Avoiding the Rabbit Hole: Historical Research for Writers
Julia Dielmann graduated with the 2023 cohort. Her queer historical YA novel Love and Liberty tells the story of 17-year-old Adrienne de Clairmont who runs from an arranged marriage by reinventing themselves as Adrien in the powder-keg of nineteenth-century Parisian poverty.
You can contact Julia via email and follow her on X (Twitter) and Instagram.
So you’ve decided to write a historical novel. Maybe there’s an era you love or an event you’ve always been obsessed with. But the more you think about it, the more you realise this is going to involve a tremendous amount of research. And suddenly, that shiny new idea seems terrifying rather than brilliant. There are so many details to get right, so many pitfalls to avoid. After all, you don’t want to write about your characters climbing up the Eiffel Tower before it was even built (yes, that happened to me). But don’t worry! Here are my top five tips for making research more manageable and maybe even fun.
1. Get a general overview of your chosen time period. This is the big-picture stuff: who was in power? What did society look like? What significant events were going on at the time? The Very Short Introductions series by the Oxford University Press are a good place to start.
2. Next, get into the details, the nitty-gritty. What did people wear? What did they eat? What did they believe in? This is where it’s easy to get sidetracked by all those fascinating new facts. But odds are, you don’t really need to know most of this stuff. It can help to make a list of all the questions you need to answer. For example, my story centres around the “June Rebellion” of 1832, so I had to know the motives behind it, where it took place, who was involved (and a lot about how to treat bullet wounds!)
3. Try to get your hands on primary sources if you can. Diaries, letters, political pamphlets… nothing can give you a better insight into how people felt and thought than reading their own words. It will also help you get a sense of how they spoke so your characters don’t all sound like Shakespeare. Another useful way to avoid linguistic anachronisms is the Merriam Webster online dictionary, which will tell you the first recorded usage of literally any word. If you need extra help with finding sources, the Writers and Artists’ Guide to Writing Historical Fiction has a comprehensive guide to libraries, archives and other useful institutions in the UK, US and Commonwealth. Alternatively, Google is your friend!
4. Don’t be afraid to approach experts in the field with your questions. The worst they can do is say no - and most of the time, they will be more than happy to share their knowledge (shout-out to the lovely French National Archives employee who responded to my appallingly written email with a whole host of useful links).
5. Know when to stop. Yes, research can be fun, but don’t forget that at the end of the day, it’s supposed to inform your writing, not allow you to procrastinate. Only a small fraction of your research should end up in your book – enough to make its world realistic and vivid, but not so much that your story reads like a history lecture.
I hope that armed with these tips, you feel a bit more confident about embarking on your research journey without ending up down a rabbit hole. Have fun finding facts and use them wisely – if not in your book, they might come in handy at your next pub quiz!