Must you do on-site research for your novel in order to be “authentic?”
Melissa posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
I’m currently reading a book on writing historical fiction in which the author strongly emphasizes researching on location. While I agree with him 100% that on-site research will enrich your story, it’s not always feasible to travel to your stories physical location to do so. What would you say is the second best option available to a writer who wants to authenticate the physical location of a place that he/she has never been?
This question is a good one, whether you’re writing historical fiction or any other kind of fiction. Must you do on-site research?
I remember years ago reading an interview with Tom Clancy in Writer’s Digest. I don’t have that interview anymore, but one thing stood out to me. If my memory is correct, in that interview, Tom said that he had never been on a submarine until after he wrote his book THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. But he had talked to lots of people who had.
Since THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER was notable for its highly authentic feel of life on a nuclear sub, this surprised a lot of people. How did Tom make his readers believe that they were experiencing life on a sub, if he hadn’t experienced it himself?
The answer is not merely that Tom talked to a lot of people. Tom also asked those people the right questions. His books are packed with details — things that make you believe you’re right there. I’ve never been on a sub, so I can’t speak from experience on whether those details are right. But the very fact that the details are there makes you FEEL like they’re correct. In principle, a writer could make it all up, and yet make it feel real by simply showing lots of details of the environment. But more importantly, the writer must make it matter to the reader by finding the emotive impact those details have on the characters.
I’ve never been to Mars, and yet I wrote two novels set on Mars with my co-author John Olson. John and I studied up on what Mars is like, based on the best information we had. Then we imagined what it would be like living in a small habitation module on Mars, recycling the water, dealing with the peroxide-laced Martian dust, getting on the nerves of the other astronauts, living in constant fear of a depressurization event that would mean certain death, and suffering the effects of hypervigilance as a result. Then we took that imagination and made it real in the form of sensory details and everyday actions in the lives of our astronauts. In the end, the physical details were less important than the emotive impact those details had on our characters.
I’ve never been to ancient Jerusalem, but I wrote three novels set there. I have been to modern Jerusalem, and I spent an entire day studying a model of what the ancient city looked like. I also wandered around the old city, getting a feel for the color of the stones, the blue of the sky, the size of the city. I also spent absurd amounts of time reading the writings of people who lived in that time and place, learning the way they expressed ideas and how they interacted with each other. I tried to imagine what they cared about and what they feared and hoped for. Then I took all that and put it into concrete details. Again, the actual details were less important than the emotive effect they had on my characters.
Are there factual errors in my novels? Almost certainly. The evidence available for both Mars and ancient Jerusalem is fragmentary. But you can’t write a novel using fragmentary descriptions and details. You have to fill things in as best you can to create a coherent picture. Some of what you fill in will be wrong. That is one of life’s little tragedies, and the smart writer will accept that and not worry about.
Create an imaginary world that fits the facts as best you know them, but which fills in the holes in such vivid detail that the reader can’t tell the difference between what you know and what you imagine. Remember, it’s a novel you’re writing, not a documentary.
I won’t go into all the tools you have at your disposal for doing research. That depends a lot on what time and place you’re writing about, what information exists, and what form the information is in. It can be very helpful to find experts who know the world of your novel better than anyone else. Don’t be surprised, though, if you ask 3 experts and get 4 opinions. That’s the nature of the beast. It’s better that you form a coherent picture in your own mind of the world of your novel, and that you create that world in vivid detail for your reader. Then translate that coherent picture into an emotional impact on your characters.
Repeat after me: It’s a novel, not a documentary. It’s a novel, not a documentary. It’s a novel, not a documentary.
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In Historical Fiction more than any other genre, research counts if you want to stay in it for the long run. I have spent the last six years researching readers of Historical Fiction, asking questions, rooting around the many blogs, and especially the largest HF forum on the web. This is what I have found:
Many readers wander in via some popular book — ‘the Other Boleyn Girl’ is an example. They love it, and they look for more. Then they start finding out about the world the book showed them. Courtesy of the internet, they compare notes with other readers. Very soon, they discover if the research is not very good. And since its fiction, most don’t object, but when the time comes to choose another novel, they note which writers are reported to be both good novelists AND present a realistic story. Many a big HF name is fast sinking as a result of how easy it has become to fact-check while reading. Kindle readers of HF now report that they are googling as they go. Writer beware!
Another thought on this genre (sorry for the double post) is that HF readers are not driven by pure escapism. If that were the case, they’d read fantasy or alternate history. The great majority of them want to learn in an enjoyable manner, and that frequently means that an HF writer who throws in too much P.E.E. (Emotion) is less well-received than one who spends equal time with the camera backed out to a wide-frame view. I can think of several novels which are heavy on emotion that have reader comments running fifty-fifty against. “Too much gory detail,” or “I would have liked to understand WHY this was so important historically to the characters.”
Some emotions people DON’T want to spend much time in-close with, and history, unfortunately, is full of them.
For a story set in current day Scotland, I couldn’t budget a trip there, so I did the best I could to get a feel for the area where the story is set by using Google Earth and virtually roaming the villages, hills and countryside. I also hunted down film and written word: fiction, blogs, online news and just about anything written by Scots in order to better understand the rhythms of speech, humor, sentence structure, word choices, etc. This is a poor substitute for being there and talking to people first-hand, but I got enough to build my little storyworld to make it feel real. A number of people who have been to Scotland and who’ve read the story or exerpts totally thought I’d been there. Of course, I haven’t mustered the nerve to give the book to a Scot . . .
Randy makes a great point: if the details feel real and help create an emotional experience, that has far more impact than knowing the details are perfectly accurate. I just read Athol Dickson’s River rising, set on the Mississippi in 1927. I am aware that this author is neither a young black man or old enough to have been alive at that time, and especially not old enough to have witnessed slavery, but I totally bought it, every detail. If the story is done well enough to catch me up in it, I will totally believe the setting, even if it was impossible for the author to physically be there.
I’ve heard it said of Frederick Forsyth’s novel, The Fourth Protocol, that his research was so detailed that a cafe that is significant to the plot is easily recognisable to people following the story. The cafe owner was not happy and sued Forsyth.
Anybody know if this is true?
One thing I would add with all the research is that the history needs to be organically woven into the story. If people wanted to read only history, they could pick up a non-fiction piece on the history they wanted to read.
A novel places you in that part of history, but I do not want to be taken out of the story to learn how a sword was used during that period or cooking or anything like that. Show me without making me feel like I just opened a history textbook.
On another note, I had a friend who writes historical fiction tell me that when she was done with her current novel, she was going to write fantasy next just so she could “make everything up.” I laughed and explained to her that I still do a lot of research so my book sounds authentic, even though it takes places in another world. So even fantasy writers have to research 🙂
I firmly believe that even HF stories must have a powerful emotional experience. LoL! I probably know enough about 10th century Ireland to write a dissertation on the subject but that doesn’t mean I’m going to put it in my novel. No, my main dilemma actually lies with the geography itself. I find my scenes lack in the physical local because all I’ve had to work from for description are general photographs, maps and the paltry descriptions you get from hero sagas. Nothing that pinpoints the exact locations. I don’t know why I never considered Google Earth before. That’s probably exactly what I need. Thank you Camille!
I recently read a novel in which a character goes to Bali for a short holiday. The airport architecture is so subtly incorrect that only a frequent traveller would spot the difference. However the sensory experience achieved by making the ’error’ was just right. But the character then buys a souvenir from an Indonesian street vendor who gives her the price in Baht (Thailand currency) which she duly hands over. I can guess from other evidence that the author had holidayed in Bali too, so it seems that on-site research somewhere you’re unfamiliar with doesn’t necessarily guarantee a perfect outcome. Looks like an argument for keeping meticulous notes, Forsyth style.
I think the detail work is what made Harry Potter books 1-6 so wonderful- Rowling saturated her books with the most everyday of details, with the overall effect being that her world did feel more realistic, even though she was talking about a castle whose rooms ad staircases had a tendency to move, and even though one of the favorite treats of her students was a frog that had a tendency to jump arou d.
You are very right.And of course she has never been to a place like Hogwarts but yet described it as if from experience.
I’m totally distracted by stories that gets the facts wrong. I responded once when someone wanted to know the names of the mountains in East Texas. Mountains? Once we pinpointed what she meant by East Texas — the Golden Triangle area of Beaumont, TX or the NE Texas area of Longview where I’m from (and we’ve always called it East Texas), I was able to answer some of her questions. We have rolling hills–not mountains. She wasn’t real happy with that because it seems she’d have to do some revison. I haven’t had the courage to read her book.
Here in Louisiana where I live now, the people get irate when false pictures are painted about their lives and culture. I attended a lecture/reading once and heard an attendee take the author to task because she had flowers growing in South Louisiana that did NOT grow here–EVER.
We need to do the very best we can when researching and take advantage of all tools available to us. I would hate to be called out in front of others for a silly mistake in a published book. I think it would probably shut me down completely! Yeah, I have thin skin and want to do it right and want to please everyone. And that’s just one of my hang-ups. 🙂
A lot of this can be applied to SF/F novel writing as well, when much of the make up stuff is based on some historical concept. In example, I’m writing a scifi series where the dominant culture in which the characters live uses jousting tournaments much like they did in the Renaissance era.
Obviously I cannot go back in time to experience or talk to people who did that sort of thing, but there are I know there are enough people today who know enough with whom I can talk to be accurate in my representation. While I have gotten bogged down by research, I do have remember that it’s only a novel–not a documentary.
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It’s OKAY if you have never been to the place you are writing about.You can easily ask people who have or google it up.If your book feels real enough nobody will even notice the made up parts in between the real parts,in other words you will be fine