Tag: Characters

Writing Tip

nypl-digitalcollections-ba309cea-94f2-4288-e040-e00a18066c61-001-wDigging Deeper into Personal History

Even though I get a lot of inspiration from reading about important people in history, I still find intriguing stories within my own family.  Both sides of my family come from West Virginia, meaning I know a lot of stories about my extended family going back generations and I come from a long line of storytellers.

My dad has enough hilarious tales about what he did as a kid in the 1940’s and ’50’s to make at least a trilogy.  My maternal grandfather told all kinds of stories about growing up on a farm with seven brothers and sisters in the 1910’s and 1920’s.  I had a great-great-grandfather die in the infamous Civil War prison camp at Andersonville.  If I wrote historical fiction, this would be a story worth researching.  I have a great-grandfather who worked as a carpenter  in Moundsville, West Virginia, beginning in the 1880’s.  He helped support his widowed mother and a sister and her children because the sister’s husband had abandoned them.  He finally married, or I wouldn’t be here, when he was 47 years old.  His bride was 19, and they had two children together.

Their marriage was always stirred my curiosity.  How did they meet?  Had my great-grandfather always wanted to get married but didn’t feel he could because he was already supporting his relatives?  Did finding a wife come as a surprise?  Why did my great-grandmother want to marry someone so much older than she was?  Why did my great-grandfather want to marry someone so much younger?  What did their families think?  Their friends and neighbors?

Even though their story took a place a hundred years ago, their storyline is so good it can be translated to any time.  Placing it in a modern context would give the characters different reasons for getting married.  Such a May-December marriage would also be viewed differently by family and friends.  There is so much to work with here.  But I wouldn’t want to use my great-grandparents’s names and exact situation and fictionalize it.  Since I didn’t know them, I wouldn’t like to put words in their mouths and misrepresent them.

So ask grandparent, parents, any relatives for family stories.  Not only will you get great writing ideas, but you will gain a connection to your family’s past that makes your family unique.

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Writing Tip

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Digging up History

I have never been inspired to write historical fiction, primarily, I think,  because I am intimidated by the idea of trying to write about a time in which I never lived.  I worry about getting it wrong and not doing justice to the people who lived then.  But that doesn’t mean history doesn’t inspire my contemporary stories.

I like reading history because it gives me real world examples of how people act and I can use those actions to build characters and their motivations.

As I wrote in a previous post, I have read a lot about the Victorian and Edwardian periods in England.  The relationships within Queen Victoria’s family could inspire dozens of plots.  For example, Queen Victoria was crazy about her husband Prince Albert.  They were both crazy about the oldest of their nine children, Vicky.  They devoted a lot of time and energy to groom and educate her into being the ideal queen consort.  Their second child, a boy nicknamed Bertie, was not nearly as well trained, even though he was in line for his mother’s throne.  Victoria and Albert were very critical of Bertie.  Their third child, Alice, was probably the most original thinker in the family but was overshadowed by Vicky.  She and Bertie were close.

This family dynamic can easily translate into modern times.  Mom is a celebrity CEO of a successful family business.  Dad is her right-hand man.  First daughter, whose personality matches Mom’s, is groomed to take over the family business.  Son and second daughter feel left out and become each other’s best friend in the family.

My historical inspiration doesn’t have to trap me.  I can change it.  I can make second daughter deeply jealous of first daughter.  I can make son a rebel.  By the time I’m through, my story may look like nothing like the historical inspiration, but the history was need to get my imagination working.

If you are interested in reading about the Victorian and Edwardian periods, these books are ones I have read and enjoyed: Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants by Alison Maloney, Victoria’s Daughters by Jerrold M. Brown, and Queen Victoria’s Family: A Century of Photographs by Charlotte Zeepvat.

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