The Voice of Literature e-zine

AUTHOR CHATS

Research

In the previous article in this series exploring the sources authors exploit for their inspiration, we looked at the use of philosophical theories. This time, we take up the topic of research, and we asked three writers of historical novels for their views. Novelists all base their writing on their imagination and personal experience, but often this is not enough; they have to dig deeper in search of inspiration and accuracy. Our authors’ insights will be useful both to other writers and to those readers who, inspired by what they have read, want to find out more.

Cathie Dunn

Cathie writes historical mysteries and romances. Her latest novel is Love Lost in Time, set in Southern France in medieval and modern times. Previously she concentrated on stories based on Scottish history, and among her success are Dark Deceit, Highland Arms, and A Highland Captive.

She lives and writes in the historical medieval city of Carcassonne in Southern France.

Richard Savin

Richard is a retired journalist whose love of the written word has prompted him to turn to fiction. Three of his novels, A Right to Bear Arms, The Girl in the Baker’s Van and More Than One Passion are set during the World War II. He has also written contemporary thrillers, including The Haunting of the Harlequin Goat. Recently, he published a hilarious memoir of an epic car journey he made in his youth, Turn left at Istanbul. He winters in England and enjoys France in the hot weather.

Linda Conn Amstutz

Linda is an American writer now living in France. Her first novel, The Bicycle Messenger has recently been released. It’s a fictional account of the activities of the French resistance during the Second World War and the aftermath of that traumatic time.

She is now working on her second book.

THE DISCUSSION

The importance of Research

Cathie: Research is very important in my genre. I write historical fiction, and I try to give my readers as authentic an experience as I can. Historical fiction varies greatly in terms of description, and while some readers are perfectly happy with just a hint of the historical setting (be that clothing, the layout of castles, character traits typical of the era, etc.), others prefer a deeper immersion into the past. I strive to provide the latter, but without wanting it to sound like a history lesson. Reading historical novels should be an adventure.

Richard: It’s absolutely essential for me too. I need to check that personal recollections actually accord with the historical record. I write a lot about the Second World War and although I can remember quite a lot about it and it was often the subject of talk in the family, nevertheless things can become blurred or just the victim of good old-fashioned folklore and myth.

Linda: It’s important, because making an error (historical, technical etc.) can lose you the reader who won’t believe much of anything you say afterward. That said, I think it ranks pretty evenly with the importance of personal experience and imagination. But then you can impale yourself on other fatal swords…like bad grammar, a plot that doesn’t move along, or unlikeable or flat characters.

How much time do you spend on Research?

Cathie: Ha! You got me there! I easily spend 30%-40% of my time on research, and it's very easy to get carried away. History is fascinating! Often, one thing you look up leads to the discovery of another that might just fit in with the plot. So you head off to explore that further too. For example, when I was reading up about an important attack on Charlemagne and his army in the Pyrenees by the ancestors of the Basques, which he lost, and during which many Frankish nobles died, I came across a reference to an attack by Saracens on the shores of the Orbiel river in the Cabardès hills north of Carcassonne. Little is known about that attack, and the Saracens were repelled, but I chose to include a hint of that into my story, as the location is important. I love discovering lesser-known events, as they are so handy to include in your plot.

Linda: Maybe 10-15%…but I’m guessing, because the research done for The Bicycle Messenger was mostly done at the very beginning of the process and that was over ten years ago. There were elements in my research that inspired turns in the plot, or even development of characters that I wouldn’t have thought of had I not done the research

Richard: For me, it depends upon the genre and the subject matter of the individual book. I tend to do a little broad research right at the beginning, then check facts and look for further material as I develop the story. With the novel A Right to Bear Arms I probably spent more time researching than writing. This is driven by the need to fully understand an historical personality before you start putting words in his or her mouth. At the other end of the scale a pure fiction like The Haunting of the Harlequin Goat required not much more than investigating the location of the action.

What sources of information do you use?

Richard: These days it's the internet. It has largely replaced the old reference library for original sources. Fact checking is faster (though I always check several origins for facts posted online because there are fake facts posted sometimes). The most valuable for me are old newsreel clips. You see how the people looked, their mannerisms, how they dressed and you hear their voices, the inflections and the emphases; and you see the environment they worked in, the onlookers, the aides that surround them etc. - this tells you a lot about the character; for this U Tube is great. I am also a great user of maps for location research and I find Google Earth indispensable. In many cases you can get right down on the ground and walk through a town or city. This not only gives you a feel for the location but it allows you to look at, and date, buildings from their architectural style. So if I am writing about the 1930s in a particular district of say, Chicago, I can pick out public and other buildings that were clearly contemporary and include them in my narrative.

Linda: When I began my research I found books on WWII history both at the library and, because it became apparent this was a very long-term project, for sale on the internet (thank goodness for Amazon). There is also a lot of information available directly from the internet but I wasn’t skilled at finding those sources back when I was doing the research. Later I spoke with veterans of the war and their relatives who had heard the stories from the veterans. I do accept hearsay! It was actually hearsay which inspired me to write The Bicycle Messenger - a tale told to a friend of mine by an old man in a café of his childhood task of running messages across the German lines rolled into the handlebars of his bicycle.

Cathie: I have many history books. I rarely buy novels in paperback or hardback nowadays, but I can't walk past non-fiction history books. My library is increasing steadily, and now it contains not only books in English or German, but also in French as I explore local and regional historical events. I can't help buying history books, even if the character or theme isn't even in the time-frame I currently write about. But you never know when it might come in handy. It's an addiction!
Over the years, I've also loved visiting castles and ruins. Getting a sense of place is very important to me, as I'm keen to convey that to my readers. I want them to ’be there’, to see the hustle and bustle of a medieval market; and to feel the tension during an attack.

Do you have to have a particular passion for the period you write about?

Linda: For me it was incredibly important to be passionate about my topic, as much of the research I did was a morass of dry facts and useless (to me) information. The nuggets of useful stuff were few and far between…but they were there to be “panned out” and worth the time and effort involved…mostly.

Richard: Ha, that's a tricky question. For me, I have to be passionate about the story to start with. If that is there then the fun of the research naturally follows. However, as a journalist I was often required to research subjects which I found terribly dry but still did it. That was what I was paid to do. As a novelist it is more a labour of love. In the end, though, it is about the excitement and fun of discovery and the acquisition of new knowledge on a subject that interests you. The more interested you are in the subject of your research the easier the work will be. By way of example, two of my interests are food and transport. My books are littered with cars, trains, boats, food and recipes (even super heroes have to eat.), so when it comes to those elements of research I can get really excited. So in answer to the question: it is important to have a passion for the subject - but it is also important to have a passion for research itself; the passion of discovery.

When researching near history there is nothing quite so valuable as talking to someone who was actually there at the time. In researching The Girl in the Baker's Van I was lucky enough to have two neighbours in our village, who were there during the occupation. Their testimony was invaluable in dispelling some of the fog around what the occupation was actually like and how the co-existence actually worked on the ground. One was in Dunkirk and the other down south in Fabrezan and what came out were distinct regional differences both in the behaviour of the occupiers and the occupied.
Finally there is the excitement of finding something you were not looking for that adds a new dimension or direction to your story.
Cathie: Oh, it's very important. I'm a hobby historian, and I'm still considering gaining a history degree one day. I've loved history since I was a child, and for most of my life, I've lived in cities with castles, or in an area where you find many old ruins. I love exploring old stones, touching them, imagining what life was like inside the thick walls. I also took part in medieval re-enactment over 15 years ago, where I learnt archery. We stayed overnight at several castles across Wales. I was in heaven.

Where do plots come from?

The philosophical novel

This is the first of a series of articles exploring the source of ideas that inspire writers to produce their works. In each article, two or more authors will discuss their books and how their imagination was stimulated to produce them.

Timothy Balding is the author of two novels with philosophical themes, The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Thinking and The Impostors. His next novel, a political satire, will be published in December 2019. He lives and works in the Basque country in France.

James Gault has written five novels including the comic philosophical fantasy OGG. His latest novella, A Flower in the Wind, is a political drama and is currently available on Amazon. His home is in the Occitania region of SW France.

James: In your novel 'The Man Who Couldn't Stop Thinking' you introduce the idea that the ‘unconscious mind’ is a myth. Could you explain this further?

Timothy: The popular portrayal of the famous 'unconscious mind' is that it is an area of our brains to which we do not have access but where thoughts are formulated that we do not even know about! This has led to the absolutely absurd situation where people accuse others of not actually knowing what they really think! "Ah, but that's not what you think unconsciously," they say blithely. Or, "unconsciously, I probably think this and feel that." And such like.

For me, this is a confusion and a contradiction. If a thought is not accessible to you, it is not a thought. You have no reason at all to believe that it exists. The question is rather elsewhere: to what extent are you aware and thinking about what you thinking?

James: So are you suggesting that the concept of the unconscious is some kind of hindrance to understanding ourselves?

Timothy: Since I believe that this thing is a pure misunderstanding, all I can say is that the failure to be aware of what you think is certainly a handicap, for you and, above all, the others. I would like to think that all men could be aware of, and be able to articulate, everything they believe, think and feel, in which case the 'unconscious mind' would disappear into thin air as a concept. All it means for now is that many people are blind to their own views, incapable of hearing them, barely know what they are, because they do not ever reflect on them. Research by psychologists actually confirms this.

James: This is an interesting idea. In my own work, OGG, I make the case that the inability to grasp what one knows and believes is the cause of many of the problems of humanity. It’s
based on my understanding from epistemology that true knowledge can only come from deductive logic, and that deductive logic cannot lead us to truth, it can only illuminate the consistency of different statements: If x is true, y follows. So to have any view on anything, it is necessary to have some of the ‘x’s: fundamental beliefs that we consider self-evident. In my book, I send an omnipotent and omniscient ‘Great Being’ to teach his (or her) followers how to think logically and question their fundamental beliefs. So I think I am arriving at your conclusion that people are blind to their own views from a slightly different direction.

But to take the argument on, do you have a view on the implications of this, both at an individual level and at the level of mankind as a whole?

Timothy: I have only ever been interested in philosophy inasmuch as it addresses the actual questions we humans face when we confront 'reality', whether within us or in the external world, and, of course, in their interaction. This requires a certain good faith and acceptance that we largely share the same perceptions and, if we don't, that there are identifiable causes for any such discrepancies. Questions like, 'Are we actually living in reality or is this all a dream?', or 'Does truth really exist?', I have to leave to others. They don't interest me in the slightest and are a waste of my time. I live and think on the basis that we as humans have a brotherly pact to discuss and explore our existence and our condition on the basis of a fundamental common understanding of its elementary nature. But, to address myself to your question ...

Two things:
I do not have your scepticism or disbelief in the absolute value of 'deductive logic'. Of course it leads us to truth! The 'fundamental beliefs that we consider self-evident', as you put it, all arise, it seems to me, from 2 + 2 = 4. Dostoevsky made a very good joke about the charming nature of 2 + 2 = 5 - but it doesn't! If we admit that it might, we are just lost for ever as a species. No quantum physicist (whatever that might be), will ever convince me, nor ever should, that when my mother gave me two crayons one day, then another two the next, that I then had four crayons. Anyone who says the contrary is not worth talking to. So, my point: I think that our notions of justice, of equity, of ethics, of truth, all arise, basically, out of our recognition and acceptance that 2 + 2 does indeed equal 4, something our brains could see and test in our very early days. And anyone who tells me that this conclusion is 'subjective', or individual to each of us, will have a fight with me on their hands!

You ask about the 'implications' on individuals and on humanity of the incapacity of many people to be aware of - or, more importantly, to question - their own views. This is the most important question of all! I don't want to sound too dramatic, but the future of mankind depends completely on man's ability to be aware of his biases, his prejudices, his hatreds, his lies to himself. And thus possibly capable NOT of changing them - I never ask for so much - but of refusing to act on them, of refusing to join the lynch party on the tail of those who disagree with him. Very little else matters at the end of the day! This is the central lesson, I must say, of my novel, 'The Man Who Couldn't Stop Thinking.'

James:
Looking at your two ‘things’, I don’t totally accept the first but on the second I’m completely in agreement.

I’m very aware that philosophers are often accused of being removed from the real world and self-indulging in ‘yoga for the mind’, but I do think a lot of it is relevant to understanding our thoughts. When you seem to suggest that ‘2 + 2 = 4’ is some kind of fundamental truth, I disagree. I understand that ‘2+2 = 4’ follows by logical deduction from what we mean by ‘2’, ‘4’, ‘+’ and ‘=’. Knowing this is of little consequence in itself, but what it does is demonstrate that if we search for the real truth behind our assumed true beliefs, we can be surprised to find how little justification we have for them. My whole comic novel, OGG, repeatedly emphases that point in an ironical and hopefully amusing way.

On your second point I agree completely. We may believe, for example, that God exists and our version is the only true one. But when we look at why, we come to understand that such a belief is very hard to justify rationally, and this, I would hope, leads us to be more tolerant of others. I suppose all my writing challenges these kind of beliefs people have, which are to some extent only opinion or even prejudice. Ah, I say, you may believe that, but what if you’re wrong? And then I go on to show them some of the implications of holding such unfounded opinions. In A Flower in the Wind, for example, I say this: I know you think that there are unthinkable bad deeds that could never be done by my country, only the ‘enemy’, but…..

But, to wind up this discussion, can I ask you this? In your writing so far, what would you choose as the most significant philosophical point that you want to get across to readers?

Timothy: We are indeed some ways apart. If you do not accept that 2 + 2 = 4, or rather that you do not feel that this is a fundamental truth, then, unhappily, dialogue between nice and intelligent and friendly gentlemen like the two of us, is unlikely to end in a conciliation of views on this question. I certainly possess a large number of very stupid and unjustifiable biases and prejudices, but I consider them to be of no importance at all, to be 'false' inasmuch as they are neither right nor wrong, and to be merely objects of my own mockery and laughter, never to be taken as a serious basis for any action. For they are precisely NOT 'beliefs', not rational conclusions and arguments from my inner dialogue, which is entirely built on reason. You seem to suggest that some of your beliefs lie in the realm of magical phenomena, or something. I don't suffer from any such illusions. I know very well where all my beliefs originate. They have been crafted out of the simple observation of reality from my 2 + 2 = 4 standpoint.
The 'most significant philosophical point' of my writing? First of all, and above everything else, I want to make people laugh - as you do too - and embrace the joy of life. (It is not for nothing that Nietzsche is my real hero as a philosopher, because he too aimed for these ends). Beyond that, I have tried to illustrate the evolution of the human species towards complete consciousness of self and, thus, complete objectivity. Practically no one accepts that this evolution is taking place. Among my few allies are Shakespeare - the first writer to illustrate on stage the personal, solitary inner dialogue - and Nietszche, with his brilliant perception that the Greeks and the Romans, when they thought 'the gods' were speaking to them, were actually hearing themselves - for the first time in human history! Yes, we have come a long way and are entering, one by one, a new era of man. This is the discussion I hope to provoke with my writing.
James: Let’s agree to disagree amicably on esoteric matters of epistemology. Suffice to say I am a confirmed and severe sceptic and it often leads me into troubled waters. More important, in the realm of practical matters, is that I am 100% with you on the importance of objectivity. I don’t unfortunately have your optimism that all of mankind will achieve such objectivity. I’m struck by the similarity between Socrates and Nietszche, and wonder if perhaps there will also be the ‘ubermencsh’ or ‘philsophers’ whose insight into their own thinking far outstrips that of the ordinary man. But, for the sake of mankind, I hope you will be proved to be right. Thanks for talking to me.

LINKS TO THEIR BOOKS