D is for Downhill Skiing

Debra did quite a bit of research for A Christmas to Remember.

The inspiration for A Christmas to Remember came from a song of the same name sung by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. Every year at Christmas while listening to the song, ideas for a story would spin in my head. One year I finally sat down and got around to writing it. The theme of Christmas was easy. I love Christmas so it was a delight to play up all of my favorite things about the holiday to include in the story.

The setting, however, was a bit trickier. A line from the song goes: "curled up by the fireplace in a Tahoe ski chalet". I didn't want to copy the song exactly, so I moved the chalet to Colorado, but I definitely wanted to stick with a ski resort.

Problem was, I'd never skied a day in my life. Normally I use settings I'm familiar with, as in I've been there before, so this was new territory for me. What did I do? Headed to the trusty library, of course. When I do need to research, my reference books of choice are usually found in the Youth section. Youth non-fiction books have lots of pictures and easy-to-understand text. They break things down into simpler terms, without getting bogged down with too much detail. So, I found a few of those and then also checked out either "Skiing for Dummies" or "The Idiot's Guide to Skiing". Again, for the basics: simple, clear, not too detailed.

After doing my research I really, really wanted to get brave and head out on a ski holiday...maybe one of these days.

In writing the skiing scenes, I used lots of the information I'd gathered. Perhaps a tad too much. One of my editor's comments said those scenes read a bit like an instructional manual. Oops. I got so carried away and excited about the things I was discovering that I forgot to focus on the relationship that was developing. Instead I was aiming to share all of the wonderful things I learned about skiing.

After some creative editing, I shifted the focus of the scenes back to the romance, while still keeping many of my newly-found details about this popular winter sport.

And I learned something else, too, getting the details right and authentic is super important, but even those super-interesting and newly discovered facts shouldn't overshadow the main focus of the story: the romance between my hero and heroine.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

Research for Contemporary Novels

On Monday Ana told us of the research she’s done about Brittany in the 15th century. Today I’m going to tell you about some of the research I’ve done (so far) for my novel.


Okay, it’s contemporary. I don’t have to read up about food, clothes, furniture etc. from a bygone age. It’s set in the English Lake District, an area with which I’m very familiar, so you might wonder why I need to do any research, but I’ve had to look up (or at least check) quite a lot of details.

Also, I decided my hero was going to be the local vet (actually I think HE decided!). What do I know about vets? Nothing. More research needed!

When I started the novel back in January, I thought it would be interesting to make a list of all the topics I’d ‘googled’ as part of my research. Sometimes they were simply to confirm something I knew (or thought I knew), and in many cases they were only needed for one line of dialogue. Here are some of them:

Supermarkets in Ambleside

19^th century ‘crimes’ in the Lake District – sheep stealing etc
Traditional Cumbrian surnames
Lake District tourist sites, for details of cottages to rent
Photos of Lake District in winter
Sculpture trail in forest
Interior of church in the ‘real’ village I’m using (although giving it a different name)
Veterinary surgery – staff/responsibilities etc
Vet. emergencies in countryside
Farms in Hampshire
Wood burning stoves
Edinburgh vet school
Info about broken ankles, plaster casts, splints (including a request on FB for personal experiences of breaking an ankle)
Walks around Grasmere
Rydal caves.
Lake District estate agents (for hero’s house) – floor plans etc
Lambing time
Hedgehog hibernation
Foaling – time taken, possible problems
Activities for children in Lake District
Typical Geordie expressions
Dogs’ ear infections
Using brand names in novels
Tower of London – ravens
Lady Jane Grey
Child custody cases

There were many others similar to the above, and others where I didn’t actually use the information I’d looked up.

I’m about half way through the novel, so who knows what else I’ll have to look up before I get to the end? So, even for a contemporary novel set in an area I know well, there’s still a lot of checking and research involved.

With each novel, I’ve learnt a lot of new things. I now know what a Nemes headdress is, I know what correlation spectrometers measure, I know how much it costs to stage a London musical, I know how often the Eurostar runs from London to Paris and I know about dogs’ ear mites. All wonderful, although probably useless, trivia, but it’s all part of the fun of being a writer.