Lessons from the Literary Trenches: My Research Process
1) Select the time and place of my novel.
2a) Begin to research the time and place – broadly at first, reading biographies, searching online, taking out armfuls of library books, watching documentaries, reading memoirs, and then drilling down to newspapers, restaurant menus, train timetables, etc. I take notes by hand, keeping good track of where each note is from.
2b) Travel! I ALWAYS go to see the place of my setting. For A More Perfect Union, I went to Barbados.
Me, looking smug as I sat in an idyllic pool while my family back in Boston got slammed with a Nor’easter
Me in front of the Union Pacific Railroad Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, for A Transcontinental Affair2c) Next, I compile my infamous daily calendar (time) and map (place)
Note that the calendar includes events Edie will care about and react to: Duke Ellington Playing on July 1. Amelia Earhart leaves Lae. Earhart plane forced down at sea on Saturday, July 3. Terrible heatwave begins on July 7. And Gershwin dead at 38 on the 12th.
Crude map allows me to begin to imagine all the various clubs and bars that Edie will frequent.Step 3) I create a mega-list of every fact I deem important, organizing them into categories.
First of 20-page fact list. This category contains African American English and current slang terms
This page from the Fact List contains details about food costs, Harlem clubs, and the Savoy Ballroom, where a great deal of action will take place
Steamboat schedule I referred to for Edie’s job chopping onions on a steamboat. I usually get these “minutae” facts towards the end of my researching, when I know exactly what I want for my characters’ actionsStep 4: Once I’ve written my chapter outline, I cut and paste all the facts I think I’m going to want in each chapter so they’re “at my fingertips” while I write the first draft.
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