by Stephanie Morrill
Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the Ellie Sweet books (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website including the free novella, Throwing Stones.
Writing a historical fiction book scared me.
I had tried it before when I had a wisp of an idea. I made it about a page in before giving up. The amount of questions I had overwhelmed me. It’s not for me, I decided. I love reading historicals, but I’m not meant to write them.
A few months later, as I was putting away laundry in my daughter’s room, I was struck by a story idea that I knew was good. But it was a historical.
Maybe it’s not as good of an idea as I think, I told myself. Maybe I won’t have to write it. I texted my husband. “Veronica Mars meets Downton Abbey. What do you think?” He replied a minute later: “Write it!”
But how? Hadn’t I already proven that I couldn’t? I pitched my idea, which had become more fleshed out since my text, to my writing friend, Roseanna White. We decided it was more Veronica Mars meets The Great Gatsby, and she told me it was a good idea. That I should write it.
For a while, I was able to hide behind a deadline. The Unlikely Debut of Ellie Sweet was coming out in a few months and final edits needed to be turned in. Then my life became a revolving door of ER visits as we struggled to get Connor’s seizures under control. And all the while, the story churned inside me. I wanted to write it, but for the first time, I was feeling scared.
I say all that so you know that I’m not some expert in writing historicals. I’ve read quite a few, and I’m on the second draft of edits of my story, but I’m still learning how to do this. I learned because I had to. Because I had an idea that wouldn’t let me go.
Jill has written a fabulous book on creating storyworlds for fantasy and sci-fi books. It’s a must-read if you write in those genres. But realistic fiction—contemporary and historical alike—also involves worldbuilding. And worldbuilding in a historical translates into research. Lots of research.
Don’t panic about that, though. You know what I found? When you love the story idea enough, the research isn’t so bad.
I picked 1924 after some of my fashion research told me that cloche hats didn’t really come into popularity until then, and I didn’t want to write a 1920s book without cloche hats. I went with spring because one of my characters is a baseball player, and I wanted him to be coming home from spring training. I leaned on some Chicago friends to help me find the right neighborhood, and then I roamed around on Google street view for a while.
Once I had those things figured out, it was much easier to figure out what else I needed to know.
This list is extremely basic, but it gave me enough to be able to move my character around decently well. At first that was all I needed.
Later, of course, there were very specific things that I needed to research to build my world. Like how the mafia operated. Society’s view on flappers. How dead bodies were identified and how long that took. But I think it’s easier to do that as you write rather than trying to learn it all up front. At first, you just need to get down the basics.