12 WAYS TO RESEARCH A HISTORICAL NOVEL

12 WAYS TO RESEARCH A HISTORICAL NOVEL

by Ann Roscopf Allen

Whether you are fictionalizing historical events or making up your own story, attention to detail can determine whether your novel is credible to history buffs or if they’ll give it a pass.

1. Read about the general history of the locale where your story is set, so you have some context for your story.

2. If at all possible, visit the locale. Carefully observe details: types of foliage, local seasonal changes, weather conditions, architecture, perspectives. You may see interesting and important details that you wouldn’t know to make up. Also, make note of what’s not there; sometimes this is as important as what is there.

3. Visit local museums. They can be a wealth of information about the daily life of an era.

4. Explore old cemeteries, especially those where the models for your characters are buried. Take note of common names used in that area and era.

5. Research old newspapers. If you don’t live in the area, you can usually hire a researcher through the local public library or use inter-library loan. In addition to basic information about your story, you can get a sense of the language used at the time, other contemporaneous events, even products that were available.

6. Seek out and talk to knowledgeable people. The local librarian can help you find historical societies or amateur historians. Networking can be an essential part of your research strategy since not everything is written down somewhere, especially legends, myths, anecdotes, even the location of other written sources, such as letters and diaries.

7. Consider searching for any legal documents related to your story. Old deeds, contracts, and wills are likely to be filled with more unusual information than current boilerplate legal forms. Legal research can be tricky, but historically minded lawyers may be willing to help you out.

8. Take a look at the fiction written at the time your story is set. Often this proves to be a good source of details about the time period and even the locale.

9. Don’t ignore the footnotes. If you find a book related to your subject, don’t limit your reading to the body of the book. Endnotes, epilogues, indexes, and other appendices can contain a great deal of useful information.

10. Consider specialized data bases and sources. War records, genealogical information, and the census can reveal worthwhile information. This type of resource is often available through university libraries or research centers.

11. Buy some good reference books: a dictionary of slang or phrase origins to make sure you don’t use anachronistic language; a writer’s encyclopedia or other general reference of historical lists, dates of inventions, timelines; an unabridged dictionary; a thesaurus. Building your own reference library is a smart idea for any writer.

12. Use the Internet to its full advantage. Although reference books are often a quicker way to find information, the Internet can be more thorough, if you have the time to search. If you need to know something truly esoteric, place a post on the message board of a relevant website. But if you limit your research to the Internet alone, you are truly limiting yourself. Old newspaper archives, photographs, details of a particular locale may not be readily available online.

Because you’ll use probably only a fraction of the information you uncover in your research, you have to decide which details are worth the time to research and which are not. Regardless, the more you know, the more comfortable you’ll feel writing about a different time. Your novel will be more engaging and credible with artfully placed and historically accurate information."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ann Roscopf Allen is a college writing instructor and the author of the historical novel A Serpent Cherished, based on the true story of an 1891 Memphis murder.

Literary Term You Should Know

Foil: Foils are characters meant to play off one another’s tics and quirks, like Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus in Ulysses or Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. Or Batman and Robin.

A Case For Slow Writing

Those of us with Italian backgrounds will know that you don’t make an authentic pasta sauce in an hour. It should be cooked slowly, the ingredients added one by one, at the right time.

First the meats must be browned, next the onions, the herbs, spices and tomatoes incorporated. Then the mixture must simmer for two, three, four hours until it is a thick, mouthwatering sugo, the succulent meat falling off the bones….

It’s good to cook slowly.

But this is a writing blog, right? Yes.

And it’s okay to write slowly too, blending words, sentences and paragraphs together, adding them to just the right part, in the proper sequence.

Time spent writing can often look like this:

You write a few lines, the thoughts are flowing. You’re in the zone. Then life rips you out after what seems like a mere five minutes. You go back to the computer, type another line or two, only to be summoned by the real world again.

If this describes you, don’t worry — the story still brews while you attend to reality, the words sub-consciously simmering as you do what you need to.

There are only two situations when you really must write fast:

1. When you have a contract or a time limit. Writers quickly learn to write with speed when they have a pressing deadline. Students know the perils of handing in late assignments.

2. When you write for a living. If writing is the only way you earn money, then your income is tied to your output.

The rest of us are free to savour our writing if that’s what we want to do. Incidentally, J.K. Rowling and Stephen King are two of many authors who wrote novels at a snail’s pace. And there are lots of valid reasons why writing might take a long time.

Maybe you:

·         have a life.

·         are just starting.

·         don’t need the money.

·         are a meticulous researcher.

·         like looking for exactly the right words.

·         need time to gather your thoughts and assemble the most salient.

Or maybe you write simply because, fast or slow, it’s good for your soul. Amen.

Whether you take a day or three to write a brief article, a month or four to produce a short story, a year or more to draft a novel, I’m here to say, it’s okay to take your time. While ever you are making progress and you haven’t given up, if writing makes you happy, there’s no reason to feel guilty about doing it slowly.

Savour each word, each sentence, each paragraph.

10 WAYS TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR BOOK ENDORSEMENTS

Endorsements, sometimes called "Blurbs," are wonderful and often witty comments about your book provided by respected authors, journalists, entertainers, and industry experts connected to your topic. They're also one of the strongest sales tools an author has in their book sales toolbox. These short quotes should be gathered both before and after your book is published. Once you've gathered your endorsements what do you do with them? Here's a list of ten ways to get the most out of your well earned endorsements:

1. Book Cover. Readers respect the opinion of others, especially respected authors and industry experts. Endorsements gathered before production should be included on your book cover. In addition to placing your blurbs on the back cover, a great, short endorsement on the front will increase your sales.

2. Inside Your Book. Place pre-publication endorsements on a page or two just inside the front cover of your book. If you don't have pre-publication blurbs, consider adding your blurbs on your next printing.

3. "What Others Are Saying" Page. Collect your best endorsements and reviews on a single page and include it in your media kit. Positive endorsements will increase your press coverage.

4. Promotional Materials. When creating postcards, bookmarks, flyers, brochures and other give-a-way items, include an endorsement. They send the message, "Don't take my word for it, this is what others think of my book."

5. Tip Sheets: Create a tip sheet to include in your media kit and as a handout. Tip sheets, sometimes called a "One Page," include four basic elements: About the Book, About the Author, Book Statistics, and Order Information. A callout box or sidebar with a blurb about your book is an excellent addition.

6. Website. Include call out boxes or sidebars on your website that contain your endorsement quotes. Boxes add interest to your website. Your site visitors will view them as testimonials from others adding a level of trust.

7. Email Signature. Endorsements included with a link to your website draw interest and attention to your email signature.

8. Advertisements. Include a quality endorsement quote or two in all your print and online advertisements.

9. Query Letters. Include an endorsement or two in query letters when selling editors on stories connected to your book.

10. Press Releases. Use endorsements as quotes in your press releases. This will add interest and value to your book related news items. Additionally, a great endorsement from a recognized name is press release worthy on its own.

Literary Terms You Should Know

Fin de siecle: Put away the Ramones album and pick up some Oscar Wilde for a fin de siecle fix. Meaning "end of the century," this phrase refers to creative works completed towards the end of the 1800s, reflecting Europe’s social and political mores.

10 Steps for Editing Your Own Writing

You’ve done it. You’ve finally, triumphantly, typed out “The End.” Congratulations! Now comes the hard part: revision.

Revising is often more laborious than the writing process itself, but it’s essential — assuming, that is, that you want your writing to get published. Whether you write nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, you must evaluate your own writing and transform it from something that is complete but nothing more to something that is completely compelling. The process will involve multiple task-specific passes (not necessarily in the order presented) intended to achieve various goals. Let’s get you started:

1. Wait

Oops — hold on. Not yet. You deserve a break. Step away from the computer. Give yourself a few days to let your win sink in. Pursue another writing project, perhaps, or catch up on the rest of your life, before circling back and manipulating your manuscript.

One exception: If you have not written a synopsis or an abstract, do it now, before you revise your work. If, after reading the manuscript, you realize that you didn’t write out what you set out to write, decide whether the precis is precisely what you wanted, or whether the finished product is the real deal.

2. Hands Off

Read the entire manuscript without changing anything — or, at the most, make notes about major fixes or other key corrections for later attention. Shift from your writer mode to your reader setting. Remember, you tackled this writing project because nobody else would (or you thought you could do it better, or at least differently), so now it’s time to read it from cover page to conclusion.

Some people recommend printing your piece out in hard copy because they claim that you notice the details more when you read your work in print, but that’s impractical for a 100,000-word novel, and some people are more comfortable with on-screen reading than others, so take or leave that advice.

3. Parts of Speech

Focus, one type at a time, on the parts of speech: Notice nouns, and choose more precise terms and employ elegant variation. Is one of your characters a pirate? Refer to them as a corsair, a buccaneer, or an adventurer now and then. Use a dictionary with synonyms listed, or a thesaurus or a synonym finder.

Veer from your verbs, finding opportunities to use more vivid, compelling action words. Resist the urge to go overboard, especially with variations of “he said” (which you should minimize in dialogue as much as possible anyway by using narrative to identify the speaker), but don’t let your characters get away with walking — have them stroll, strut, stalk, amble, caper, or mince instead. Search for forms of “to be” (is, are, was, were) and strive for more active sentence construction: “She looked in and saw that he was idly handling the device” becomes “She peered in to find him fiddling with the gadget.”

Attack adjectives and adverbs. Don’t omit them without justification, but do make sure they’re not a crutch for your unwillingness to enhance descriptive language in other ways. Instead of referring to a hazy sky, describe how it reminds the character of when she used to play around the house as a child wearing a veil. Rather than mentioning a slowly flowing river as such, tell the reader about how it doesn’t seem in a particular hurry to get anywhere.

Are you sure you know the precise meaning of every word you use? As you read, be alert for terms — whether newly acquired or long since adopted — that may not express what you think they do, and look them up to confirm or deny your suspicion.

4. Sentence Structure

Are your sentences particularly complicated and convoluted, or notably short and stubby? Don’t strive for a strictly limited word range, but minimize outliers: Sentences with a word count you can tabulate on the fingers of one hand should have a punctuating purpose. Sentences that last an entire paragraph need to be snipped into palatable pieces.

Are your sentences generally active? Passive sentences are used by great writers, but you and they both know that too many sentences structured that way produce an enervating effect. Also, parenthetical phrases are better inserted mid-sentence than tacked on at the end; save the last position for the impact. The same goes for paragraphs — which, by the way, should be cloven in two if they’re more than ten or twelve lines in a Word document — half of that for Web-bound words.

And unless you’re consciously incorporating iambic pentameter, beware of sentence rhythms that may subconsciously sap readers’ energy. Too much alliteration (guilty) or assonance can weary the most dedicated reader. You’re writing prose or poetry, not constructing an obstacle or dog-agility course.

5. Deemphasize Emphasis

Do you use “scare quotes”? Frighten them away. Italics? Too many are an eyesore — and weaken the cumulative impact. Exclamation points? Omit unless OMGs are also part of the package — an exclamation point can be a crutch that takes the place of high-impact prose.

6. Tone and Voice

Eloquent literature has been laden with slang, and serious nonfiction writing can be laced with humor. But honestly appraise your writing for its personality. If you’re writing a how-to, you can be conversational, but don’t throw away your authority with your austerity. If you’re writing period fiction, be alert for anachronisms.

Do a word check. Are you concerned that perhaps you use a particular word too often? Do a search, and if you find it liberally sprinkled throughout your manuscript, cull it so that it appears with reasonable frequency.

7. Reconstruction

You may find as you read for some other purpose that a major structural flaw exists: In fiction, you may decide to add an adventure or subtract a subplot or alter the sequence of plot elements — or at least the order in which they appear if you shift from one plot thread to one or more others. Your nonfiction piece may cry out for a major reorganization. You might decide to insert instructions or develop details, or discard a digression.

Don’t hesitate to undertake significant revisions like these. Yes, you’ve spent a lot of time getting your manuscript to where it is now, but that doesn’t mean it’s where it should be. Go with your instincts.

8. Keywords

Now is the time you really search inside yourself about whether your hero’s name really fits them, or whether they kick back with one too many sidekicks or could really use a new nemesis. Or maybe a place name seems out of place, or the term for a talisman is too tortuous. Are your chapter titles or subheadings really working for you, or are you trying too hard to line them up with some grammatical gimmick?

9. Recite Makes Right

Just when you think you’ve finally nailed it, read it one more time — aloud. A recitation lets you listen to the rhythm of your writing and catch any clunky or laboriously long sentences you missed or words you omitted.

10. Editor’s Notes

Now, it’s time to send your manuscript out into the world, but unless you’re self-publishing in print or online, an editor is in its future — and, likely, so is a revision on your part based on the editor’s comments. But you’re also likely to get focused requests for rewrites, so though you may feel by now that you never want to read it again, take heart that you have some direction.

Writing The Blockbuster Book Proposal: How To Sell Your Non-Fiction Book By Britt Gillette

Writing The Blockbuster Book Proposal: How To Sell Your Non-Fiction Book By Britt Gillette

You did it. You crafted the perfect query letter for your non-fiction book, and as a result, an editor at a large publishing house has requested a full book proposal. At this point, you have a 50/50 chance of seeing your work on a bookstore shelf. The difference maker will be a strong book proposal that exhibits knowledge of your audience, what that audience needs and wants, and how that audience can be reached on a cost-effective basis.

When an editor makes a request to see your book proposal, he/she will most likely send along a brief overview of the publisher's book proposal guidelines. You might want to make some subtle adjustments to your proposal in order to meet those guidelines. But under no circumstances should you wait for a book proposal to be requested before actually writing one. A well-written, professional book proposal takes several days, oftentimes several weeks, to compose. It should be the first thing you write – before both the query letter and the manuscript itself. Despite the guidelines, each proposal is unique, and the quality of yours will be THE difference maker in determining whether or not the publisher takes a financial risk with your book. So put your best effort into crafting a blockbuster book proposal. Below, you'll find a list of the basic elements of a book proposal that, if mastered, will all but guarantee the offer of a book contract.

Element #1: The Title Page/Table of Contents: The first page of a book proposal is the title page. The title page states the working title for the book you are proposing along with your contact information (and that of your agent if you have one). Make sure to center the text. Generally, it isn't wise to use fancy borders or cutesy graphics. You're writing a business proposal. Make sure it looks like one. On the second page of your proposal, provide a short table of contents for the book proposal itself. List each of the following sections along with their corresponding page numbers: Summary, About The Author, Audience, Competition, Publicity & Promotional Opportunities, Outline, and Sample Chapters. Some will say the Outline and Sample Chapter sections are optional, but remember, you’re trying to sell a book. Providing the publisher with a sample of your writing, especially if you're a first-time author, might well mean the difference between acceptance and rejection.

Element #2: Summary: In the Summary section of your proposal, provide a brief overview of the proposed book. Try to envision the blurb that will appear on the back cover of your final product. Make that blurb the opening paragraph. Show the editor you can hook him/her on your proposal from the very first sentence, and you'll convince them of your ability to hook a potential reader as well. Elaborate on the contents of your query letter by addressing the following subjects: the content, the audience, and the author. What is the premise of your book? What does it promise its reader? Who is the market for the book? How large is that market? And, finally, why are you the best person to write this book at this time?

Element #3: About The Author: In the About The Author section of your proposal, go into greater detail about yourself. In general, it's best to use third person. But it's okay to use first person if you feel more comfortable doing so. Why are you the best qualified person to write this book? What are your credentials? Are you an expert in the field? Has your previous work been published (not just in books, but newspapers, magazines, ezines, etc.)? Are you a prolific public speaker? If so, how many speeches do you give each year? To what types of audiences do you speak? Do you have media experience or media contacts? If so, let the editor know. If you have limited experience in any or all of these fields, say so. Be honest and direct. Experience helps, but lack of experience itself will not lead to rejection. Misrepresenting yourself will. Never include information about your personal life unless it is essential to your ability to sell the book.

Element #4: Audience: In the Audience section of your proposal, clearly define the market for your book. First, identify the demographic segment you hope to target. Examples of demographic characteristics are gender, age, political ideology, religion, nationality, education level, economic status, etc. Be specific. Research the size of the audience and back up your claims with real numbers. Avoid broad claims such as "everyone will love this book," and instead use such statements as "4.5 million college-educated Christian men between the ages of 21 and 29 will be drawn to this book because of its unique..." At this point, define the psychographics of your audience. What is the motivation of this demographic to buy your book? What unmet needs and wants do they harbor that your book is sure to satisfy? In short, make certain your Audience section clearly indicates 1) who will buy your book, and 2) why they will buy it.

Element #5: Competition: In the Competition section of your proposal, provide examples of well-known published books similar to yours (or, if your book covers a new niche in a popular subject, list those books that target a similar audience). It’s always best to cite bestsellers. If you can track down the sales figures for these books, provide the number of copies each title sold. The larger the sales figures, the more you strengthen your case that a large market exists for your subject matter. Once you've established that a large market exists, explain why your book will be different. In what way will you position your book in order to differentiate it from its peers? Do any demographic trends aid your case for continued demand in this market? State explicitly why your book is unique and why the market is ripe for its release. However, be wary of a bold statement such as "nothing like my book has ever been written before". You may have uncovered a unique angle for your subject, but in all likelihood, you haven’t invented a new genre or field of study.

Element #6: Publicity and Promotional Opportunities: In this section of your proposal, outline the promotional avenues open to your book. If you've already established that a market exists, this section will be the make it or break it section of your proposal. The publisher must know how you intend to reach the audience you've identified. Do specific groups exist with a high likelihood of being receptive to your book? Good examples are the audience members of a specific radio or television show, readers of specific magazines or newsletters, book clubs, non-profit organizations, or trade groups. Identify the groups relevant to your book and point out the vehicles a publisher can use to reach those groups in a cost-effective manner. Do you have media connections or experience? Potential exposure on nationally syndicated radio and television shows is the best way to capture a publisher’s attention. Booking the author on such shows is free, and the resulting sales can be astronomical. So publishers are always looking for authors with a media platform. Do you have one? What angle or hook can you provide a producer or editor that will land you a coveted interview or feature story? If you develop a strong enough hook, you might land a book contract based on this aspect of your proposal alone.

Element #7: Outline: For this section of your proposal, provide a list of the proposed chapter titles, along with a brief overview of the contents therein.

Element #8: Sample Chapters: In this section of your proposal, simply attach the first two or three chapters of your proposed manuscript. Providing sample chapters is essential for a first-time author. If your chapters are of high quality, they give the publisher confidence you can produce a publishable manuscript in a timely manner.

Element #9: Presentation: The presentation of your book proposal is as instrumental to its success as the content. Make sure to proofread zealously. If you think you've finished, proofread it again. Read, correct, and rewrite your proposal at least twenty times so as to be confident that it's the best it can possibly be. When it comes time to print the final draft, the body of the proposal should be double-spaced and printed in black ink on clean white paper using a LaserJet printer. Finally, just as with any business document, send your book proposal via FedEx. This will create the immediate impression you are a professional who will be businesslike in his day-to-day dealings with the publisher.

Once you've incorporated these nine elements into your book proposal, you will be left with a finished product worthy of commanding the respect of any editor. But in order to create a true blockbuster book proposal, make sure to… Define the book’s concept. Identify the book’s audience. And outline exactly how to reach that audience. Do these three things well, and you’re certain to obtain a book contract. So don't waste any time. Get to work on your blockbuster book proposal today!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Britt Gillette is the author of The Dittohead's Guide To Adult Beverages (Regnery 2005). He also runs The DVD Report (http://www.thedvdreport.com), a site showcasing his personal reviews of movies and TV shows currently released on DVD.