Research for writers can be a double-edged sword

[Ronn Munsterman]

I'm working on the next Sgt. Dunn Novel, #13. While researching a river in Germany, I learned it flowed the wrong way for Dunn to use it the way I envisioned.

Boy, those pesky facts'll get ya.

Picture of The Moselle River Valley at Trier, Germany - near the front line of the Battle of the Bulge.

[LilyBLily]

Oops!

Nobody's called me out yet on my sparse-to-implausible descriptions of Western ranch life, although one cranky reviewer said she was tired of reading about stallions. So I put a mare in the next book. Another book has both a mare and a stallion--and honestly, I have NO IDEA if they can be safely together at the same time or if the stallion would be constantly causing trouble.

I'm switching away from Westerns after I finish the ones I'm working on now. It's probably for the best.

[Marti Talbott]

Oops!

Nobody's called me out yet on my sparse-to-implausible descriptions of Western ranch life, although one cranky reviewer said she was tired of reading about stallions. So I put a mare in the next book. Another book has both a mare and a stallion--and honestly, I have NO IDEA if they can be safely together at the same time or if the stallion would be constantly causing trouble.

I'm switching away from Westerns after I finish the ones I'm working on now. It's probably for the best.

I have lived and learned too. Complaints - they didn't have potatoes back then, you have the phone calls to London all screwed up. London time should have been...etc, etc. That's why I switched from historical to contemporary mysteries. Historical novels are a lot more work than readers realize, but boy will they call you out if you don't have everything spot on. I occasionally scream, "Fine, write your own book!" Of course, they can't hear me. Quick, just run away. 

[cecilia_writer]

Maps can be quite deceptive like that. I had a path in a novel that I assumed was on the flat because I thought it was a normal canal towpath, but luckily I went to see it for myself, which involved three train journeys and a taxi for the last few miles, and found it went up and down over a defensive structure that had been built just alongside the canal.
I also had visitors here in Edinburgh not long ago who hadn't realised the Castle was up on a hill and were aghast when we went to look at it (from below) - 'How are we going to get up there?'

[German Translator]

While researching a river in Germany, I learned it flowed the wrong way for Dunn to use it the way I envisioned.

--So which direction did you need?

[idontknowyet]

Oops!

Nobody's called me out yet on my sparse-to-implausible descriptions of Western ranch life, although one cranky reviewer said she was tired of reading about stallions. So I put a mare in the next book. Another book has both a mare and a stallion--and honestly, I have NO IDEA if they can be safely together at the same time or if the stallion would be constantly causing trouble.

I'm switching away from Westerns after I finish the ones I'm working on now. It's probably for the best.

Don't most animal have to be in heat to cause trouble?

[LilyBLily]

Oops!

Nobody's called me out yet on my sparse-to-implausible descriptions of Western ranch life, although one cranky reviewer said she was tired of reading about stallions. So I put a mare in the next book. Another book has both a mare and a stallion--and honestly, I have NO IDEA if they can be safely together at the same time or if the stallion would be constantly causing trouble.

I'm switching away from Westerns after I finish the ones I'm working on now. It's probably for the best.

Don't most animal have to be in heat to cause trouble?

I would think so, but then again, on all the farms I've lived near (and I live about a thousand feet from one right now) there have been lots of cows but no bulls. Different species, granted. As I more than implied, I don't know much about animals--and I intend to keep it that way.

[TimothyEllis]

I don't know much about animals--and I intend to keep it that way.

The more I watch ducks and swans, the better I understand people.

[elleoco]

Don't most animal have to be in heat to cause trouble?

The heat cycle for a mare is about 5 days every 3 weeks. Not just stallions but geldings or more rarely other mares will react to them when they're in heat, which can be a pain, even if that particular mare isn't too susceptible to mood swings. Back when horses were often tied side by side, turned out together in groups, etc., a nice, stolid gelding would have been preferable for most.

Stallions are always in heat. IMO testosterone is the most powerful substance in the world. I sincerely doubt any sensible person who used a horse for ordinary transportation would have considered a stallion as an everyday mount.

The OP's premise is that it's sad when research shows you can't have something work the way you want in a story, which is different from not doing research at all - something that spoils a lot of stories in all genres.

[DrewMcGunn]

I write alternate history. The cardinal rule in this genre is you have to know your facts before you twist things up.
My last scene was a small skirmish at the beginning of the civil war in Virginia. I spent more time researching the scene than I did writing it. The scene I should be writing at the moment is set in Richmond a few days later. I have spent too many hours scrolling through chroniclingamerica.loc.gov at contemporary newspapers for the day the scene is set.
I may write slow, but I've been complimented in reviews for the deep attention to historical details, even when the premise of the story is making major changes to history.

[Kristen.s.walker]

Despite writing fantasy in an alternate world, I spend a lot of time on researching various subjects. I get disappointed sometimes when I learn things don't work how I wanted them to. Like airships are really impractical for flying around. So big, so slow, and so finicky depending on weather conditions. And then you have to find a place to tie it anywhere the characters want to stop, because it's too much work to land and then get it back up in the air. I feel like there are only so many excuses I can make with magic before it sounds ridiculous.

[Marti Talbott]

Despite writing fantasy in an alternate world, I spend a lot of time on researching various subjects. I get disappointed sometimes when I learn things don't work how I wanted them to. Like airships are really impractical for flying around. So big, so slow, and so finicky depending on weather conditions. And then you have to find a place to tie it anywhere the characters want to stop, because it's too much work to land and then get it back up in the air. I feel like there are only so many excuses I can make with magic before it sounds ridiculous.

I feel your pain.

[Ronn Munsterman]

While researching a river in Germany, I learned it flowed the wrong way for Dunn to use it the way I envisioned.

--So which direction did you need?

The river flows northeast at the location in question. The front line where he needs to get is southwest . . . on the other hand, the Moselle River was probably at least partially frozen over due to the extreme cold of the winter of 1944-45. Maybe he can walk it.

[okey dokey]

How about a disclaimer that you might have moved a mountain or two to make the landscape fit the story, and you needed to have the soil that would produce certain things, and Hey folks, this is fiction. Enjoy.

[Maggie Ann]

How about a disclaimer that you might have moved a mountain or two to make the landscape fit the story, and you needed to have the soil that would produce certain things, and Hey folks, this is fiction. Enjoy.

I wrote a disclaimer about an historical event taking place a year later than it actually did because it needed to fit the story. Nobody called me on it.

[JRTomlin]

How about a disclaimer that you might have moved a mountain or two to make the landscape fit the story, and you needed to have the soil that would produce certain things, and Hey folks, this is fiction. Enjoy.

Doesn't work that way in Historical Fiction. Leaving out the History is like writing Fantasy with no... you know... Fantasy.

And fans often know a lot. If they don't already know, many of them will do the research. And I can't complain. I have long refused to read a certain writer after she put a spinning wheel in 13th century England (they weren't). I think the only thing that annoys me about all the research is that it does make producing novels slower. If I work really hard I can manage three a year and I don't usually want to work that damned hard.

If you put in a disclaimer they will sometimes let slide a minor change but not a major one.  And even then some will complain about it.

[JackT]

I was writing an historical novel once and found a reference in a primary source to a solar eclipse that took place on a particularly significant day. I really wanted to include this in the book, but I needed to verify it with at least one other source, and when I checked the official astronomical records it said that the eclipse took place ten days later. It took me some time to realise that the discrepancy was because England was using the Julian Calendar and Europe was using the Gregorian calendar.

[DrewMcGunn]

Doesn't work that way in Historical Fiction. Leaving out the History is like writing Fantasy with no... you know... Fantasy.

And fans often know a lot. If they don't already know, many of them will do the research. And I can't complain. I have long refused to read a certain writer after she put a spinning wheel in 13th century England (they weren't). I think the only thing that annoys me about all the research is that it does make producing novels slower. If I work really hard I can manage three a year and I don't usually want to work that damned hard.

If you put in a disclaimer they will sometimes let slide a minor change but not a major one.  And even then some will complain about it.

So true. I'll tolerate a disclaimer up to a point, but I tend to agree, most readers of historical fiction tend to be an unforgiving lot. Even in alternate history, the stuff that comes before the "point of divergence" needs to as accurate as possible.

I found a cool resource I thought I would share here. My latest WIP speculates about a super-volcanic eruption in the 19th century. I've wanted to catch things as accurately as possible and found a wonderful tool attached to the US Library of Congress:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

This is an online depository of tens of thousands of imaged newspapers in the US from 1789 to the present. I believe they even have some digitized newspapers all the way back to the 1690s. I've wasted way too much time on it already, but it's fascinating stuff.

[LilyBLily]

If I read historical fiction I want the history to be accurate. No sliding stuff around. There are enough secondary sources from nonfiction biographers and historians that we really don't have any excuse. I did a ton of research for my one historical and then set it aside for a style rewrite; if I ever go back to it, I'm going to reread all my newest secondary sources and attempt to glean some details no one has yet put in a novel. There's hardly any point in writing one without some good details.

And we keep learning things. Finding Richard III certainly was an interesting event.

[Maggie Ann]

If I read historical fiction I want the history to be accurate. No sliding stuff around. There are enough secondary sources from nonfiction biographers and historians that we really don't have any excuse. I did a ton of research for my one historical and then set it aside for a style rewrite; if I ever go back to it, I'm going to reread all my newest secondary sources and attempt to glean some details no one has yet put in a novel. There's hardly any point in writing one without some good details.

And we keep learning things. Finding Richard III certainly was an interesting event.

Buried under a parking lot of all places. It was in my book with Richard III as a character (I never touted it as historical fiction) that I moved the time Elizabeth Woodville and her daughters left sanctuary. I included that in my Author's Note.

Another very interesting fact I discovered quite by accident. I was double checking the Battle of Bosworth Field when I came across an archeological discovery that had just been revealed a few weeks before then.

Ambion Hill was thought to be the site of the final charge, but this discovery puts the place where Richard fell a mile away, nearer to Garbrodys Hill. The name of that hill was changed to Crown Hill in 1605.

If I had written the book a year before, I would have set the final battle by Ambion Hill and been thought correct. If someone read it a year or two later and knew about the new archeological evidence, I would have been thought lax in my research. Things change and it's not always possible to keep up.

[Jeff Tanyard]

I found a cool resource I thought I would share here. My latest WIP speculates about a super-volcanic eruption in the 19th century. I've wanted to catch things as accurately as possible and found a wonderful tool attached to the US Library of Congress:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

This is an online depository of tens of thousands of imaged newspapers in the US from 1789 to the present. I believe they even have some digitized newspapers all the way back to the 1690s. I've wasted way too much time on it already, but it's fascinating stuff.

Browsing it right now.  That's cool as hell.  Thanks, man.   

[elleoco]

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

Yes, thanks a bunch.