8 Tips on How To Avoid Rabbit Holes in Research While Writing Historical Novels
From always carrying a notebook to getting rid of nonessentials, author Angela Petch shares 8 tips on how to avoid rabbit holes while researching your historical fiction novel.
If you go down a rabbit hole, like Alice in Wonderland, whilst researching for your novel, you might not come out for a while. Beware! Could you weave in the point that Mussolini insisted Italians ate rice instead of pasta during WWII, or that British soldiers got a ration of three sheets of toilet paper a day whilst Americans had 22? Fascinating these facts might be, are they relevant? Do they add color to your story?
When I’m researching for a new historical novel, I set aside at least two months to enrich my basic idea. Yes, I have a story and characters in my head before I start, but I need to be confident of facts, geography, dates, local traditions, etc. However, it is important to know when to stop. Researching is not the same as writing your novel.
Here are some tips on research that I've picked up after publishing six historical novels.
1. Always carry a notebook around. You never know when you might need to record a sentence seen in a museum or a line in an advert or poster on a street hoarding that sets your mind alive for another scene that you want to include in your book.
2. Always carry your camera or cell phone around with you to capture images on film that you might need to use for a scene later on when you’re not in the same location where your book takes place.
3. Give yourself reminders. When it comes to the actual writing of these scenes, and you can’t remember a detail but you’re sure you’ve read it in some book or other on your shelf or written it down in your notebook but you’re not quite sure which notebook, put a few X’s in the text and a note in the margin to remind yourself to research later. Otherwise, your attention will be dragged away from the drama of the moment, the pathos and passion that you're wanting to instil on the page. When you decide you absolutely need to look up something on the Internet that you weren’t sure about, you can get side-tracked by something else and one hour later your manuscript is still at the point where you left off before you went down the rabbit hole. And you will likely have lost that brilliant moment of inspiration that writers thrive on.
4. Use a separate notebook for your research facts and always write down the source so that when you come to write a bibliography at the end of the book or want to weave more detail in your story, you’re not desperately hunting around for scraps of paper or looking in your bookshelf for the book you thought you’d used. In fact, this might even have been a library book and you gave it back ages ago. Always, always record.
5. Use a timer to check on how much time you’re spending on research. Remember you’re writing fiction and not a textbook. It’s quite shocking adding up how much time we waste. Don’t waste time. That’s money and effort down the drain. Yes, you need to create an authentic picture of the period, but don’t waste time on half a sentence when you could be spending time on the emotion and narrative. Know when to stop researching. Be strict with yourself. You can wallow around in research like a hippopotamus wallowing around in mud, but it won’t get your book written.
6. Be willing to get rid of nonessentials. When it comes to editing your story, what you filter out will be as important as what you leave in. So, focus on the important details and not your research “darlings.” I make comments in the margins all the time during my first drafts. I try to be honest with myself, jotting sentences like: “This is too heavy on the research.” “Is this distracting from the narrative?” “Have I included this because I think it’s a clever piece of research?” Don’t focus on irrelevant details because you will lose the reader and literally lose the plot. Is some of your research that you’ve included behaving like extra jigsaw pieces that don’t fit within the finished puzzle? Get rid of it.
7. Stay open to extra details. After you’ve decided you’ve done enough research, it’s still not a bad idea to keep your eyes and ears open for extra details that you come across before you wrap up the final manuscript to send to your editor. This probably sounds like a contradiction but you still haven’t quite delivered your baby.
8. Remind yourself that research can turn into procrastination. As Emma Darwin says in her brilliant book, Get Started in Writing Historical Fiction: “Research doesn’t get the story written; only writing does.”
Angela Petch is an award-winning writer of fiction—and the occasional poem. Every summer she moves to Tuscany for six months where, with her husband, she owns a renovated watermill which they let out. When not exploring their unspoilt corner of the Apennines, she disappears to her writing desk at the top of their converted stable. In her Italian handbag or hiking rucksack she always makes sure to store notebook and pen to jot down ideas. The winter months are spent in Sussex where most of their family live. When she’s not helping out with grandchildren, she catches up with writer friends.
