Award-winning author Lucia St. Clair Robson recommended that when you start writing a book, start with a pivotal event. “Think
‘the trouble started when…..”
Robson wrote her
first historical novel, Ride the Wind, while working as a public
librarian in Anne Arundel County, MD. It earned The Western Writers’
Golden Spur Award for best historical western and made the NY Times and Washington
Post bestseller lists.
I heard her speak recently at a
meeting of the Carroll County Chapter of the Maryland Writers' Association (MWA). She
stressed the importance of thorough research and accuracy throughout her
presentation.
You
hope your sources are correct. You want to come to a greater truth – to create
a reality. You try recreating their whole world, language, clothing, and what
is happening around them. She likes to make a map of the area and use pushpins
as her characters move. Moving with
them, seeing what they are seeing.
“We
put words into dead people’s mouths,” she said, emphasizing the need for empathy,
as well as accuracy.
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| Lucia St. Clair Robson signs a book for Lois Halley |
Robson
learned the importance of organizing your research material early in the
process. She has developed a detailed system. Each of her projects has a
letter. Each source has a number, allowing her to show where she found the
information for each book.
However,
everyone has to do what works for them, she said.
You
may have everything planned and outlined and then a side character may take
over or your research may reveal something you didn’t expect. You may be surprised
by new information you find. She often is.
Ride the Wind is the story of Cynthia Ann Parker’s life after she was
captured at 9 years old during a Comanche raid.
She's also written eight more
historical novels. They are:
Walk in my Soul includes Cherokee Indians, a young Sam Houston
and the Trail of Tears.
Light a Distant Fire - explores the
Seminole and Miccosukee Indians as they take up arms against forced removal
from their Florida homeland in the mid 19th century.
Tokaido Road is set in feudal
Japan.
Mary's Land is takes place on
the Maryland frontier of 1638.
Fearless is about Sarah
Bowman who joined Zachary Taylor's forces as a laundress in 1846 and went with
them into Mexico. Standing almost six feet tall, she became a familiar figure,
riding through the smoke and gunfire of battle to retrieve the wounded.
Ghost Warrior is about Lozen,
sometimes called the Apache Joan of Arc, warrior
and shaman.
It is set in the last half of the nineteenth century.
Shadow
Patriots, a Novel of the Revolution. In the American colonies 1776 is a
time of critical confrontation on the battlefield and off as people must choose
between their king and a new country.
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| Lona Queen and Lucia St. Clair Robson talk about writing techniques |
Last
Train from Cuernavaca includes the 1913 Mexican society and rebel leader,
Emiliano Zapata.
Her
books also include romance, but she stresses that since love is a vital part of
history, she always includes it in her stories, but it’s not the focus of the
story.
Besides
doing thorough research, Robson said most importantly, write the best story you
can to please yourself.
Historical
fiction varies widely and includes such books as:
Elizabeth
Wein’s Code Name Verity,
Kathryn Stockett’s The Help,
Christina Baker Kline’s The Orphan Train, David Laskin’s The Children’s Blizzard, Khaled
Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Anita
Diamant’s The Red Tent, Ellis Peters's Cadfael Chronicles, Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat (2015 Maryland One
Book), Melanie Benjamin’s The Aviator’s
Wife and Mary Ann Shaffer’s The
Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
I’ve
read most of those listed above and others. Historical figures and events
become much more real in these books, even knowing that the book is fiction.
The author’s imagination lets me think more closely about what people might
have been feeling. The details help put me in that time and place.
Historical
fiction uses setting as a backdrop to the story, surrounding characters with
social conditions and period details. As seen in the short list above, they can
focus on war, a specific place during a certain time-period, a murder mystery,
special event or historical figure. But all show how society of the time and
place affected the characters.
Historic
fiction brings facts to life and Lucia St. Clair Robson does this well.
You can learn more about her at luciastclairrobson.com and more about her books at Amazon.com.
