The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian ... by Kristine Hughes

Developing the character, the atmosphere and the series is important. It has taken me years to feel confident, and I say that with a laugh because I’m not really confident that I’ve reached the point where I know what I’m doing, but I’ve taken the classes and done the research and tried to immerse myself into the time period. BUT… while it might be interesting and maybe even important to know that Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show had a second female sharpshooter or that he hired over one hundred Sioux to work in his show even while there were still Indian Wars going on, all of this information is important and helps me as a writer understand my story’s time period and politics, how much of it is really necessary for the story itself. I mean, when you find out really cool things it’s difficult not to include them in your story. The problems are going off in another direction than the one you intended or getting so lost in the research you forget about the writing, and the biggie, wanting to put everything you discovered into your story.

Finding new things along the way is part of the joy of doing the research.

In school when we’d get the chance to go to the library to do research, I’d get so caught up in the search I sometimes forgot what I was searching for.

The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian ... by Kristine Hughes