Weaving Truth into Fiction: Sidestepping Pitfalls & Mining Valuable Nuggets of Research

Research: Your Dream Deferred

Social media. E-mails. Reading blog posts. Writing blog posts. Trips to the fridge. There are many attractive distractors for creative types trying to craft original work. The easy answer is to shut down the Internet, turn off the cellphone and padlock the fridge (Tried it. Epic fail. Remembered I am still working through an old two-pound bag of mini Tootsie Rolls from an adoring student that I have stashed in my desk drawer. I spent an hour building a Tootsie Jenga tower with the stale ones.)

Possibly the worst writing time-suck of all is the easy accessibility of information in the electronic age—crack for the research junkie. If you aspire to authenticity in your story, you know you must do your homework. And everyone else’s. Even a simple modern tale must have a setting that rings true, whether you are world-building in a city or town of your own creation, or setting your characters off on a stroll down the Queen’s Walk along the Thames in London. (Been there. Done that. Lovely. I should write a story. If I did, could I deduct my trip? I should turn my Internet back on and look that up.)  

There's the Rub

Writing historical fiction certainly requires accuracy and detail. So, you research. You turn the Internet back on. What choice do you have? You visit encyclopedias, make a book wish list, devour every online reference and link that might even vaguely relate to your thing, you pore over travel sites for location tidbits, check maps, drift through Google Images, and even read menus from setting-connected restaurants. (You know, just in case you decide to visit on a tax-deductible research tour. Oh, and you’ll need a hotel. And flights. Maybe there’s even a travel article in it for you. So, you’re off to see what the submission guidelines are for a few travel mags and to whom to address your query.)

Many, many months later you have gained a bit of candy weight, purchased a large bottle of Senekot (damn Tootsie Rolls), but also have a hefty file of printed research from the Internet, stacks of books scored from libraries, Amazon and eBay, legal pads filled with copious notes and a general idea of what you want your main character to accomplish on her journey.

Now what? What bits of history do you include? How do you marry the truth and the fiction? How do you do it so that you are not awkwardly pushing in the historical detail? (While walking in Braintree, home of our future second President of the United States, John Adams, a self-professed ‘obnoxious and disliked’ little fellow who has also already sired a future president and has a famously respectful relationship with his ahead-of-her-time wife, Abigail, young Corky noticed a sheep in the meadow.)

The Question, Jerk. The Question. (John McEnroe, anyone?)

Good story ideas can begin with a question, and historical fiction is no exception. My own inspiration was simple. I love sports. My sports heroine is the great multisport legend Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who came to fame in the 1930s and spent twenty years making shots and headlines as the world’s first female media darling of sport.

The great Babe in 1932

Babe Didrikson Zaharias,
champion golfer and showman

My mom was an athletic Depression era Minnesota farm girl.

The question: What if my mother met Babe Didrikson?

I’d researched the great athlete Babe Didrikson for years. I learned in Russell Freedman’s Babe Didrikson: The Making of a Legend that Babe, having single-handedly won a team qualifying meet for track and field in Evanston in 1932, immediately traveled with her new team via train from Chicago to Los Angeles for the summer Olympic Games. One detail hit me hard: an attention-hound, Babe would regularly run the length of the train in her workout gear, staying fit and enjoying her newfound celebrity. Setting chosen. Mom would become a feisty twelve-year old tomboy in the company of our stern and proper Aunt Cora off to visit family in California on the same train. (And so began a whole new round of research on Union Pacific, trains, Pullman cars, Pullman porters and the cross-country route from Chicago to LA. Thank god for Tootsie Rolls. And Senekot.) 

Babe would be a special guest star in Tomboys, larger-than-life, brash and an All-American braggart. She represented the changing times and emergence of empowered sportswomen in the thirties. She was easy to insert into young Elsie’s story because she quite literally took over any scene she was in. Getting her to talk wasn’t difficult. Getting her to shut up--well, that was another story, and one her Olympic teammates could identify with. Her quotes and antics jumped off the pages of my research as dialogue and deeds as effortlessly as Babe herself took hurdles. All I had to do was to take dictation and create an audience. Elsie would be there, eagerly lapping up Babe’s tall feats and taller tales, and at the same time allowing the reader to listen in and meet a famous historical figure. Establishing a conflict premise was even easier: Two 1930s gals challenging gender stereotypes and roles while the disapproving public cluck their collective tongues at the boyish athlete and her protégé. Story idea launched.

Adopt, Adapt, Improve

A small problem arose. I lack expertise in track and field. You can learn history. You can learn rules. You can’t learn how something feels unless you do it. To connect with readers and audiences you can't fake the essential truths of your story. Despite running the anchor leg on the world's slowest mile-relay team one misspent season in high school, I could not effectively convey the truth of life as a track star. I do know what it’s like to flip a curveball off your fingertips, and how it feels when you’re pitching a no-hitter. I’ve lovingly fingered the raised red stitches on a new glistening white baseball, and I’ve heard the taunts for being better than the boys. So, I simply had Elsie’s dreams focus on baseball, a subject I am more capable of writing about in great and expressive detail.

Location, Location, Location

As the story developed (and the research pile grew) I realized I needed more plot. What did Elsie really want, and how could she go about getting it? What was in the way? Babe provided the inspiration, society provided the obstacles, but Babe slowly gave way to a fictional female baseball barnstormer pitcher named Libby, who boarded the train with her fast-talking husband/coach and an offer Elsie couldn’t refuse. They would escort Elsie the rest of the way on her journey and into the climax. But what would that climax be? And how could I get my passengers off that train for a change of pace? If baseball was a backdrop, a train setting was a bit limiting.

My research led me to the final scene where all major elements would come together: I learned from a book that the Olympians were taken off the train and feted at the grand Brown Palace hotel in Denver. (Well, the white athletes, anyway. The two black American track stars, Louise Stokes and Tidye Pickett, were made to eat in their dingy room on the maids’ floor. Hmmm, file that away.) I contacted a wonderful hotel historian who, grateful that I had tipped her off on the forgotten Olympic connection, forwarded me clippings of the city’s celebration for them. She knew there was a mural of Babe in the hotel, and the later link to her Colorado husband, wrestler George Zaharias, but never knew of her celebrated visit in the summer of ‘32. One Denver Post article she sent contained a tiny reference that had me standing on my chair in excitement. The day of the Brown Palace banquet, Babe Didrikson also made a public appearance at a local baseball tournament to demonstrate her world record in the baseball throw, then a women’s track and field event. Jackpot. It was easy to contrive a climatic scenario that would bring all those characters together at the hotel and ball field while still honoring the historical playbook.

End of the Line

So while research can drift into the realm of the unfocused, and chew up more time than a stale Tootsie Roll, there are gems to be found in the crevices of the past. You might meander, but you must never lose sight of the finish line (note track and field metaphor). Precious nuggets of dialogue, characterization and setting can be mined and seamlessly interwoven into your fiction, but like any prospector, you must be able to recognize the possible treasures and not be sucked in by Fool’s Gold (Pyrite. I looked it up.) Sometimes the greatest historical finds are quite small; little moments that shed light and context on a person or time period, and become part of the fabric of your original story without overwhelming your character's journey.

Oh, and Elsie witnessed the racism while at the opulent Brown Palace, again allowing the reader to see a moment in history unfold through the story. It also triggered my revisitation of Elsie’s relationship with the Pullman porter aboard the train and led me to recognize obvious parallels in their stories and quests for acceptance from a (mostly white male dominated) society so deeply rooted in stereotype and tradition that it retarded progress for both women and people of color.

After a very successful stage performance by a school theatre group, the novelization of Tomboys is finished and the search for an agent has begun. My journey, like Elsie’s, was full of stops and starts. No matter what becomes of my Tomboys manuscript, I enjoyed the ride.

(Though I’d still really like to visit that hotel in Denver. Oh, and the Pullman museum and Union Station in Chicago. Anyone know a good restaurant? Never mind, I'll look it up.)