Elsewhere in this issue, you will read a delightful short story about a frustrated writer and his increasingly desperate creation. It's clever – thanks, Freewayriding. Our author says, 'The idea for the story was there; it was just he was finding the incessant research extremely, annoyingly dull.' I hear you.

He also writes, 'Who cared what colour the seats were on a bloody train that had been scrapped over a century ago?' Who, indeed, but a trainspotter? Just don't make them Naugahyde.

I think our author has hit a problem precisely on the head. When do you do research? Why do you do research? And how much research should you do? Even better, how much research should you put in your finished product?

When to Research?

There's an anecdote floating around about a conductor, usually Toscanini. Somebody asked him what you had to know in order to play the cymbals.

He replied, 'When.'

When do you need research?

• When you're about to insult everybody's intelligence with temporal or geographic provincialism. It isn't fair to project the knowledge, habits, and preoccupations of the present day on humans of the past, and expect them to act accordingly. It isn't fair, and it isn't decent. It also isn't fair to project your prejudices onto other groups of people in your own time. Before you assume things, have a heart and do the work. Don't know what Mennonites think about teenage marriage, agricultural technology, or the wearing of metal buttons? Then don't make your characters Mennonites. Write about something you know.
  
  You think this isn't relevant? Go over to Netflix and watch a dreadful movie called Mute.
• When the setting is relevant to the story. The story Mute didn't need to be set in a weird future Berlin. (Nor did it need those Mennonites.) It would have worked as a 1940s noir. So why not do that? Oh, yeah. The visuals. Ugh, those visuals. I expected better from the auteur of Moon.
  
  If, on the other hand, you're trying to get to the heart of a specific experience, one you know something about, and one that is anchored in a specific time and place, bother to get it right. Otherwise, you're misusing the material – in fact, you're lying. Don't lie, fiction writers. Make up stories, instead.
• When the story you make up with the wrong background would falsify the period, slander the people involved, or undo the educational efforts of a continent full of hard-working and underpaid history teachers. I have one title for you: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Grr.

Why Do You Do Research?

"Will these be in your way?" he said to the executioner, raising his long locks; "if so, they can be tied up."

Charles accompanied these words with a look designed to penetrate the mask of the unknown headsman. His calm, noble gaze forced the man to turn away his head. But after the searching look of the king he encountered the burning eyes of Aramis.

The king, seeing that he did not reply, repeated his question.

"It will do," replied the man, in a tremulous voice, "if you separate them across the neck."

The king parted his hair with his hands, and looking at the block he said:

"This block is very low, is there no other to be had?"

"It is the usual block," answered the man in the mask.

"Do you think you can behead me with a single blow?" asked the king.

"I hope so," was the reply. There was something so strange in these three words that everybody, except the king, shuddered.

"I do not wish to be taken by surprise," added the king. "I shall kneel down to pray; do not strike then."

"When shall I strike?"

"When I shall lay my head on the block and say ‘Remember!’ then strike boldly."

"Gentlemen," said the king to those around him, "I leave you to brave the tempest; I go before you to a kingdom which knows no storms. Farewell."

Alexandre Dumas, Twenty Years After

Is the account of the execution of Charles I in Twenty Years After accurate? Judge for yourself:

The king adjoins, 'I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown; where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.'

The bishop: 'You are exchanged from a temporal to an eternal crown, – a good exchange.'



Then the king asked the executioner, 'Is my hair well?' And taking off his cloak and George [the jeweled pendant of the Order of the Garter, bearing the figure of St. George], he delivered his George to the bishop. . .

Then putting off his doublet and being in his waistcoat, he put on his cloak again, and looking upon the block, said to the executioner, 'You must set it fast.'

The executioner: 'It is fast, sir.'

King: 'It might have been a little higher.'

Executioner: 'It can be no higher, sir.'

King: 'When I put out my hands this way, then – '

Anon. Eyewitness, An Account of the Execution of Charles I, from Readings in European History, vol 2, by James Harvey Robinson, 1906.

If you retort, 'Gack, that's boring,' then I say unto you: do not set a story in a time period for which you have no interest. Go write about cowboys. You'll have a ton of fun comparing saddle manufacturing techniques and spur rowel designs. (Beware: your reader will know if you make it up. They're fanatics.)

What were Dumas' aims in telling this tale? Almost exactly the same as those of Bernard Cornwell in the Sharpe series: to put his character into the historical action, to make his character look like a hero, and to ride his hobbyhorse on his favourite subject. In Dumas' case, it was monarchism: Dumas was for it, big-time. Athos is under the platform when Charles I is executed. Athos catches some of the 'sacred' blood in his handkerchief. It's very moving if you're a monarchist.

And you know what? If you read that anonymous account, you'll find out that people did that: collected the ex-king's blood as a relic. If you don't do the research, you wouldn't know that. Why did I do the research? Because I read that book when I was about thirteen, and the whole idea was so weird that I had to check it out. I didn't want anybody lying to me about things like that.

That's why you do research. So you can get away with things like that. Play your cards right, and you might even teach somebody something.

How Much Is Enough?

I'm going to immodestly suggest that you read this short story. Immodestly, because I wrote it, ten years ago. It's a bleak story about a woman who happens to live in Kiev in 1941. She sees a lot of people walking by her house, in the direction of the ravine at Babi Yar…. Warning: it's sad. It's meant to be. If you're not feeling well, maybe you want to pass it up.

How much research did I do in order to write this story?

• In one sense, a lot. I've been studying the Holocaust – and reading accounts in many different languages – for almost half a century. What I know from study and listening to eyewitnesses informs what I chose to write.
• My Russian is mediocre: I looked up a few phrases in Ukrainian. I knew a Ukrainian woman named Liuba once. I liked the name.
• I looked at a map of that part of Kiev during the war.
• I read DH Thomas' The White Hotel (okay, more than once) and Yevtushenko's Babi Yar.
• I read the eyewitness account in the linked site at the History Place.

'Wow,' you say. 'That was a lot of research. I don't think I ever want to do that much.'

Personally, I think that's fine. Just do us all a favour and don't write about the Holocaust. To write about that subject – at least, about the actual events – you need that much research, believe me.

But what if you wanted to write a story about somebody who had lived through the Holocaust? You weren't going to go back to that time. You just needed that experience to be in your character's background. Could you do that?

Absolutely. And I can give you an example.

Have you ever seen the film Harold and Maude? If you haven't, remedy this gap in your education immediately. It may change your life. Harold is a depressed teen living in 1971. Maude is a survivor who is pushing 80, and doesn't act a day over 18. Oh, and Maude is also a Survivor: somebody who survived the Holocaust. We find this out casually, and it is far from the most surprising moment in this astonishing little film. Harold falls in love with Maude. Maude teaches Harold how to live. We listen to a lot of Cat Stevens, which never hurt anybody.

How much research did Colin Higgins have to do to include this Holocaust backstory? My guess is, none at all. He had to know that the Holocaust involved deep suffering, that there were survivors, and that they had numbers tattooed on their arms. He probably grew up knowing that: his father was an Australian veteran of the Second World War.

So now you know. A final word about research: unless you're getting paid to do it, and you really, really need the money, don't do research that you find tedious. Just know enough not to try to tell someone else's story if you're not interested enough in their world to find out about it. Don't make people up. It's not fair to the past, or to people who live in other places. You wouldn't like it if they did it to you. Set your made-up stories in a time and place that you care enough to learn about.

Or make one up. Who knows? You might invent the next Narnia or Middle Earth or Neverland or….

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

16.04.18 Front Page

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