research historical novel

My novel Chasing Sylvia Beach shares the story of a young woman captivated by another era and what happens when she unexpectedly gets the chance to visit Paris, 1937, a place she’d only dreamed of. (Yes, very much like Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris!)

RuedeFleurus — From the interior courtyard at Gertrude Stein's former apartment in Paris

But even romantic dreamers need facts to breathe life into a story. I had to do solid research to take my readers all the way to Paris approaching the end of its heyday. I needed more details about bookseller Sylvia Beach’s world.
Many writers love research, but I’m no scholar. I didn’t know where to start searching. While I am able to delve in once I find a source, unearthing new material isn’t my forte.
Worse, in 1999 when I first began writing this book, research was a whole mostly analog. To contextualize this long-ago era, I didn’t yet have a personal computer or an email account. There was no Google and no abundant jungle of information to tap at a click.
Saving me with its vast abundance of information, the Internet blossomed as a treasure trove for researchers. Over the twelve years it took to write Chasing Sylvia Beach, I developed a multi-pronged approach in order to depict a historical period accurately.
If you’re writing a historical novel, you may consider some of the seven methods I used to show Paris, 1937, in all her fading glory.

In-person research

I took many trips to Paris, visiting Odéania, the name Sylvia and Adrienne gave their Left Bank neighborhood. I walked the streets, ducked down alleys and sniffed around second-hand bookshops. I’d squint to edit out the contemporary noise and hubbub, inspired by Leonard Pitt’s Walks in Lost Paris, which showed before and after pictures of the city.

Films

Paris is proud of its past and French nostalgia made it easy to find Paris-related media. Forum des Images, located in the center of Paris, is an archive of the films featuring the city of Paris.
On several visits, I viewed archived footage from this era and saw clips like this. Seeing animated images helped me to relate more immediately to the people in this era.

Stock photos

The city of Paris also hosts an extensive archive of Paris photos that I accessed online. From thousands of images, I generated my own gallery depciting people at the time (1937) and in the places (the Sorbonne, the Luxembourg Garden, the Latin Quarter and St Germain).
Staring at these images and writing immediately after inspecting them helped me hone my observation and description skills. Paris en Images has a huge database of photos of the city of Paris.

Conversations with masters

It never hurts to look at good examples of historical fiction for inspiration. You may be able to strike up conversations with the authors, as I did.
I had the good fortune to correspond with spy novelist Alan Furst about how he accessed Paris in the past. Interviews and conversations with Noel Riley Fitch, John Baxter and a Parisisan named Alexandre who survived the Nazi Occupation of Paris all helped me delve deeper into this city’s past.

CynthiaParisbyAlex — The author, by interview subject Alexandre, Paris 2010

Paris booksellers were often willing to talk about the era and pointed me toward other books or resources that helped my quest.

Archived material

If the subject of your historical novel was a real person, there may be museums or archives devoted to that person. Because of a generous grant from the Alliance française of Denver, I was able to spend a week in Sylvia Beach’s archives.
I used every penny of the $1,000 to travel to Princeton, New Jersey, where Sylvia’s archives are held in the Special Collections of Princeton University Library. I managed to slip this experience into my novel, so you can read about it in detail there.
Touching Sylvia’s things and visiting her grave was a profound experience that deeply impacted the story and added a layer of emotion I couldn’t have accessed otherwise.

Books

Of course it was a book that got me into Sylvia Beach in the first place. Here’s the bibliography that helped me write my novel.

Cultural immersion

My friend, journalist Lys Anzia invited me to consider the gestalt of the era. She urged me to listen to music of the era, read up on the political climate, investigate social and cultural mores of the period. I also found myself inspecting fashion, transportation and writing tools (fountain pens and typewriters) to ensure accuracy.

Trying to access another era calls for persistence and thoroughness. You’re attempting the impossible and know that you’ll never fully get there.
But you do the best you can, fueled by your intense desire to see, feel and know what it was like to inhabit another era.
I gave Lily Heller, my character, this chance to visit Paris, 1937. And she thanks me for it, as well as for what it leads her to.
What helps you do historical research? Was research easy for you or a challenge?

This is part of the Claim Your AUTHORity series.
You’re jamming away at your novel. You’re composing merrily when you realize you don’t know what the cars look like in Paris, 1937, the era you’re writing about.

You dip into Google, searching for images that will help you accurately describe those cars. Before you know it, you’ve spent 40 minutes leaping from link to link, gathering more support for what you’re writing.

Finding information for your book online, or re-surfing, is fun. You can claim, guilt-free, that you’re working on your book. But a glance at the clock shows it’s time to pick up the kids. You shutter your session and enter the slipstream of your busy day.

Your one-hour writing session involved exactly 20 minutes of writing and 40 minutes of re-surfing, yielding a couple scribbled pages and a lot of information, much of it not applicable to your book.
Sound familiar?

Three ways your inner critic can hijack your research

I know this scenario well; having written a historical novel, I have spent countless hours researching my era and time period. But early on I experienced these three pitfalls while researching for a book:

It is much easier to surf an endless research loop than to do the difficult work of writing. Your inner critic will love that you’re spending so much time looking at other people’s work.
Your inner critic is committed to making sure you don’t look like a fool. He can turn your commitment to accuracy into a practice of endless research that can prohibit you from ever getting your book done.
If you’re writing a non-fiction book based on your professional or personal expertise, your dedication to thoroughness can fuel deadly comparisons that wither your authorial confidence.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Keep your re-surfing in check

Try these simple but effective practices that my clients and I use to keep research from becoming the purview of the critic.

Demarcate writing time and research time. If you have only 2 hours a week to work on your book, give 1.5 hours to writing and .5 to research.
While writing, keep a separate log of items that need to be researched. When an issue comes up – what kind of fabric were skirts made of in 1937? – jot that down on your research list. I kept a notebook for notes for my novel and always had a page going entitled ‘To research’.
Set aside a specific amount of time each week for this work. Be realistic; one or two hours is usually enough. Give yourself parameters. I usually did research at the end of the week in the afternoon, when my focus for writing waned.
If you’re writing a non-fiction book based on your expertise, consider drafting your material before looking to see what else has been done. Get a sense of how much you need to know about what’s ‘out there’ before you feel confident claiming your AUTHORity.
Keep a list of sources – web sites, magazines, people – whom you will turn to for research. Be open to the fun serendipity that will lead you beyond what you know and into territory that will enhance your book.
Notice when the impulse to research arises. Often it surfaces just as you sit down to write. But notice, too, how your focus and energy and perhaps even your confidence can diminish the more time you spend in research mode.

What helps you keep your critic from hijacking your research process?

The Daunting Work of Researching a Historical Novel in Paris