Writing workshop -- Making Research Personal

Hello, writers! I'm presenting an online writing workshop-- Fun Facts: Making research personal.  The class will be held 9-20 September 2019. 

Williamsburg, VA

About the workshop

For authors, our writing process can become so absorbing that it steals time away from our families and friends. By inviting them to become our partners in research, we gain some of that time back through multi-tasking.

In this class, we'll discuss more efficient, personal, and fun ways to research our historical or contemporary stories by:

• improving the results returned by search engines;
• creating an inventory of the passions, experiences, and expertise of our family and friends;
• "living" the research with our loved ones as sidekicks;
• the etiquette of involving our family and friends.

This online workshop will take 6 lessons over 2 weeks and costs 20 USD.

Register by Sept 14

Always there - research

I love the research for books so much that I sometimes forget to stop researching and start writing the story.

The goal, of course, is to write my stories to be as authentic as possible. For historical books, I visit locations, try recipes, check out period details (like fashion, transportation, food, technology) on the Internet, and interview people who may have lived during the time period.

For contemporary stories, I often write about issues, technology, or places in which I have experience. Sometimes, though, my experiences aren't enough to write a complete, interesting, satisfying story. In those cases, I research and research and research...

If you're a writer, here are a few tips for researching books, whether historical or contemporary.

• Interview your family and friends: Everyone you know is an expert on something--and often their interests and skills will surprise you. So ask--and prepare to be amazed. Make mental notes about their love of horseback-riding or their fascination with astronomy. You will use it one day!
• Visit museums, historical sites, etc.: Many docents know everything about a topic, and they want to answer your questions. So visit museums or historical sites and engage in conversation with the docents, staff, park rangers, etc. They love eager and interested visitors.
• Watch YouTube: Let's face it. YouTube has a video for everything. If you don't know how something works, you'll find a how-to video on YouTube.
• Browse Wikipedia: Yeah, I know. You can't always rely on wikipedia to give you purely factual, accurate information. But, it can supply a good, general overview--and the references linked at the end of each article are priceless.
• Go!: if you have access to locations or venues that will be featured in your book, go and experience it firsthand. Use local parks as book settings. Take in a ballgame. Sign up for lessons in cooking, dancing, sports, etc. 

Let me show how I applied some of these suggestions to my books.

The Whisper Falls series: It's entirely possible that I have visited every colonial museum or historical site in North Carolina and Virginia. The docents/guides at Mount Vernon, Tryon Palace, Yates Mill, and Williamsburg are amazing. I learned incredible nuggets of information that enriched my stories.

As a time-travel, the Whisper Falls series also required contemporary research. I've watched YouTube videos about mountain bike racing, chatted with my Physical Therapist about how to break noses, and asked my cousin-in-law (who, coincidentally, is the registrar of deeds in a nearby county) to explain how to fake a birth certificate.

The I WISH series: In the first book, the issues were mainly depression and poverty--which I have first-hand experience with. But I also had a biracial character, which required interviews with a biracial friend. The second and third books deal with grief, terminal illness, and disability. Again, I interviewed people with knowledge of brain injuries and caregivers of cancer patients. Their candor was invaluable. For small details--like ballroom dancing or building stacked stone walls--I used YouTube. Lastly, I needed one of the main characters to have an interesting hobby, and the young man ended up with my husband's passion--astronomy.

The Possibility of Somewhere: The heroine, Eden, is dealing with poverty and the difficulties of getting college scholarships when you can't afford the extra-curricular activities that make your resume shiny. Since those issues are somewhat autobiographical, I knew how she felt. But the details had changed since I was in high school. So I read blogs, content on social media, and Quora questions. The hero, Ash, is the son of Asian-Indian immigrants. Because I work at a global company, I had several Indian colleagues who were willing to answer my questions about what life would be like for Ash.

Fade To Us: This book (which releases in February 2018) may have been the most interesting to research because of the variety of disparate threads that are woven through.

• Biracial stage manager: The hero is half-Chinese and half-white. I interviewed a Chinese friend and her biracial sons to understand the character of Micah. He's the stage manager for theater productions. Happily, my daughter has a friend who is a professional stage manager. (And, yes, Daniel, you will see some of your quotes in the book :)
• Baseball umpires: The heroine's mom is a lady umpire; that was fun to research! I attended a baseball game with a professional umpire, who called them for me and gave me insider details. In addition to introducing me to a lady umpire, he beta-read the baseball sections of the book.
• Summer musical theater program: A local high school allowed me to sit in on their musical theater rehearsals, both during the school year and during the summer. Since the musical featured in the book is Oklahoma!, I was able to observe the rehearsals of a local community theater's production of Oklahoma!.
• Autism: The third main character, Natalie, is on the autism spectrum. I have a child with Asperger's Syndrome, so I've "lived" the research for over 20 years. But I still read books and blogs, chatted with autism parents, and leaned on the many observations I've made with my daughter and her friends on the spectrum. Natalie is--of course--her own unique person; she is not a re-creation of anyone I know.

I hope that some of these suggestions spark ideas for how you can make your research process fun and effective!

Favorite links for writers - historical research

I love research, possibly too much because I'll immerse myself in details and sometimes delay writing the book. With Whisper Falls (which is half-set in 18th century North Carolina), I researched the colonial and post-revolutionary periods in America for six years before I started writing the book.

Along the way, I've collected many websites and blogs that have helped me get the details right. It's important to trust your sources, and I feel like authors can trust these. (Some have been contributed by author friends. Thank you!)

Warning: This post will be heavy on references to USA history and, in particular, North Carolina history.

Daily Life

Website	Type of content
Metropolitan Museum of Art	art work for fashions, furnishings, locations/landscapes
Colonial Williamsburg	wonderful place to visit for living history; it also has amazing content on its website on fashion, medicine, furnishings, jobs, etc.
Mount Vernon	educational resources about George Washington
Colonial Quills	blog for writers passionate about Colonial America
Costume Gallery	fashion through the ages
Historic food	photos and recipes for historic foods in Britain and Europe
British Museum	everything
Bloomsbury Heritage	reprints of historical books, maps, etc
Costume Gallery	fashion through the ages

People and Events

Website	Type of Content
North Carolina History Project	lists people, events, and regions from 1585-present for the state of North Carolina
Archives: US UK Scotland North Carolina	historical documents and records, such as newspapers, wills, court proceedings
Etymology Online	A site for discovering a word's origins; it's great for making sure that the vocabulary you want to use was in existence in your period of history
Old Bailey Online	Court proceedings from London 1674-1913
People History	Type in a date in history and learn what happened that day
Library of Congress Digital Public Library of America	everything and more

About Wikipedia--
I am cautious about using Wikipedia, but I still think it's a great resource. It can give you a good, basic overview of events or people in history. Even better, though, are the resources and references listed at the bottom of the page.

Do you have any links to add?  I'd love to include more links to great historical information--so leave them in the comments!

Enoch's planets

I'm working on a historical novel that will include the real-life hero Nathan Hale.  While doing some research, I looked at a diary written by his brother, Enoch Hale.

Enoch was an interesting dude.  Here is a page from his diary, where he was tracking the planets...

And may I just say how odd, humbling, and exciting it is to handle documents that are 250 years old.

Counting down 1 week and Thank You Mary

One week from today is the release of A Whisper In Time. I can't wait for people to get their hands on the next stage in Mark and Susanna's story!

But first, let me pause and give a word of gratitude.

I needed to research some information for a pair of books, one that is mostly written and one that I'll probably get started on this summer.  I planned a trip to Williamsburg, then contacted a high school friend who lived there--to ask her if we could meet for coffee.

Mary did so much more than that. She welcomed me into her home and accompanied me on my forays into the surrounding areas. Perhaps, best of all, she introduced me to other people who love history--people who were willing to share their ideas and knowledge so that the worlds I'll be creating in future books will be richer and more authentic.

Thank you, Mary! You have taken hospitality to a fine art and I am deeply grateful.

It takes a village

I have become an unapologetic user of people. Everyone I meet becomes a potential source of information for my next book. No one is exempt.

• Tom-the-personal-trainer offers me insights into the mindset of male athletes. 
• My physical therapist helps me figure out how to hurt people (and, not surprisingly, he is very good at that). 
• My nurse practitioner advises me on how long it takes for untreated wounds to become infected (when she's not taking care of me). 
• My cousin (who is studying to be an English professor) can now serve as my finger-on-the-pulse of academia.
• All female acquaintances with teenage sons are now my new best friends. 

Yesterday, I had brunch with a friend and two of her amazing kids.  One will soon be a secondary English teacher (yay! another finger-on-the-pulse). The other is a male high school senior.  Poor guy. I had a list of questions waiting for him. If he could have any classic car, which one? What types of sport teams are available in college?  How much do teen soccer players know about knee injuries?

WARNING to all males 14-18: Avoid me if you don't like talking to earnest old ladies. I have an endless supply of things I want to understand about your world.

So, friends, I may be unapologetic about picking your brain, but I am also deeply grateful.  It may be my mind assembling the puzzle pieces of the plot and my voice choosing the words, but it is your knowledge, experiences, and generosity that provide the building blocks.

I thank you all!

Hidden gold for writers

I love hanging out with other writers, which is why I belong to several writing groups.  My author-friends in the Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood run a great blog to help aspiring authors—and I'm the blog host on Tuesday, December 18.

We'll be discussing websites that we use to gather research for our manuscripts. 

I'm encouraging Ruby Blog visitors to add comments which list their favorite research sites. Throughout the day, I'll update this authoretc post with their recommendations.  By Tuesday's end, I hope to have a wonderful, cumulative list of Hidden Gold.

Free Books and Publications

• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Federal Citizen Information Center

Government Websites to Cultural Resources and Artifacts

• The British Museum 
• NC Dept of Cultural Resources

 
Websites about History and Historic Places

• Colonial Quill blog
• Colonial Williamsburg
• Costume Gallery
• Mount Vernon
• NC History: A Digital Textbook
• NC History Project 
• NC Historic Sites
• Old Bailey (Historic proceedings from England's court system)
• Recipes from the past
• Tryon Palace

  
Military, Law Enforcement, Crime, and Forensics

• All things military
• Dept of Defense registered websites
• Graveyard Shift (Blog about law enforcement)
• Firearms Tutorial
• Military Rank
• Navy Seals 
• U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
• U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
• U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• U.S. Joint Special Ops Command
• Weapons   
• Writer's Forensics Blog

Miscellaneous

• Old book repository
• On this day in history...
• Online Etymology
• Urban Dictionary

A Place of Confidence

I've always loved eighteenth century history. When I was in elementary school, that time period seemed so romantic with its pioneering spirit, elegant balls, travel by carriage, and tea parties staged to quench the thirst for freedom.

Before I wrote Whisper Falls, I researched that period of history for six years, visiting historical sites and reading historical tomes.  Along the way, I discovered just how brutal, frightening, and uncivilized that Colonial and Post-Revolutionary America could be. Reality only intensified my curiosity. What mindset did it take for the upper classes to not see the human beings who served them? How must it feel to believe in an ideal so fiercely that the possibility of forfeiting life, family, or fortune was deemed worth the sacrifice?

By the time I began writing Whisper Falls, I had saturated myself with learning about the people of the 1790s. I'd collected reams of data on their clothing, daily life, food, religion, and jobs. The quest for information continued as I wrote. Susanna (the heroine) was an eighteenth-century indentured servant. Mark (the hero) was a modern-day mountain bike racer.  I am neither, so I had to research both. Two luxurious years elapsed between writing the first-word and making the first-sale.

For the sequel, I've had to compress the schedule dramatically.  A Whisper in Time¹ must be written and researched in nine months.

In the historical part of the second book, even though a new century has dawned, I assumed that my previous research still held.  Wrong. America evolved a great deal during the ten-year span between 1795 and 1805.  Politics, fashion, architecture, attitudes—all were changing. 

In modern-day part of the sequel, I gave my protagonist an obstacle that involves Federal laws with little precedent, a government official of little imagination, and the thin line between truth and fact.  The protagonist's struggle to wade through the maze of regulations and governing bodies became my struggle.  The process of discovery nearly crippled me.

I hit the jackpot late last night. After weeks of battling websites and dense content, I finally connected the dots and figured out how the system works.  Not surprisingly, it is boring, time-consuming, and often stupid. But it is possible to navigate.

For an author, knowing the system allows me to alter it. Poetic license is possible now that I understand.

The book has resumed writing itself. Once I've done the research—once I have complete access to the facts—only then I am free to write from a place of confidence.
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   ¹ A Whisper In Time is the working title for book two of the Whisper Falls trilogy.

Be Not Afraid

Sunday was a spectacular day in many ways.

1. North Carolina had another gorgeous autumn day. (Have I ever mentioned how much I love my adopted state?)
2. It was Veterans Day. People told me thank you for my service to the nation (and I, in turn, thanked those who gave the far-greater sacrifice of service during wartime.)
3. I attended my first author's event.

I'm about to make a confession, and it's a statement that my introverted little soul never thought I would say: I loved my first author's event! Two hours flew past (at least for me.) After I gave a reading of the first chapter of Whisper Falls, the discussion started. And the questions flowed. We talked books, the craft of writing, historical research, the publishing business, social media...

I learned so much from this wonderful group of young women and their moms. (For the YA writers reading this post, get thee to a book club. You will get way more than you give.)  I asked the group if I could interview them, and they graciously consented. Read on and I promise that you too will benefit from their collective wisdom¹.

Q: What do you like least about the current YA fiction market?
A:

• There is too much sameness. Bookstores have entire sections of Paranormal Romance.  We're seeing too many Twilight knock-offs.
• The storylines just seem too young.  A lot of today's books are better suited to the middle grade age group than high school readers.

Q: What makes a YA book appealing to you? What would you wish to see more of?
A:

• When writing a character, allow him/her to be:
  • more real
  • both good and bad
  • multi-dimensional and flawed
• We want stories with:
  • more complex plots
  • higher quality, especially in execution
  • better writing in general (style, voice, sentence structure, literary devices, vocabulary, etc)

Q: How much slang is okay? How much cursing?
A:

• Only use slang in dialog.  Leave it out when we're inside the character's head.
• With cursing, it really doesn't matter.  It's fine either way.  But—if you do use curse words—don't let them be gratuitous. It has to flow naturally from the characters' personalities and the situations they find themselves in².
• FYI... we spell out everything in our texts now.  We might be a little easy on the capitalization, but everything else is usually correct.

Q: What topics can authors address in YA fiction?
A:

• Avoid anything too cliched. We've seen plenty of books on typical teen issues.
• Give us more about relationships.  Romantic relationships are still fine, but there are other kinds too. We have relationships with our parents, friends, siblings, grandparents, and teachers.  Explore those.
• It would be great to have more characters who struggle to find their purpose in life.  Why am I here? Where should I go next and how do I get there?  Write books about the process of self-discovery.

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring YA authors?
A:

• Don't try to follow a pattern too much. Don't copy what's already on the market.  If you do, you're missing the point. You have your own good qualities, your own voice, your own unique way of executing a story.  That's the book we want to read.
• Don't cater to the least common denominator. Don't dumb down the book. We like well-written stories. We like good sentence structure and vocabulary. We want complexity.
• Let the characters be real. Let them make mistakes and suffer the consequences.
• Don't be predictable. We don't want to see the plot twists a mile away.  But don't just insert yourself into the story and make things happen either. Surprise us in the right way.

Q: What makes you want to pick up a book in a bookstore?
A:

• The Cover [the girls said in unison]
• [laughter]
• [silence]

Q: Anything else besides the cover?

A: Back blurbs, although not everyone reads them.  Some readers don't want to have too big of a hint in advance.


Q: Tell me more about what you like in cover art.
A:

• It has to be cool.
• It needs a great font.
• We like photographs better than artwork, but it has to be good quality photography.

Q: What types of social media do you use most?
A:

• Twitter, for conversations
• Pinterest
• Tumblr, a little
• But Facebook? Not so much.  FB seems to be fading away.

Q: How do you find out about books?
A:

• Word of mouth is the best way.  We get recommendations from our friends and our moms.
• goodreads.com
• booklists from teachers³
• teenink.com
• magazines
• Once we like an author, we'll research more books by that author on amazon.com or the author's website.

Wow. Are you not blown away by their wisdom? I'm so glad I asked them for this interview.  The girls⁴, like their answers, were smart, profound, fun, and inspiring.  I enjoyed this visit so much that I'll just have to beg, borrow, and steal my way into other such opportunities.

America, you have nothing to fear. The next generation is amazing!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¹ The answers to interview questions include actual quotes from the book club members. The teens answered more than the mothers, but Moms are represented in there too.
² The adults agreed with the teens on this issue, which is good since my characters (especially the hero) curse.  I think it is organic to his personality, though.
³ There was a Language Arts teacher at the book club meeting. She told me that her booklists tend to contain classics. She said that it's hard to find well-written books in the current market that she can recommend. That, YA authors, is a sobering statement. Just sayin...
⁴Thanks to Ellie, Claire, Laura, Melanie, and Michelle for inviting me!

Getting the History Right

It takes a lot of effort to get the history right in historical fiction.

The author has to think about everything that a person experiences.  Food, clothing, housing, technology, and transportation are visible parts of life that change over time.  But there are plenty of aspects that are not so visible--such as political, moral, and religious beliefs. Sleeping, hygiene, and health behaviors. Attitudes toward marriage, children, work, humor and recreation, social class, education, ethnic groups, and women.

The research for Whisper Falls began six years ago when I visited Tryon Palace in New Bern.  (I love that place.  I've been back two times since, each time focusing on a different aspect of colonial life.)  The docents were extremely knowledgeable and happy to share what they knew.

When I asked about servants, one of the docents/reenactors told me that little is known about the servant class.  Most servants didn't know how to write, and the ones who did would've had a hard time affording ink and paper.  Bottom line: a writer can interpret what it might have been like and it would be hard to dispute.

Cool.  The pressure was reduced somewhat. But, still, servants worked for wealthy people--so I had to learn about both.  My research efforts included:

• Visits to the NC State Archives, NC History Museum, Mount Vernon Estate and Grist Mill, Tryon Palace, Carlyle House, Monticello, Bennett Place, Joel Lane House, and Claude Moore Colonial Farm
• Reading letters, journals, inventories, cookbooks, and newspapers from the period
• Reviewing historical blogs, scholarly works, old maps, and history tomes
• Exchanging email with experts (such as a grist mill association)
• Attending workshops on history; attending a colonial fashion show (where I was able to view up-close-and-personal some 18th century undergarments)
• Preparing 18th century recipes (tasting mandatory)

I also read historical fiction that targeted the same period, although this is a tricky thing to count on.  There is no guarantee that the history is correct.

All these efforts may seem like overkill--but I don't mind.  I love the research.  It's just pure fun for me.  

Hitting the road

Book 2 is due next spring. Half of the story takes place in 2016; the other half circa 1800.

I've had a brainstorming session with the brilliant Laura.  But, as I found with Whisper Falls, delving into the history often unfolds the story.  It's all there, waiting to be discovered.

So I'm heading on a couple of road trips.  First, daughter #2 and I will be traveling through eastern North Carolina, seeking out historical sites--hoping the land, buildings, and keepers-of-the-past share their wisdom.

Two weeks later, I'm heading to Virginia.  One of my eighteenth-century characters earns her living as a seamstress.  I'll explore the life styles, fashions, and textiles of that period in Richmond, Alexandria, McLean, and Mount Vernon.  My amazing husband has offered to drive.

The only thing better than learning about American history is to experience it with my family. I can't wait.