.

1. Capture your setting. Incorporate street names, landmarks.
2. Pay mind to clothing worn at the time, especially if social classes had great disparity between them.
3. Add a layer of language. Remember that speech varies among people based on social class and education, even personal experience. Do use slang and foreign words when appropriate. (I’m not a big fan of books written in dialect, though. I don’t want to have to sound a line out just because I didn’t know what to do with all the apostrophes and mysterious contractions.)
4. Incorporate prevalent religious beliefs. Faith systems are very important because they may influence social behavior, mannerisms, and speech--everything from ethics to OMG.
5. Make sure your fantasy fits the history, and vice versa. They should enhance each other, not make people wonder what the heck was that author thinking? 

The last one may be the most important tip of all. When I wrote The Heartbeat Thief, I chose to begin the story in the English Victorian era because of its societal views on death as well as a woman’s place in the world. The story itself is a vampire-type tale, where the Immortal steals heartbeats rather than drinking blood to survive. The character wanted to remain within society, not pursue a dark solitary life. A touch on another’s skin is intimate, perhaps to the point of scandalous—at least to a Victorian mind. It seemed like the fantastic elements were ideal for a Victorian setting.


Another reason why I chose that era if because the story is structured to follow Edgar Allan Poe’s story Masque of the Red Death. The first lines of the book mention the character was born the year it was published, each section is started with a relative quote from the story, and the main character’s journey through her mortal/immortal life take place in the same order as the seven apartments of Prospero’s palace. The last room is draped in the colors of black and blood and it is there that Death awaits. Once again, the fantasy and the history complement each other as perfectly as I could imagine.

Give Your Readers An Experience They’ll Never Forget
Ultimately, you want to write the story that takes a reader to a place in time and space that leaves them wondering…could this have actually happened? Historical details aren’t just decorations—they build an environment that readers can experience for themselves. You want them to journey back with you to live out that story, page by page.

And there is no greater reward than hearing a reader tell you that you got it right. This is a review  The Heartbeat Thief earned shortly after it was published.

"Krafton not only tells you a story, she makes you experience it with your senses. You can feel the fog moistening your skin as Senza wanders around London. You can smell the city's decay. You can hear the clatter of horses against the cobblestones. And your own heart will anguish along with Senza as she despairs about life--and death--in an era when a woman's beauty guaranteed her a well-matched marriage, even more than her wealth..." --Ronesa Aveela, author of the Mystical Emona series 

This review quote went a long way to validate the research I’d put into writing The Heartbeat Thief. It makes me feel proud of this book.

You should be proud of your book, also. Put serious work into researching your historical period. Don’t write your book as if it were a history lesson; write it as an amazing fantasy that dwells within the constraints of an interesting time period.

Historical details should infuse the setting and characters with the flavors unique to that place and that time. If you wrote your fantasy story a dozen different times in a dozen different historical settings, you should end up with a dozen separate, unique experiences.

Take your reader back to a time long gone by. Let the fantasy keep them there.

USA Today Best-Selling Author Ash Krafton is a speculative fiction writer who, despite having a Time Turner under her couch and three different sonic screwdrivers in her purse, still encounters difficulty with time management. She's the author of two urban fantasy series (The Books of the Demimonde and The Demon Whisperer) as well as several stand-alone titles. She also writes for upper-YA audiences under the pen name AJ Krafton. THE HEARTBEAT THIEF, her Victorian dark fantasy inspired by Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, is now available.

Titles, Titles, Titles!!!!

In a query, the first thing your future agent sees is the title. Think about it:

Your title needs to do a lot of heavy lifting. Make it strong.

(Yes, in theory the agent sees your name before the title, but unless your name is Nora Roberts or James Patterson--both of whom I assume have agents already--you're not really going to make an impression with your name. You could make a lousy impression with your name, but it's harder to make a positive impression.)

Your title, however, is the first place your book gets to show off, and it needs to be awesome. It needs to fit the story. It needs to convey genre. It needs to be intriguing.

Titles aren't like naming your baby. Titles are marketing tools. That's all. And in some ways, the title is the last thing the author gets to say about the story.

I'm a lousy titler. I know this, and it was only confirmed for me after an agent wrote me a long email requesting pages but asking for a new title please along with a bunch of suggestions as to how I could go about this. She didn't know this was the fourth title the story had already gone through. She also didn't know I'd see it two days later when she posted a cleaned-up version of that letter as a blog post. (Minus my name, which as we've already said is nonmemorable.)

Two of my novels have come right down to the last minute where the cover artist couldn't proceed because she kind of sort of needed the title before she could design the cover. That's Olympic-grade lousiness. (And we're not even going to talk about the face that two of my children didn't have names for the first 24 hours of their lives. "Honey, she's bringing the birth certificate paperwork. We really need to decide.")

I'm a lousy titler, and therefore you can assume I'm a pro by now at picking out ineffective titles.

1) Does the title fit with your genre? Occasionally you can make a title work across genres, but that's for later in the game, when you're an established crime writer and want to throw in a fantasy-esque title for flavor. Right now, reserve your fantasy titles for your fantasy novels.

2) Can this title work for half the books in your genre? If it's "To Love Again" or "Magical Lineage," try again. You need something specific enough that no one else's story truly fits your title.

2A) Does Amazon already have five pages of novels using exactly this title? This especially happens when someone uses a cliche or a quote as their title. Your title needs to stand out.

3) Is your title incomprehensible? I hate asking this, but sometimes in the heat of the moment, we latch onto a tiny element of the story; it becomes outsize in importance, and it makes perfect sense after you've read the book. Unfortunately, everyone else is seeing the title before reading the book, and the title gives us enough of a "huh?" feeling that we don't then read the book. I've seen this happen a lot in critique groups, where I'm obligated to read the story, and generally someone will tactfully raise the idea that perhaps the title needs an adjustment.

Keep in mind that the first thing an editorial board does is decide whether to change your title, so unless it's spot-on, you may not keep it. But that doesn't mean you should avoid doing the work.

My suggestions:

1) Go to Amazon and look at the top hundred titles in your subgenre (free and paid.) Read the titles and nothing more. If there's a series name, look at that too. Just get a flavor for how the books indicate their genre in rough strokes.

2) As you edit and re-read your novel, look for a key phrase that encapsulates the through-line of your story. This is my favorite way of finding a title, although it doesn't always work.

3) Write down twenty ideas, good and bad. In fact, make sure you include plenty of bad ideas just to get the juices flowing because sometimes the fear of "getting it wrong" means we freeze up on our creativity. Instead, do what Gavin DeBecker suggests: make one of the qualifications for success that you have to be wrong more often than you're right. Once you've got that, you can brainstorm properly. Make sure to laugh at yourself.

And as a corollary: these are just for you, so go crazy. Try that twenty-word title. Use just your main character's first name and call the book John. Title it in French even though you don't know French. Pull out Roget's Thesaurus and derive alternate versions of ho-hum titles. Make puns. Make lots and lots of puns.

4) Draw up a list of themes underpinning the book and see if any of those resonate with the titles you've already played with.

5) Call your friend who always has awesome titles and sob into the phone for twenty minutes, hoping she'll say, "Well what if you turned the title backward and called it Half Missing?"

It's only a few words, or maybe even only one word, but the title carries the first burden of selling your work. Ensure it's a good one.

Writer Productivity Tip: How To Increase Your Daily Word Count

Today’s post continues with the theme of how each member of the QT blog team keeps (or tries to keep) our writing or writing process/career organized, less stressful, and more effective.

Over the years, I’ve learned to streamline my writing (more so now that I’m a published author with multiple book deals). It used to take me a year to finish writing and editing a book. With my first book (which was never published), I got a tiny bit carried away and spent TEN MONTHS planning it. At that point, I was writing YA fantasy and for some reason felt it was necessary to figure out EVERY TINY DETAIL about my story world. And that included the types of plants that would grow there based on soil type. Did I use any of this information in my novel? Nope. It wasn’t necessary to the story.

Research is another area I’ve learn to rethink. My books often require some research before I can figure out my characterizations. For example, in my first published book (Tell Me When), I dealt with stalking and post traumatic stress disorder. I needed to understand how an eighteen-year-old girl would react to different situations in the book based on what she had endured prior to the story. I had to research these topics first. But while writing my books, I quickly learned that I didn’t need to stop writing every time I had a minor research question. Let me ask you a question. How many of you can go onto the internet and only look up the ONE thing you need to know? How many of you decide that since you’re already online, you might as well quickly peek at your inbox (especially when you’re querying)? How many of you end up then checking out Twitter and Facebook and all your other social media sites instead of returning to your WIP? *puts up hand* Now, I don’t stop to look up those details as I write. I make a note in my manuscript (which is easy to do because I use Scrivener), and go back to look them up once I’ve finished my first draft. And because I use Scrivener, those comments are easy to find. I don’t have to spend time combing through my manuscript to find them.

Another thing I do to increase my daily output is writing sprints. I see how many words I can write in an hour and then take a brief break before continuing with the next bout of sprints. I also write first thing in the morning (5:30 am) and don’t check my inbox until I’ve written for an hour (then I have to get my kids ready for school). I also schedule my writing time so that it gets done. All of these things have helped me increase my productivity.

What helps you increase your writing productivity?

Don’t forget that our QueryTracker's 5x5x5 give-a-way has begun. We're giving away $500 to celebrate the new QueryTracker version 5 coming soon. FIVE winners in FIVE weeks will receive their cut of the $500 prize.

How to Enter
•    Look for the Rafflecopter entry form (see below) on all our blog posts for the next FIVE weeks.
•    Log into Rafflecopter using your Facebook account or Email address.
•    Follow the instructions to tweet, post, and follow and receive entries into the raffle for every action you take.


Prizes

We'll randomly award a $100 gift certificate to Amazon, B&N, or Apple every Sunday for the next FIVE weeks.

Good luck.

Interviewing The Terrified (or, how to fall in love in one easy step)

There I was, seven months pregnant, sitting with a pad and a pen in a room full of construction workers and terrifying every one of them. 

Writing down what they said. And gestating. Two things these guys found incomprehnesible and terrifying.

I was writing the text of my first business website, promoted suddenly from database manager after my boss had me throw together some ad copy and the client loved it. ("Hey," my boss exclaimed in the middle of presenting it to the client, "This is good!" Professionals all the way, that was us.)  But in order to get material for twenty pages on a website, I needed to interview them, so the owner invited every department head into his office and had them talk. I copied every word, and I learned something important: writers can scare non-writers.

Sometimes it's good. I've maliciously sat in a hallway (maliciously!), writing in my journal as a means of making people leave me alone. Writing in a journal is subversive: I could be putting anything in there (particularly with my handwriting, sometimes incomprhensible even to me.) But when you as a writer want information, it's bad. When you're trying to write your client's advertorial and the client won't talk, it's bad. When you're conducting a newspaper interview, it's even worse.

Me: "I'm calling from the Local Paper because I'm writing an article about the food pantry, and they said you've been wonderful to them."
Business Owner: "Oh. Yeah?"
Me: "So how did you come to support the food pantry?"
Business Owner: "I don't know. I just did."
…
Me: "Tell me a bit about how you support them."
Business Owner: "Stuff. You know. Whatever they need."

Clearly I'm not getting a quote from that guy. 

You're thinking, "But I write novels," and I'm going to tell you this: at some point, you'll need to talk to someone about her job or her experience, and you'll need that information to create a well-rounded character. I've ended up talking to auto mechanics, fire marshals (no, seriously, the top guys in two states ended up talking to me!), and so many others just listening to their impressions of their own professions or their own experiences. It's invaluable in creating your character, but first you have to get the person to talk.

They won't talk if they're terrified of you, strange wizard with your magical writing powers. So what do you do?

I end the interview. No, really, I've discovered that as soon as the terrified person feels she's no longer being interviewed, she starts to open up. So I'll thank the person for talking to me, explain why it was so important, and then suddenly, with the spotlight off, they relax. 

When they relax, they stop giving me what they think I want (well-formed sentences with words they haven't used since their SAT prep) and give me what I actually want: themselves.

"My friends call me a color-coating technician!" quipped the painting specialist. Or the business owner: "Oh, those folks at the food pantry, they're so nice. They're not just doing it like a job. They really care."

These are professionals but they don't have media experience and they're afraid you're going to destory what they love, so it's up to you to take it into the arena they're familiar with. Oftentimes, they're very comfortable selling themselves or their business. Most of the time, someone's doing his job because he loves it. There's some spark in that industry that attracted him to it, and it's kept him there. You can find that spark, hold it right in your hand, and ignite your character. 

But to do that, you need to loosen up your interviewee. Sometimes, the way to do that is to say, "I'm so glad you spent the time talking to me," and then, "It sounds like you really love what you do." Because they do -- and once you love it, your character will love it, and your reader will love it too.

You might call it falling in love. I call it research.

---

Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy. She has four kids, three cats, two books in print, and one husband. She lives in the Swamp and spends her time either writing books or knitting warm socks. At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four kids. If you want to make her rich and famous, please contact the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. 

Where The Truths Be Told

Before you send out your query to an agent (or publisher), it’s important to do the necessary research to reduce the risk of a rejection. 

 

One of the first places to look is the individual’s website. If the agent doesn’t list your genre/category, he isn’t a good match. Please don’t waste his time (and yours) by querying him. The exception is if you’ve seen on Twitter that the agent is suddenly falling over himself for books in your genre. Then query away. 

If you check the Querytracker database and it doesn’t list YA (for example) as a category the agent is looking for, check the raw data for queries sent (found with the Premium membership). If you see people have sent queries for YA and he’s NEVER requested material from any of them, then don’t add yourself to the list. He’s not interested. Get the hint.

The next thing querying writers tend to do is search writer forums for information about agents. These forums are great for giving you feedback as to the expected wait times, and can be super supportive while you wait and wait and wait to hear back from the agent. The downside is that bitterness lingers in some of these forums. People understandably don’t like rejections. But because of the anonymity of these forums, some individuals enjoy spreading bitterness by attacking agents (or publishers). And unfortunately other like-minded individuals do the same thing and start saying things that might not necessarily be true. 

If an agent tries to defend himself, the angry folk pull out their pitch forks and add more negative comments, thereby further besmirching the agent’s (or publisher’s) reputation. They figure if the agent really is good, then his clients will stand up for him. 

But here’s the deal, his clients are busy with other things. They are waiting for their books on submission. They are writing their next book. They are editing the book sold to a publisher. They are promoting their new release. What they aren’t doing is hanging out on the agent’s forum. They don’t need to anymore. They have an agent. Their dream agent. The agent who is doing more for them than is revealed on these forums. Unfortunately you won’t know this because you only see the negative comments, or the comments that don’t really tell you much, other than writers are still waiting to hear back on their queries. 

So what can you do when researching an agent to potentially query? You can look up the agent or publisher on P&E (Preditors & Editors), and you can talk to writers (offline preferably) about their agents. But not all writers are going to be willing to talk to you, unless they know you. All you can do is query the agents who seem like a good choice, based on the interviews you’ve read and their blog posts and tweets. If the agent does offer representation, make sure you ask them lots of questions and talk to some of their clients. You’ll learn more from their clients than you will from the poisonous grapes who leave negative comments on the forums.

And if you are rejected by an agent or publisher, please be professional and keep your negative comments to yourself--unless you have proof that the agent is performing unprofessionally. And in that case, you can fill a complaint with P&E. 

Where do you find your research before querying an agent?

Stina Lindenblatt @StinaLL writes Young Adult and New Adult novels. In her spare time, she’s a photographer and can be found at her blog/website. She is represented by Marisa Corvisiero, and finds it weird talking about herself in third person. Her debut New Adult contemporary romance, TELL ME WHEN, will be released Jan. 20, 2014 (Carina Press, HQN).

Researching Your Novel: Dos and Don'ts

I always think writers have an interesting dilemma with research. 

On the one hand, readers want you to get the practical details right. There are few things more annoying than finding a glaring inaccuracy in a story. Not only does it pull you out of the story, it makes you trust the author less.

One of my favorite examples is from the original Terminator movie. After the psychologist in the movie interviews the soldier who came from the future, he goes back to his colleagues and says the soldier is delusional. Good so far – any psychologist familiar with psychosis (which can include delusions) would probably agree. But then the character excitedly remarks how unusual the soldier’s story is. “I could make a career out of this guy!” he crows. 

Every single time I watch that, I do a *facepalm.* Not only are the themes of the soldier’s “delusions” about a machine that looks human (i.e. the Terminator) not unusual, there’s actually a name that would probably fit them—Capgras delusions. As a result, the psychologist looks like he started practicing the day before when he’s supposed to be a seasoned professional. (Admittedly, his refusal to believe in the Terminators becomes an ongoing joke in the movies.)

On the other hand, there’s that glorious thing we call “artist's license.” Artist's license means we can play with the truth and bend reality to fit our purposes. Sometimes, to make a scene or story work, we really do need to use a little of the artist's license magic.

With those things in mind, here are a few dos and don’ts to help you figure out when to stick to the facts and when to fudge the truth a bit.

Do: Research!

Especially if you publish, your book will be read by all kinds of people – including people who are experts in areas you aren’t. Though it can be tempting to muddle your way through a scene by being as vague as possible, details are part of what bring the story to life.

I’ve researched everything from the bubonic plague to Britishisms to how to take apart a Sig Sauer. I bet you’ve got a list of bizarre things you’ve looked up, too. And the glory of the internet is that information on all of those things is readily available out there. 

Do: Use Reliable Sites

You can tell that one of my pet peeves is when people use psychology inaccurately in their stories. Unfortunately, there’s so much inaccurate information out there that it’s easy for writers to make the same mistakes everyone before them did. 

There are, for example, two types of websites on ECT (“electroshock” therapy): the ones that insist on perpetuating the idea that modern “modified” ECT is just like the old, torturous “unmodified” ECT; and the ones that have information based in modern practice. (This is not to say that ECT is an amusement park ride, only that it’s not what you usually see in the movies.)

My point here is that you need to choose the resources you rely on carefully. There’s a lot of bogus information out there, and an awful lot of people don’t know how to cull the wheat from the chaff. In fact, so many people fail to think critically about things they find on the internet that a man named Lyle Zapato decided to prove their gullibility. He created a convincing, professional-looking website encouraging visitors to “help save the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus from extinction.” These days, it’s easy to find out that there is no tree octopus, but for a while a lot of people were fooled. 

So think about the website you’re consulting – what evidence do you have that the information on it is accurate? Remember, good misinformation is usually mixed with accurate information to make it harder to tell what’s real and what’s not. And just because a website looks professional doesn’t mean its content is any good. It just means the creator knows how to build a website.

Once in a while you’ll end up with egg in your face no matter what you do, so don’t kick yourself too hard if that happens. I’ve learned things in psychology textbooks, complete with research citations, that people later tell me are outdated or inaccurate. “But the publication date is 2010!” I cry, embarrassed. But even textbook publishers can forget to double-check their facts over the years. Something that was “true” when the first edition came out may no longer be true in the 12th edition…but nobody’s bothered to check.

Don’t: Use Research to Procrastinate 

Let’s face it, researching obscure facts can be fun. Anyone who’s ever started on a Wikipedia page with a totally benign topic and ended up three hours later reading about some obscure factoid on a page that has nothing to do with the first one knows that the web isn’t just a tool…it can also be a black hole. We get sucked in and can’t seem to find our way back out.

Some writers love to research. They love it so much it’s their procrastination of choice. Some writers are distracted by Facebook or the sudden urge to clean the entire house, but others convince themselves they’re doing something useful when they research. 

The reality is that when you keep researching far beyond the things that you needed to know, you’re not doing it for your story anymore. You may be doing it to procrastinate. If you find a goldmine of information you must plumb for new story ideas, bookmark it or print it and then go back to it later, when you’re not supposed to be writing.

Don’t: Put All of Your Research into Your Novel

We rarely find the factoid we need lying all alone, packaged up and ready to use. Instead, we have to dig through hills (sometimes mountains) of other information. Once you’ve spent all that time and energy learning about [insert your research topic here], you want to use it! That can lead to technical infodumps that bring your story to a grinding halt. 

Like perfume or cologne, researched facts should be used sparingly. We’ve all met people who have been wearing a particular scent for so long that they no longer smell it, so they put on more and more until the smell practically knocks those around them off their feet. Avoid doing the same thing to your readers. You don’t need to hit them over the head with every last thing you learned. 

Feel free to write a research-heavy scene like that if you really need to, but then save it in a separate file and pare the real one down so only the key information is there.

Do: Use Your Artist’s License When You Need It

If you paint yourself into a corner with your research and discover that what you need to happen isn’t likely, remember that isn’t likely doesn’t mean it’s impossible. That just means that your character is an outlier (someone who experiences something most people don’t). 

Other times you actually need to bend the rules. I recently worked with a writer who wanted her character to believe he was turning into a werewolf, but he had no other psychological symptoms. This would usually mean the character has what we call a delusional disorder, in which a person stubbornly believes in something that has no basis in reality, despite evidence and logic to the contrary. The problem is that people with delusional disorders only have “non-bizarre” delusions. That means the not-real things they believe are possible in the world as we know it. (Perhaps extremely unlikely, but possible nonetheless.) Non-bizarre delusions are usually things like believing someone who's not in love with you is, or that someone's following you when they're not, or that a partner is cheating when they're not.

Believing one is becoming a werewolf would qualify as a bizarre delusion – it is not possible in the world as we know it. And if someone is having bizarre delusions, they are diagnosed with schizophrenia, which usually has additional symptoms.

I told the writer she had two possible approaches she could take.

First, if werewolves are in fact possible in the world you've created, your problem is solved! The delusion is no longer bizarre, so a delusional disorder makes total sense. 

The other approach you could take is to call it a delusional disorder (if you're going to name it) and just ignore the fact that the delusion your character is having is technically bizarre. That's where the artist's license comes in.

Happy researching!

Carolyn Kaufman, PsyD's book, THE WRITER'S GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGY: How to Write Accurately About Psychological Disorders, Clinical Treatment, and Human Behavior helps writers avoid common misconceptions and inaccuracies and "get the psych right" in their stories. You can learn more about The Writer's Guide to Psychology, check out Dr. K's blog on Psychology Today, or follow her on Facebook! 

How to be a know-it-all

A couple of years ago, my husband approached while I was reading and sat beside me on the couch. After a few minutes, I looked up. He seemed concerned. "Is there something you want to talk to me about?"

Color me puzzled. "Why?"

He pointed to the book I was reading. The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships

Oh, that. I said, "The only problem we're having is that you're married to a writer."

The truism is to "write what you know." That means it's your job to know everything.

You must become, officially, a know-it-all. Or at least, someone who knows how to find out the things she didn't know she needed to know.

My answer? Self-help books. I've already touted self-help books to become fluent in the way other people manage their relationships, but now I'm suggesting them for everything else too. I read self-help books for helps that I either never will need or hope never to need. Why? Because at some point, one of my characters is going to need it.

Your characters probably had a childhood. If you're mean like me, they probably didn't have wonderful, glorious childhoods. On my shelf are books like Raising Adopted Children, Motherless Daughters, and a half-dozen other books about fatherless daughters, abused children, treating traumatized children, and children of divorce.

Childbirth doesn't have to be all about how your character sailed through with an epidural and push-push-push: how about adding to your character's challenges with books by Ina Mae Gaskin, and then for the meta-analysis of birth, throw in a copy of Pursuing The Birth Machine and Birth As An American Rite of Passage? You may have your own experience with having babies or raising children, but since you need to write what you know, now it's time to know every other possible experience. With more possible choices in mind, you'll know better whether your main character might prefer to give birth unassisted in a tub in her living room.

It goes on and on: Boundaries by Townsend and Cloud for when you write your pushover character. The Art Of Verbal Self Defense books for your witty character. The Sociopath Next Door? The Gift Of Fear? Check out a book about how to run your own business even though you don't own a business. One of your characters might want to.

Moreover, the greater your knowledge base, the more opportunity you have to create interesting situations for your characters. Reading a book on management will give you plenty of examples of how lousy bosses operate -- and you may find yourself filling with ideas for future stories.

Right now I'm reading a book called How Not To Marry A Jerk. (Although I admit I'm afraid I'll discover my husband married a jerk.) Not because I want to get married again, but because I want to learn another perspective on dynamics for my characters' sakes. Someday, one of them may want to marry a jerk. It'll be my job then to know why she does it.


Read. Read fiction, but also read how-to. How to live. Then you too can be a know-it-all.


---

Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy, to be released by MuseItUp on September 28th. She is also author of The Guardian (Thomas Nelson, 1994), Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) and The Boys Upstairs (MuseItUp, 2010). At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four children. She is represented by the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. 

Making the Most of Writers' Workshops

Michael Hauge

Like most professionals, writers should always be seeking ways to expand their knowledge. This might be achieved through reading craft books that delve into your weakness (grammar, characterization, emotions), through feedback from your critique partner or group, or through workshops. The first two options are cheap (free), but workshops provide you with an experience that will raise your manuscript to a level beyond what the other two might provide—if you find the right workshops.

When searching for a workshop, there are several things you should consider:

1. Your goals

Before you select a course, you need to know what your goals are. It could be craft related, such as story structure. It could deal with social networking or marketing. Or it could pertain to research, such as a behavioral analysis of serial killers. Do you want a course that will provide feedback on excerpt from your novel? Most don’t do this, so if this is something of interest, contact the course provider and find out if the instructor is only providing lectures and an opportunity to ask questions, or if you will be asked to submit assignments for feedback. 

2. Location 

If you can’t travel or your schedule doesn’t permit you to attend a live workshop, online courses are a perfect solution. Some conferences (e.g. Romance Writers of America and Thrillfest) enable you to download for a minimal fee the audio from workshops. Not all workshops are available, but it’s a perfect option if you can’t attend the conference, or if two workshops you want to attend are offered at the same time.

3. Time

If you’re busy, you might want to select a course that is online, as previously mentioned, and allows you to be a lurker. Be realistic if you are expected hand in assignments. If you don’t have the time to do them, you might want to skip the class, unless you know you’ll still benefit as a lurker. 

Try not to get behind on the reading of the lecture material; otherwise, you’ll miss out on your chance to ask questions. There is nothing worse than finally reading the material two weeks after the course ends, only to discover you have tons of unanswered questions. If you’re going to be a lurker and there are assignments that get instructor feedback, DO read what the instructor had to say about each one. You’ll learn a lot from studying the comments. Even if you’re not lurking, check out the instructor’s feedback and comments on the other students’ assignments. It’s worth the effort. You might discover errors you constantly make, but which didn’t show up in the excerpts you submitted for feedback.

4. Reputation of the Instructor

This is where a little investigative research is required. If the instructor is Stephen King and he’s offering a workshop on writing horror and thrillers, well, what are you waiting for? Sign up now. If he’s instructing on writing erotica, you might want to pass. It could be an instructor has seen a boom with a certain genre and decided to offer a course on it. However, she might not have the necessary background, other than she’s read a few bestselling novels from the genre. If she’s published in the genre, then you can be assured she knows what she’s talking about. Better yet, read at least one of her novels to make sure she does know the subject. No point spending money on a course on characterization when you find her characters to be no thicker than cardboard. 

Another reason to do the investigation is to make sure you don’t end up with an instructor who doesn’t follow through on the course expectations. I was recently in a course in which the instructor constantly promised to post the latest lecture or provide feedback on assignments, but more often than not, it didn’t happen. Her feedback was brilliant, when she bothered to give it. Turns out, the instructor was notorious for not living up to her promises. 

Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to find out about an instructor’s reputation, even with the popularity of social networking. While bloggers gush about awesome instructors, they tend to avoid talking about the duds. If you belong to a writing organization, you might be able to post the question on a forum, and give individuals the opinion of contacting you offline. 

5. Cost

Cost does not equate to quality. I’ve spent over $250 for a course that was a major disappointment (not the aforementioned one), and $30 for one that was amazing. Both offered critiques, but the latter resulted in editor-quality line edits. The other didn’t. The latter had course material not found in a craft book. The former had course material that could be found in any book on writing young adult stories. 

Have you participated in any workshops? Did you find them to be of value? Do you have any other suggestions for getting the most out of your workshop experience?

Stina Lindenblatt writes young adult novels. In her spare time, she’s a photographer and blogging addict, and can be found hanging out on her blog, Seeing Creative.  @stinall

Your Character's Language

Five minutes after meeting a guy at my daughter's winter concert, he stopped the conversation and said, "Are you an engineer?"

I laughed out loud. "No, but I'm bilingual in Geek."

I explained that I was married to a Geek, and then, as it turned out, my Beloved Geek works for the same company as the gentleman to whom I was speaking. In five minutes of talking to a senior computer engineer about music theory, I'd matched my diction and conversation style to his, and he'd pegged me for an engineer.

Why is this important? Because within five minutes of reading about your main character, we should peg him or her for what he or she is, even if he or she never mentions it. This isn't "voice" in the current usage of the word, which refers more to the feeling generated in the reader by seamless, comfortable prose. Instead I'm talking about your characters speaking as themselves.

The advice we commonly hear is "write what you know," but most of the time we're not following that to the letter. Perhaps your main character is a hair stylist, and you yourself are not a hair stylist. How do you write this character convincingly?

First, you learn to speak like your character.

In the past, I've had to become bilingual not only in Geek but in Musician, Stutterer, Police Officer, Auto Mechanic, Priest, and NASCAR Driver. The languages aren't hard to master -- but that's deceptive because every subcategory of person is going to have its own lingo and its own frames of reference. In order to convincingly write these characters, you need to immerse yourself in the way people of that category speak.

And to raise the degree of difficulty, your character most likely doesn't fit into only one category: sometimes she may be speaking like a homicide detective, but at home she may be speaking like a bereaved mother, and maybe on Sundays she's speaking like an evangelical Christian. Meaning for the duration of the book, you her writer need to be trilingual.

The way to do that is not to string a bunch of cliches together. It's to learn to speak like your character; think like your character; frame reality like your character.

"But Jane," you're saying (because I can also speak Baffled Writer), "um, how?"

The trick isn't just researching the character's background and the information your character would know. You can pick up a book and learn how police investigate a murder or how a violinist tunes a violin. In order to hear how these characters speak, you need to do the following:

1) Talk to real-life people who do these jobs or fit these classifications

(You didn't need to read a weblog to know that, so we'll move on.)

2) Pick up magazines written for and read by individuals in these jobs or classifications. You'll combine facts with lingo this way and get a basic sense of usage. (At first you will be very, very confused. Just let it all wash over you. It'll begin to make sense soon enough.) Even the ads will tell you what the target audience wants, needs, and fears. 

3) Find a support group online where people of your character's description gather. And read. Read. Read. Read. Read everything you can find. Don't pay attention to who's posting and when. Absolutely do not post there yourself. But immerse yourself until you're breathing the same air your character breathes.

Online support groups are invaluable. When I researched stuttering, I googled it thinking I'd learn a couple of things, and five hours later, I had adopted a new mindset. The gift of speaking suddenly didn't seem all that natural any longer. It was a shock. It was amazing. I'd learned a dozen acronyms I'd never thought of (PWS, SLP...) and learned the most common pitfalls, problems, and issues. And how nasty people could be to those who stutter. My character improved a thousand percent.

When writing musicians, I visited violinist.com.  Support groups for violinists? Sure, why not? And the issues they wrote about weren't the issues I'd necessarily have assumed violinists face. I learned some of their prejudices, some of their pitfalls, some situations most violinists face, and their most common questions. I got to hear high-level players giving advice to newer players, and I learned from them. I learned how deeply some of them feel for their instruments.

Did I use the specifics? No, of course not. But did I get a sense of the emotional range among musicians? And did I leverage that to create my characters? You bet.

Similarly, blogs by people dealing with what your character deals with? They're a gold mine for capturing your character's mindset, lingo, language, and situations the character will find commonplace in his or her line of work.

4) Podcasts. Listening to someone talk off-the-cuff about his profession or self-categorization will give you everything you ever need to know about how your protagonist should speak. You'll hear the usage of their everyday terminology. You'll pick up not just the lingo but how it combines with their ordinary diction.

When you speak to someone directly about his profession, he'll tell you what he thinks about his profession. But when two professionals are talking with one another, they're going to be honest about the tough parts and the surprising parts. Mine this. It's gold.

Is reading or listening like this voyeuristic? In some senses yes. But it's all been posted in public by people who knew they were posting in public. So access it without guilt.

Moreover, when you're writing a character, you will want to do a good job portraying every single aspect of that character because of respect. Your characters deserve that much. When you truly respect a group or a profession, you want to show it as it is, and that means learning as much as possible about it. 

The internet gives you a window into the unpolished lives of every kind of person there is, every profession, every subcategory of human being. Leverage it to create the truest characters you can.

---

Jane Lebak is the author of The Guardian (Thomas Nelson, 1994), Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) and The Boys Upstairs (MuseItUp, 2010). At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four children. She is represented by the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Marianne Strong Literary Agency.

Research Before Hitting "Send"

A common complaint from agents on their blogs, Twitter and Facebook is the receipt of submissions that aren't in keeping with their agency guidelines. It surprises me in this age of internet that so many writers get it wrong.

Perhaps part of the problem is the internet itself. There is often more misinformation than there is fact. The trick is sifting through inaccurate or obsolete information and finding the correct answer.

There are numerous sites designed to help authors make sense of the publishing maze. Is one of them the definitive source with the all right answers?

No. (Does my answer surprise you? I am representing QueryTracker after all!)

QueryTracker is pretty darned close to being the definitive source, but it doesn't eliminate research. Not even close. It does make it easier though.

QueryTracker lessens the probability a writer will query a "scammer"' or unqualified agent. An agency's sales and reputation are researched before that agency is added to the QT database. There have even been cases where agents were removed from QT after being red flagged by Predators and Editors.

When I was searching for an agent, one of the things I liked about QT was my ability to track the format in which I had sent queries and to whom. Another helpful feature is the links to other resources from an agent's profile that make it easy to research him/her in "Quick Click Tools."

The agent's website, blog and other sites are linked as well. Research links are all in one place.

Writers using QueryTracker effectively should not be among the ones agents complain about because of poor research. Really.

Now, here's the catch: Even though acceptable query methods are listed on QueryTracker, you can't rely on that anymore than you can rely on information on other agent listings or databases. What if the agent listed above adopted an online form last week and didn't inform QueryTracker?

You MUST read and follow the submission guidelines on the AGENCY WEBSITE. Other sources may not be up to date.

Agents provide information initially listed on QueryTracker, but they do not update it as often as they update their own websites. There are agents who will occasionally close their inboxes to submissions for a brief period of time. They also stop taking certain genres. Sometimes, they don't inform all the databases on which they are listed. So, again...

You MUST read and follow the submission guidelines on the AGENCY WEBSITE. Other sources may not be up to date.

Research agents thoroughly before you hit "send." There is no excuse to submit your adult project to an agent who only accepts children's projects. Don't waste your time or the agent's time. Check their website to be sure nothing has changed.

You want your project to receive the serious consideration it deserves. Not researching properly before you query turns your hard work into

Have a wonderful, well-researched, spamless week!

Mary