Tag: History

Posted in Research, Uncategorized

Open Letter to Anyone Writing a Research Book Just for Me

Posted on by beckylevine

This post is dedicated to my sister Jenny, the history teacher, who is stunned to find me reading history after all these years and who, I fear, grits her teeth and bites back words every time I reject or whine about a book. Love you, Jen!

Dear History Writer:

I’m back on the research trail, along with honing in on my WIP’s story. Over the weekend, I read a great book about technology and housework and what all those newfangled inventions did and didn’t do for women’s (and men’s) work in the home. (I can now tell you that there were, at one time, gas-powered refrigerators as well as electric ones, but do not ask me to explain the workings of either, or why one took off while the other didn’t!)

And then this morning, I picked up another book, that shall remain nameless, because–even though it’s on a topic I am interested in and that has a lot to do with my WIP, I couldn’t get through it. I tried–reading a few pages at the start of each chapter, skipping through looking for a heading that might be relevant, reading a few paragraphs more here and there…but nope. There might be information in this book that I need, but I can’t keep my brain attached to the words long enough to find out.

Why did I enjoy (and learn from) one book and couldn’t force myself to keep reading the other? Well, the obvious answer would be that the first author is a better writer, but I think there’s more to it than that. So, for anybody out there who’s considering writing history for readers like me–who aren’t their strongest with a nonfiction read, who need to be entertained while they’re being educated, who will leave behind a dry research book for something fictional at the drop of a hat…here’s what I’d like you to be thinking about as you write.

  • Do, please, tell me stories. I can only take so many facts without a breather, without being pulled into something that has plot, tension, character dynamics, and forward movement. No, don’t feel like you have to write a novel for me–I have plenty of those lying around. But bring that information into something with the elements of a novel, if only for half a page. Kay? Thanks.
  • Give me people. Yes, I know there are readers and researchers out there who love diving into pages and pages of government edicts, tables with housing and employment data, maps of population migration, lists of the various ores used in building railroads. And I need some of that, too. But please sprinkle them lightly through your words, as examples, not the entire text of a chapter. And then let me know what it really felt like to live with those statistics, what someone said about them in a letter or diary. Feed my imagination, not just the calculator that is, yes, stored somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain.
  • Weave some humor into your narrative. Make me smile, even laugh. Some of those quotes you’re sharing are ludicrous–I know it and, come on, you know it, too. How could he/she say that with a straight face? And how can you deliver it without at least a tiny well-phrased smirk. Or go the other way. Make me mad, get me pissed off at the nerve of a group, a person, a leader. And let your own anger leak out–just a little trickle, so I know we’re on the same side. So I know you didn’t just type that passage into your manuscript coldly and objectively, not when it’s outrageous enough to break through anyone’s objectivity. Seriously.
  • Draw connections. Yes, I know it’s simplest for you to organize your book by decades, or by geographic regions, or by ethnic groups. And,  yes, that organization makes it easy for me to find the information I most need. BUT…just because your chapters are separated by page breaks, does not mean these people, these areas, these timelines are distinct and isolated from each other. They’re not. One year builds to another; one person’s actions ripple through the lives of others; the events in one state cross the borders into another–even if it takes a while. Share this with me. Show me that you see the threads weaving through it all, and make me aware of the ones I don’ t know yet.
  • If you need an example of the things I’m talking about, I can refer you to a couple of books that were beginning steps of my conversion into reading (good!) history. Pick up Amy Butler Greenfield’s A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire and Laurence Bergreen’s  Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifiying Circumnavigation of the Globe. (Note: Don’t eat a big meal before reading the sections about scurvy in Bergreen’s book. And, yes, making me sick to my stomach gets you a gold star, right up there with the whole humor and anger thing.)

That’s all. For today, anyway. Thank you for listening and for, possibly, considering my wish-list as you start writing Chapter 1. I don’t know how far my request will get you in academic circles, or in the lives of those people who live for facts (Hey, some of my best friends are people who live for facts!!), but your efforts will not go unappreciated here, in my world.

Which must count for something.

Yours in research,

Becky Levine

Posted in Historical Fiction

Historical Fiction: The History Part

Posted on by beckylevine

I think I’ve told the story here of how I started writing historical fiction. I was reading a nonfiction book about the 1913 Suffrage March in Washington, D.C. I read a scene about the march and knew, instantly, that I wanted to write a hero who was part of that scene. Of course, that turned out, eventually, to be the other book I still have to write, but still…that was my entry into a genre I never thought I’d be part of.

I was, honestly, never a big fan of history. Maybe it started with the high-school history class where we were given copies of a page in the text, on which certain words had been whited-out, and our job was to read the page, then fill in the blanks. Yes, really. Anyway, when I decided to write this book, I had to face reading a lot of stuff I thought I wouldn’t really enjoy. What I found out, though, is that (duh!) there are good writers of history* and not-so-good writers of history, just like in any genre. (Side note: For one of the best examples I know of one of these good writers, go pick up a copy of Amy Butler Greenfield’s A Perfect Red. You will not be able to put it down.)

And I learned something else. For me, history is people. Not wars, not political parties, not socio-economic statistics. People. Individuals. Yes, sure, I’ll read about the impact those people had on their times, and the impact their times had on those people. But if you don’t catch me with how the person actually ticked, how they thought and how they behaved…well, you won’t catch me.

Which, hey!, fits pretty well into writing historical fiction. Because, again, fiction for me is about people. Aka characters. How they act, why they act, and how they interact with/off each other.

This weekend, I wrote a scene, in which the people of history and the people of my story finally came together. There is really one reason why the book I thought I was working on has been put in second place on the writing shelf. That reason is Jane Addams.

When I started reading about Chicago in the early 1900s, I was so blown away by how Addams was everywhere, doing everything, and by the person everybody and their great-nephew’s-cousin’s-sister-in-law described her to be, that I was lost. Or maybe found. But I haven’t been sure whether I would really write Jane Addams into my book. It’s the story of a teenage girl, the daughter of an immigrant mother who lives her live in a too-narrow world of fear. The girl finds Hull-House, finds the world that the settlement residents move in every day, and has to break out of her mother’s shell to become part of the settlement life.

Anyhoo…Like I was saying, I knew that Hull-House would play a big part in the story. Huge. But by 1910, Jane Addams wasn’t always around Hull-House. She traveled, she spoke, she had a finger in just about every pie inside and outside the United States, let alone Chicago. And I didn’t want to force her in, just to give her the cameo.

But Saturday, she stopped by. Just like she did so many times in real life, dropping into a class that was being taught for a few immigrant girls, in one of the many Hull-House rooms that were always full and busy. She talked to the girls, she stayed to help, and then she was drawn away by another resident with another demand on her time. All with grace, warmth, and ease.

I think I got close. I think I may have painted a TRUE picture of who this woman was, who I see her to have been. A woman who always had time for her neighbors, for the people who were the reason she built a Settlement House, the reason she settled onto Halsted Street in Chicago, in 1897. A woman whom people not only respected and admired, but truly loved.

And I think, after all, she may very well stay in this story.

Posted in Historical Fiction

Thoughts on History and Historical Fiction

Posted on by beckylevine

So many times, as I sit down with a history book these days, one I’m reading for WIP research, I get this mixed feeling of…

  • Wow, things were really different back then.
  • Wow, has anything changed?

Okay, maybe this is because I’m reading a lot about things like women’s roles in society, working women getting less money than men, poverty and crime, anti-immigrant sentiment.

See what I mean?

Sure, I could get depressed. Sure, I could get frustrated, and impatient, and–oh, yeah–just a bit angry. And, sometimes, I do.

But…I think this sameness, actually, is what’s at the heart of good historical fiction and is the extra element in a well-written story that really hooks a reader. Especially, maybe, a teen reader. (Yes, that’s the sound of fingers crossing that you hear.)

It’s pretty hard, I think, to have our emotions triggered by things that are truly in the past, completely over and done. I think we do, at least, respond in a milder degree about injustices or tragedies that are finished, taken care of, “fixed.” When we read about something, though, that was wrong in 1913 and is still pretty much happening in 2010, then we get pissed. The reaction that says, “This is horrible,” is doubled, maybe even tripled, by the recognition of its continuity, its sameness nearly 100 years later.

One of the things I hope to have resonate for my MC is some of that feeling–that the world her mother lived in when she first came to America still exists–the tenement slums, the work conditions, the fear–even if her mother has escaped from it. I want my readers to see this sameness. I also want, though, for them to see the continuity between my MC’s problems and choices, and their own. The narrow world she grows up in–the choices she must make about building her own life and separating herself from those who would stop her from doing that–I want this to “click” with the teens I’m writing for.

Because when I think about having no control of your life, about being pushed in a direction that is not right for you, about constantly hearing you “shouldn’t” and  you “can’t”–I don’t think these things were specific only to the teens of the early 20th century. I think they’ve pretty much stuck around for our kids today, obviously to varying degrees of force and wrongness. And I think the choices teens faced in the past, the times when the pushing went too far, are very, very close to the choices they face today.

So, I guess, for me, this is what young-adult historical is about. The goal…somehow…is to layer in the history, tell the specific story, and make that connection.

Posted in Research

Fast Friday Five: A Long Time Ago, in a Chicago Far, Far Away

Posted on by beckylevine

I wasn’t going to post a Friday Five, but I’m reading some fun ones around the blogosphere & feeling JUST a bit left out! So…five fun facts I learned during research and writing this week. Step back with me, if you will, to 1913 Chicago. It’s a cold, windy year, even for that city, so bring those winter layers. (I know some of you are still wearing them, anyway!)

1. You can, apparently, spread diptheria with classroom pencils.

2. Maybe because you’re being required to turn your pencils in at the end of the class, or the end of the day. Personally, I think I’ll keep my son stocked with his own!

3. More girls were staying in school and going on to college thanboys. Pretty much because they weren’t ever going to make as much $$ as the boys, so if the boys got out of school and worked, the family could support the girl through college (increasing her earning power SOME), but if she quit, she couldn’t earn enough to help get that boy through school. Wait, I’m sorry, did we just tesseract between 1913 and 2010?

4. Nope, still there! Moving on. One of the reason big electric companies had a bit of a battle spreading their services around Chicago, is that it was so easy to set up your own, personal power-station and then sell your extra electricity to your neighbors. Okay, PEOPLE weren’t doing this, but fancy hotels and businesses that wanted to “dress to impress” with bright lights were.

5. Some rich people put just a few electric bulbs into their otherwise-gas-powered chandeliers, and then would light those bulbs for big parties or when the “Joneses” came over.

 Happy Friday. Happy Writing!

Posted in History, Research

Five Historic Tidbits on a Friday

Posted on by beckylevine

Been deep in lovely research all week. Here are a few things I’ve learned about being an immigrant on your way to Chicago in the early twentieth century

  1. You might not make it. The Immigrants’ Protective League kept stats on how many girls were supposedly put on a train to Chicago, from their port of entry, and didn’t get there. Some they found. Some they didn’t.
  2. The address you had for your family might not be real, might be wrong, or might have had a change of residents three times over since you got it.
  3. You were very likely to have lost track of your luggage, including the feather bed you’d brought with you.
  4. You were put on a train to be “fair” to the railways, even if it meant a few extra days of travel. Say there were 10 railways with trains leaving your port of entry and going to Chicago, with various and sundry stops along the way. Say there were 500 immigrants that day on their ways to Chicago. 50 immigrants went on each train, even if it meant heading down to Norfolk, Virginia, then back up to Chicago. If you didn’t bring enough food for the extra legs of the journey, oh, well.
  5. If you were one of the lucky ones, someone from the Immigrant Protective League was at the station, or across the street in their offices, to greet you in your own language and help you find your way through the maze of confusion to your new home. With a bed to stay in for a few days, if needed, while they tracked down that address or that family. And found you a job.

Because, at that point, the government sure wasn’t going to help you.