How to Weave Factual Research Seamlessly into Your Fictional Storyline

 

Today’s Be My Guest Author is Mary Lydon Simonsen, Author of the newly released Searching for Pemberley. Don’t miss the book giveaway at the end.

Thank you for inviting me to write a guest blog for The Cuckleburr Times. I’ve been asked to write about weaving research seamlessly into a storyline.

This is one of those Catch 22 situations. You have to know the basic plot line of your story before you can begin the research, but you have to have the research in place so that you can have a foundation on which to build your story. Of course, the story is more important than the research, because if you don’t have a compelling tale to tell, no one is going to care about the factual details embedded in the novel.

Before I even type out the first word, I have been walking around with the plot line in my head for quite a while. I do some of my best thinking while I’m steam cleaning my tile floor because it’s a mindless task. Rather than risk being handed the steamer, everyone in my family stays away from me, so I have some quality “alone” time. After I have a solid beginning and end for the book, I start working out the details of the mushy middle.

I’m what people call a “history buff,” and I’ve been reading history and biographies since I was in fourth grade, way back in the 1960s, when I first learned about Concord and Lexington and “the shot heard around the world” of the American Revolution. Because of that, a lot of my research was already in my head, waiting to break out. That was the case with my new novel Searching for Pemberley. I had already read a great deal about the three distinct time periods which serve as a background for the story: the Regency Era and World Wars I and II. Because of my love of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, I had read extensively about the Regency Era. Since I am a baby boomer, and because so many of the stories I heard when I was growing up involved what everyone did during World War II, I had read numerous books about that conflict, and because World War II was a direct result of the fallout from World War I, I had an interest in that war as well.

Once I have the plot line and the historical details necessary to fill in the background, I start writing my first draft—what I call my “brain dump.” Included in the first draft are historical references, but I do not make any attempt to weave in the research at that time. It would only slow down character and plot development. It’s probably not until the third draft that I start fleshing out the historical background, which is the part I really enjoy.

Searching for Pemberley is the story of a 22 year-old American, Maggie Joyce, who is living in post World War II England. She’s a fan of Jane Austen and her work, especially Pride and Prejudice. When she learns that the characters of Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet might be based on real people, she goes to visit Montclair, a manor house in Derbyshire that may be Austen’s storied Pemberley, to find out.

For years after the end of World War II, the British experienced shortages and rationing, and my character sees all of this while living in London. Since Maggie is an employee of the Army Exchange Service, she has access to the commissary and things most Americans take for granted. When Maggie is befriended by Jack and Beth Crowell, who live in a village near Montclair and who know if the legend is true, she always brings food that is in short supply: white bread, sugar, potatoes, oranges. However, once Maggie crosses the threshold of Montclair, she is back in the Jane Austen’s Regency Era, and I am free to write about Robert Adam interiors and Georgian architecture and what Mr. and Mrs. Darcy would have worn to a ball.

I picture writing a story as something similar to building a house. The plot is the wood frame, and the research is the finish-out. Once I am satisfied with the story, I can go back and hang the historical details on the walls and move in the furniture. But the story comes first.

My writing style is very much a “which came first—the chicken or the egg” type of writing. Does the plot lead to the research, or does the research lead to the story line? I’m not really sure, but next time I steam clean my kitchen tile, I’ll have time to think about it.


About The Book
SEARCHING FOR PEMBERLEY—IN STORES DECEMBER 2009
Set against Regency England, World Wars I and II, and postwar England, three love stories intertwine in surprising and fateful ways

American Maggie Joyce, touring Derbyshire in 1947, visits, Montclair, an 18th century Georgian country house, that she is told was the model for Jane Austen’s Pemberley. More amazingly, the former residents of the mansion, William Lacey and Elizabeth Garrison, were the inspiration for the characters of Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

Through letters, diary entries, and oral history, Beth and Jack Crowell, a couple who lives in the nearby village of Crofton, share stories of the people they say inspired Jane Austen. They also tell their own love story, made difficult by their vastly different backgrounds—she was one of the social elite while he was the son of a servant. When their son, Michael, travels home from his RAF station in Malta, Maggie may have just found her very own Mr. Darcy.

About the Author
Mary Simonsen grew up in North Jersey with the exciting venues of New York City easily accessible. She is especially interested in American and European history and 19th Century novels. In Searching for Pemberley she was able to combine her love of history (World War II and postwar England) with Austen’s characters, Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and being a romantic, the novel includes three love stories from three different time periods, all thanks to Jane Austen. She lives in Peoria, Arizona. For more information, please visit http://searchingforpemberley.weebly.com/

Thanks for writing this article especially for The Cuckleburr Times readers, Mary. We’re delighted! – Editor.

Book Giveaway!

Thanks to Mary’s publisher Sourcebooks, we have TWO free copies of the book Searching for Pemberley to give away! To enter, please add a comment on this article. For an additional entry sign up for our RSS feed and leave a comment saying you’ve done so here too. This gives two entries maximum per person.  The book giveaway is free to enter.

Two winners will be selected at random to receive a copy. Please leave a valid email address when you comment or we cannot contact you to say you’ve won for your mailing address! If that happens, we’ll choose another winner. USA and Canada entries only please.

The closing date for the giveaway will be in one week’s time on Dec 15. Good luck! The two lucky winners will be announced after the draw on Dec 16.

Leave a Reply