Why I Do the Research: Finding the Real Truth
As a kid, I would rather have eaten runny fried eggs, frogs’ legs, and boiled Brussels Sprouts than done research. In high school, the idea of doing honest-to-goodness research chilled my blood. And throughout college and grad school, I did it, but never with a whole heart, and never well.
When I wrote my first novel, I suddenly realized that research was just a word like any other and that I could make it into whatever I wanted. It stopped being the thing I had to do complete a paper on a subject I hadn’t chosen and in which I had no interest. It became instead a way to give the bones of my story flesh and nerves, color and fragrance. And because I was invested in my characters and their lives, I was interested in finding out whatever I could about them. Not just to make the book a better book or the character a fuller, more believable one, but because I cared and was curious. And to my surprise every question I posed led to at least one answer, and to several more questions. It was like crawling down a rabbit hole and never wanting to come back up. All of a sudden I realized that runny eggs and frogs’ legs, under the right circumstances, actually tasted like rich custard and filet mignon.
Take this character, a nameless tinsmith in Latvia in 1750. All I know about him is that by temperament he is compassionate, with a fiery temper, that he loves his wife and is devoted to his four children, and that he is away from home for days at a time selling what he makes. How do I write about him? And what don’t I know that I need to find out?
What exactly did a tinsmith do? How did he carry out his trade? How did he learn it?
From whom did a tinker in Latvia buy his materials? Did he buy rolled sheets of tin? In what quantity? Where was his workspace? What tools did he use? How did he get the fire hot enough to melt tin?
What items did he make? Were there only a few pots and pans and kettles, or did he take orders and make custom items?
Did he sell what he made in markets, or on the street corner, or going from village to village? Did he carry his wares on his back? If he had a cart, did he push it, or did he have a horse? If a horse, how did he feed it and where did he stable it at night? And while he was traveling, where did he stay? I imagine that in rural Latvia there were few hotels for itinerant tinsmiths.
How was he paid? In currency or in kind? What was the currency? What was a pot or a kettle worth? What did he do with the money he earned? Did he keep it under the mattress? Did he even have a mattress? When was the end of the week, and what did he do on his day of rest? Did he even have a day of rest?
When he arrived home after being on the road for several days, how did his wife greet him? What was a customary and accepted show of affection among people whose marriages were arranged by their parents? Were his children home? What might have been prepared for dinner?
Eventually, I have to stop asking questions and start finding answers. It turns out answers are just another rabbit hole. They lead to other queries and solutions, and they often provide contradictory information. The authoritative book on Village Life in 18th Century Latvia (if there were such a book) might state definitively that tinkers were all city-based and that they traveled with a backpack out to villages up to 10 kilometers away, returning home each night. But the anecdotal history of an immigrant family on the Internet might tell a different story. In it, a woman might be sharing the life of her great-grandfather, a tinker who lived in a small village, worked at home for a week at a time, and then went on the road for as long as it took to sell what he had made. He stayed in whatever village he ended up at each night because people were hospitable to peddlers who brought them the goods they needed. As a result, he made friends in villages everywhere.
Which version of the past do I choose? The authoritative one or the anecdotal one? In this case, I would choose the version that best fits my story.
Here’s another example of conflicting research. In my upcoming novel, On The Sickle’s Edge, my characters in Soviet-era Russia receive a monthly package from their family in the West, containing suit cloth, shoes, belts, and sweaters. They have it sent to a family outside Moscow, where it is less likely to be noticed. The packages are always rifled, the customs officials taking several items before sending a thinner package on to its destination. My characters collect the goods and sell them on the black market.
Two experts on Stalinist Russia—one a scholar of Russian history, the other a native Russian—agree that this was highly unlikely and perhaps even impossible. No packages were allowed, no packages would have gotten through customs, it simply couldn’t have happened. Yet, I know from the personal experiences of my own family that it did happen. My grandparents and parents sent packages to their family in Moscow, and I know that the packages were received. And I know that the goods we sent made a huge difference in the lives of the recipients.
What I have discovered as a writer is that no matter how much research you do, and no matter what form it takes—the Internet, books, interviews—you seldom get an ironclad, irrevocable answer to a question. As in the rest of life, the closest proximity to truth is a fine balance of “research” tempered by individual judgment and experience, applied wisely and with discretion.