Episode 104
Researching is a Part of the Historical Fiction Journey with Henry McLaughlin
Henry McLaughlin shares his research process for historical fiction novels, focusing on his latest book, "Emily's Trials." He emphasizes the significance of thorough research to create an accurate and authentic historical setting. McLaughlin's writing process involves "pantsing" and allowing the characters to shape the story. He encourages writers to revise and rewrite their work fearlessly. McLaughlin believes in the importance of supporting local bookstores and highlights the relevance of his stories of hope and reconciliation in today's world.
LINKS:
- Buy Emily’s Trials by Henry McLaughlin on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3uaL5e5
- Liz Wilcox's Email Marketing Membership at http://wmdeal.com/liz
- Get your FREE Move the Needle goal-setting for authors ebook at https://www.writingmomentum.com
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Writing Momentum podcast.
Speaker:I'm Christopher Maselli.
Speaker:I am not here with my wife, Gena, today.
Speaker:She is out, but I have in her place a good friend of mine, Henry McLaughlin.
Speaker:He was tagged as one to watch by Publishers Weekly.
Speaker:He's an award winning author who takes his readers on adventures into the hearts
Speaker:and souls of his characters as they battle inner conflicts while seeking to bring
Speaker:restoration and justice into a dark world.
Speaker:And now his writing, it's a...
Speaker:It's pretty great because it explores themes like restoration, reconciliation,
Speaker:redemption, and you may have known him from his Riverbend Saga series, which is a
Speaker:Western series, and his new book, Emily's Trials, has been out just for a little
Speaker:while now, and you can get it on Amazon.
Speaker:How are you doing today, Henry?
Speaker:I'm doing very well today, Chris.
Speaker:How are you doing?
Speaker:Oh, I'm doing well.
Speaker:It's always so good to talk to you.
Speaker:And we're going to talk a little bit about research today.
Speaker:I'm going to do some research as I talk to you about research.
Speaker:The reason I thought you might be good to talk about research is because Emily's
Speaker:Trials, as well as your Riverbend series are all historical fiction, right?
Speaker:They're westerns and historical fictions, so they take place in a whole different
Speaker:time period when neither of us were alive.
Speaker:In Emily's Trials in particular, you've got a female protagonist who's
Speaker:an attorney in Kansas, and she's presiding over criminal trials, which
Speaker:I imagine you had to do research to give the story some kind of grounding.
Speaker:So tell us how did that happen?
Speaker:What kind of research did you do?
Speaker:Or...
Speaker:Did you feel like you didn't need to do as much, or are things the same today as they
Speaker:were back then as far as the law goes?
Speaker:No, the things were not the same as far as the law goes.
Speaker:And it was also a challenge because I needed to ground
Speaker:Emily in a historical setting.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:My Riverbend Saga books, I just set it in the 18, late 1870s, and,
Speaker:but I had made up the towns, made up, because it was all fictional.
Speaker:I just made up the whole story world.
Speaker:Because of what Emily's Trial was about, a female attorney, I had to make sure.
Speaker:I couldn't put it in Texas because Texas didn't have its first
Speaker:female attorney until after 1900.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:So it was just like, okay, where can I put it, where would it be most, where would I
Speaker:be most comfortable and things like that.
Speaker:That was the kind of research I wanted to do.
Speaker:I settled on Kansas because of, in my research of when did states
Speaker:start having female attorneys.
Speaker:Kansas got its first female attorney in the early 1880s.
Speaker:And I said that's a good time frame for me.
Speaker:I'm comfortable with that time frame.
Speaker:So I just set it then, set it in Kansas, which meant I had to know Kansas.
Speaker:Yeah, because you just completely changed your setting, right?
Speaker:As to where it's going to be.
Speaker:And it's going to be a real place.
Speaker:It's not going to be in my imagination.
Speaker:I settled on Abilene, Kansas as the town.
Speaker:I really don't remember why.
Speaker:I said, I'll say, but I know I didn't want to set it in Dodge City because
Speaker:I would expect Matt Dillon to walk in.
Speaker:But what I did was I took a trip up to Abilene and wandered around, they have
Speaker:an old town section and wandered around Abilene, just to get a feel for the place
Speaker:and whatnot, and met with the Abilene Historical Society and talked with the
Speaker:gentleman who was the president of it at the time, this goes back several years and
Speaker:I was talking to him about the book and he said, okay, that, that sounds really good.
Speaker:And I said, yeah, and what's going to happen is there's going to be a
Speaker:murder involving, a cattle drive.
Speaker:And he said you have a problem.
Speaker:He said, we didn't have any cattle drives in 1885.
Speaker:They had moved to Dodge.
Speaker:Oh, wow.
Speaker:Abilene's cattle period was like in the late 1870s.
Speaker:I said what was big in Abilene at the time?
Speaker:He said, railroads were using Abilene as a hub, so there was a
Speaker:lot of building, a lot of activity.
Speaker:So that became my foundational setting.
Speaker:I spent some time at the Kansas State Historical Society looking at how they
Speaker:did trials, how they did murders, not how did they do murders, but how did they
Speaker:do hangings and executions and stuff.
Speaker:And did they even do executions, and so I got a lot of material there.
Speaker:I'm a big fan of westerns, so the western genre in fiction and movies,
Speaker:and so I'm pretty well grounded in books about how to write westerns.
Speaker:How to capture the culture, how to capture the dialogue, what people wore,
Speaker:what people ate, and stuff like that.
Speaker:So that was very helpful.
Speaker:So that was the kind of research I did.
Speaker:I do a class on world building, and one of the things I say, if you
Speaker:can all do it, make a site visit.
Speaker:Yeah, I imagine that would just, that had to have just opened
Speaker:up your eyes when you're there.
Speaker:I'm sure all these ideas start coming in as you see locations or
Speaker:you see even the buildings, right?
Speaker:Because then you think, oh, that's going to be in your
Speaker:mind now when you're writing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And take pictures, so you can say now what did that building really look like?
Speaker:I've got a picture I can see if there's a half columns or am I just
Speaker:making that up, that kind of thing.
Speaker:Yeah, so do site visit, take pictures, take notes, wander around and talk
Speaker:to people and check in with the Local Historical Society, and the State
Speaker:Historical Society, and depending on how deep you want to go to museums, if
Speaker:you're in Oklahoma, if you're interested in Western history, go to the Cowboy
Speaker:Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
Speaker:Go to colleges, because many times they'll have collections of papers.
Speaker:From prominent citizens who were in the area, the time frame of your story.
Speaker:It is nice that there probably are a lot of artifacts and pictures from that
Speaker:time period that are still available.
Speaker:So you're not just completely going off the written word or
Speaker:what people think is around there.
Speaker:Because like when you mentioned the train, I thought, okay, so
Speaker:does that mean you had to...
Speaker:Kind of figure out what how did the trains work in those days around that
Speaker:area because you weren't even planning to have a train in the story, right?
Speaker:And now you've got it as one of the major reasons for the first trial.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And I have Emily take a train from Abilene to San Antonio, Texas.
Speaker:So how long would that take?
Speaker:Yeah especially back then, right?
Speaker:Because it'd be even different now than it was then.
Speaker:Yeah right.
Speaker:Yeah, it was all that kind of stuff that had to get factored into it.
Speaker:Some of it you can do online, but what I stress with people is Google
Speaker:and Wikipedia are not research.
Speaker:They're the beginning of research.
Speaker:They give you clues as to where to go next.
Speaker:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker:So how about when writing then?
Speaker:Do you plot everything out?
Speaker:Because you have all these intricacies?
Speaker:Or do you just start writing from the seat of your pants?
Speaker:And say, are you a pantster?
Speaker:And say, okay, I'm just going that way.
Speaker:I see you nodding your head yes.
Speaker:So that's the way you do it?
Speaker:I'm a pantster.
Speaker:Which is something because I also have OCD.
Speaker:I can drive myself nuts.
Speaker:But I'm a pantser.
Speaker:I just I started in my second Riverbend book where I had outlined, I took
Speaker:six weeks to outline the story.
Speaker:Started to write it, and then I realized we're not on the outline anymore.
Speaker:So I said to the characters, I said, come on, we're going
Speaker:to get back on the outline.
Speaker:And I don't know if this has ever happened to anybody else, but
Speaker:my characters went on strike.
Speaker:They wouldn't talk to me, they wouldn't do what I told them.
Speaker:They finally said, look, we're telling a better story than you outlined.
Speaker:That's when I became a pantser.
Speaker:I just followed them.
Speaker:I think it's Faulkner who said "I create a character and then I pick
Speaker:up a pad and a pencil and I follow him around writing it out, everything
Speaker:he says and everything he does."
Speaker:That's a pantser.
Speaker:Ray Bradbury wrote the same way, he's, they were pantsers.
Speaker:And what I like about pantsing is the freedom it gives me to see
Speaker:what the characters want to do.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:You just follow them, explore them.
Speaker:Sometimes I'll stop and say, why did you do that?
Speaker:And hear from them and get more.
Speaker:Because that way I get to know them more as people, not just names on a page.
Speaker:So that's why I enjoy pantsing and I like it when they take me down a
Speaker:rabbit trail that, Oh, wow, I didn't even see that coming, and here we are.
Speaker:It's surprising to you as the author and probably makes it very enjoyable to
Speaker:say, Oh I didn't know that was coming and here we're going that direction.
Speaker:I always hear you talking about characters because of the way you talk about how
Speaker:they talk to you and you talk to them.
Speaker:In your creative process, you see them as actual people that you're
Speaker:interacting with, don't you?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:I tell a story when I was writing my first book, Journey to Riverbend,
Speaker:and the publisher at the time, when it was traditional, said,
Speaker:your heroine, her name was Rachel, said, she's too good to be true.
Speaker:She's the prostitute with a heart of gold.
Speaker:She's just too cliche.
Speaker:So I said, okay.
Speaker:So I started to try and revise her and make her a little, give
Speaker:her some rough edges and stuff.
Speaker:At one point I said, I'm not getting anywhere with this.
Speaker:So I interviewed her.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:Did you do it on paper?
Speaker:Did you sit down?
Speaker:I sat down with her.
Speaker:I put her in my grandmother's rocking chair.
Speaker:And I said, I need to talk to her.
Speaker:I need to find out what you're about.
Speaker:She said, this was after like seven drafts of the novel.
Speaker:And she, I said, Rachel, I don't get it.
Speaker:What do you want?
Speaker:And her response was, you know how women do.
Speaker:She said, didn't you read the book?
Speaker:Don't you get it?
Speaker:Didn't you read the book?
Speaker:And that's what I was missing with Rachel was her spark, her feisty independent
Speaker:spirit, and it came out from that little interview came her core values,
Speaker:which were no man is ever going to control me again, because she had been
Speaker:abused for years, prior to this book.
Speaker:So that's, I don't know what sent me off on that rabbit trail, but that's how
Speaker:I, yeah, my, I talk to my characters.
Speaker:My wife said to me one day, she said, I'm going to go out with some
Speaker:friends or go shopping or something.
Speaker:So you won't mind being alone.
Speaker:So you won't be alone.
Speaker:You won't be alone.
Speaker:You have all those people in your head.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So when it comes to, now we were talking about research, so when it
Speaker:comes to doing research and you've got these characters who are going
Speaker:off and doing their own things.
Speaker:How do you make sure then that what you're writing is still authentic, that it hasn't
Speaker:taken you to a different time period or into something that didn't exist, in
Speaker:Kansas in the 1880s, that sort of thing.
Speaker:Yeah, that's where the research is the foundation for the story world.
Speaker:The characters can go and do whatever they want, but they have to do it
Speaker:within the confines of the story world.
Speaker:I see.
Speaker:I'm reminded of a pastor who, a preacher who once said, in the
Speaker:time of King David or in the time of Jesus, men could fly, they just
Speaker:didn't know the laws of aviation.
Speaker:The laws of aviation we have now were in effect when Jesus was on
Speaker:the earth, but nobody knew them.
Speaker:So it's okay guys, this is your story world.
Speaker:Men aren't flying, so you can't fly to San Antonio, you can't, you can't
Speaker:jump in a Lamborghini and, speed over to Kansas City or whatever.
Speaker:So that really helps them stay within the story world, too.
Speaker:Because that's their world.
Speaker:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker:I noticed right off in Emily's Trial, so I knew it was a, a book
Speaker:about this woman who's an attorney and she's got these trials coming up
Speaker:and I knew there was going to be a murder and all that sort of thing.
Speaker:I was struck by how right in the first chapter, just the first
Speaker:few pages, there is a very clear love triangle created, right?
Speaker:And suddenly I realized, Oh, you're building in like these
Speaker:foundations in the middle of kind of what's a surprising start, right?
Speaker:It starts right off with the first twist.
Speaker:You're building a love triangle and that doesn't have anything to do with the fact
Speaker:that it's in a certain time period or that it's, even a woman who's an attorney.
Speaker:It's just that's basic human connection.
Speaker:So what was your thought between about having that in the story so early?
Speaker:My thought, being a pantser, my thought was, where did that come from?
Speaker:Yeah, it surprised you, huh?
Speaker:Yeah, it surprised me.
Speaker:You're romantic at heart is what it is, Henry.
Speaker:I guess I am, and the two gentlemen in the opening scene, Yeah I didn't,
Speaker:that's just, that's my characters revealing stuff to me as we move along.
Speaker:As we go along.
Speaker:And there's even an interesting little twist with one of those gentlemen,
Speaker:but I don't want to reveal it because I don't want to do a spoiler.
Speaker:Anyway.
Speaker:Yes, yeah, for sure.
Speaker:Yeah that, that was just, as I'm writing along, I said, Oh,
Speaker:okay, and I'm just writing.
Speaker:And then when I read it the next day, I said, Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker:That's pretty good, huh?
Speaker:Let's see where that goes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I always find I love writing romantic scenes that aren't always
Speaker:on the surface romantic, right?
Speaker:There's subtleties going on because a lot of times for me, they've happened
Speaker:in, in, books for middle graders.
Speaker:So you can't get real deep in a book for middle graders with that stuff,
Speaker:but still those subtleties to me, it brings so much life to a scene.
Speaker:And that's what I saw when I was reading that was, okay, wow, we're already
Speaker:seeing things happen that are, there's all this subtext to what's going on.
Speaker:Yeah?
Speaker:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker:I think one of the benefits for me about pantsing is I don't think about
Speaker:gee, I need to build some subtext here, or I need to do this here.
Speaker:I just let the characters...
Speaker:I don't sweat that stuff, and I discover I've done it later on.
Speaker:I thoroughly respect the fact that you can be a panster like that and do that.
Speaker:I am very much, you talk about being OCD with stuff, like I have
Speaker:to plot every single scene, every single point of every single scene.
Speaker:But truthfully, most of that plotting that I do is probably the kind of
Speaker:things that you do when you're writing.
Speaker:I'm still listening to the characters.
Speaker:I'm still, seeing how it all goes.
Speaker:I just haven't written everything out yet.
Speaker:And I'm just getting all those little details as I go, but I have mad respect
Speaker:for someone who can do the pantsing thing because I think that would be difficult.
Speaker:Sometimes I find I have to just stop.
Speaker:And I do what I call a free write.
Speaker:Where I'll just write a page, what's going to happen next, or what,
Speaker:just to work it out in my head.
Speaker:And when I start a new chapter or a new scene, my question is,
Speaker:what happens in this chapter?
Speaker:What happens in the scene and how does it connect to the rest of the story?
Speaker:Yeah, so you still got a bit of a road map.
Speaker:You're just not tied down to it totally, right?
Speaker:If the characters go a different direction, you go a different direction.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:We just rip up that map and start over, that road doesn't
Speaker:go there anymore, it's okay.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:That's good.
Speaker:Do you have any specific advice you can leave us with for the
Speaker:author who wants to write fiction tied to a specific time period?
Speaker:I think I know what you're gonna say based on what you've already said,
Speaker:but what advice would you give?
Speaker:First I want to give them some non advice.
Speaker:How many times have we heard, write what you know?
Speaker:Flip it.
Speaker:Know what you write.
Speaker:That's good.
Speaker:Because if I wrote what I know we wouldn't be here today.
Speaker:You and I would not be having this conversation.
Speaker:But if I know what I write, then I have to go find out, have to go learn stuff.
Speaker:Don't be afraid to learn.
Speaker:Don't be afraid to you don't need to rush it.
Speaker:In fact, don't rush your writing.
Speaker:That would be my advice.
Speaker:Let the story, as a pantser, let the story tell you what the story is.
Speaker:And yeah research.
Speaker:Even if you're writing a contemporary story, research it.
Speaker:I have another novel that's not published yet.
Speaker:And when I started writing it in 2009.
Speaker:So I said it in 2009.
Speaker:We're 14 years later.
Speaker:Just the tech is so different.
Speaker:But I've kept the story anchored in 2009.
Speaker:And sometimes beta readers have said wait, your character has a flip phone.
Speaker:And then I had to remember what the time period was.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I found that technology is the thing that always trips up my
Speaker:books the most on a later read.
Speaker:I write a book, it's great, and then five years pass, I read again and I'm like,
Speaker:wow, all the technology has changed.
Speaker:Because it's modern day and technology has just changed everything so quickly.
Speaker:It changes every day, you know.
Speaker:It wasn't too long ago, we couldn't do what we're doing now.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Having a conference, doing an interview like this know what
Speaker:you write from your heart.
Speaker:Sit down and write, I think it was a combination with Elmore Leonard and James
Speaker:Scott Bell said, it was like, " write every day" and then fix what you write.
Speaker:So many people just, there, it's done.
Speaker:It's no, it's just garbage, don't be afraid to go back and rewrite.
Speaker:There's a technique I use where I'll write Monday through Friday.
Speaker:Saturday I'll do a deep edit of everything I wrote Monday through Friday.
Speaker:So by the time the book's finished, I've actually completed two drafts.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Wow, that's good.
Speaker:That's what's helpful for me.
Speaker:And James Scott Bell talks about setting a word limit.
Speaker:My word limit is 500 creative words a day.
Speaker:500 words of fiction a day.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:That's realistic.
Speaker:Sometimes I'll, I usually set a timer for an hour.
Speaker:But, one time I was writing Emily's Trials, I got into the courtroom scene,
Speaker:and I'm just writing, and writing, and I wrote for an hour and fifteen minutes,
Speaker:or something like that, and when I looked up, I had done over a thousand words.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:In an hour, because it was just...
Speaker:Your fingers were on fire.
Speaker:Yeah, it was into the story, into the testimony, taking testimonies,
Speaker:cross examinations, all that stuff.
Speaker:Just that was all written in an hour and 15 minutes.
Speaker:That whole courtroom scene, a little bit of tightening up, but anyway.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Where can they get Emily's Trials?
Speaker:If someone wants to purchase it and read about her trials
Speaker:in and out of the courtroom?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:They can get it at Amazon, both print and ebook.
Speaker:If they want to go, and I would appreciate it if they would go to their
Speaker:local bookstore and say, I want to purchase Emily's Trials, and if they
Speaker:don't have it, ask them to order it.
Speaker:Because they won't, they usually will not order just one.
Speaker:They may order four, three or four or five.
Speaker:And that's going to build sales.
Speaker:That's good.
Speaker:And it's not so much building sales to make money.
Speaker:It's building sales to get the story out.
Speaker:Because I really believe Emily's Trials is a story of hope and reconciliation.
Speaker:People need that story.
Speaker:Those kind of stories in today's world.
Speaker:I totally agree.
Speaker:Thank you for writing it, Henry.
Speaker:And thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast.
Speaker:My pleasure.
Speaker:Really enjoyed it.
Speaker:We will have in the show notes, we will have a direct link to that book on Amazon.
Speaker:If you just can't wait to get to your local bookstore, otherwise, yeah, head
Speaker:down to your local bookstore and ask them for it and that'll help Henry get the word
Speaker:out and get hope out in the process, too.
Speaker:Hey, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe,
Speaker:and share it with someone who's interested in doing research for their
Speaker:historical fiction, and I think they may pick up some really good tips.
Speaker:I've really enjoyed this, Henry.
Speaker:It's always good having you on.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:It's a pleasure being on with you, Chris.
Speaker:Really enjoyed it.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:All right, and together, remember, we have writing momentum.
Speaker:Bye bye.
