Research can be fun or a drudge. For me, that depends on the subject and my mood of the day. Whether I am happily ensconced in the stacks of a library or sitting at my desk sipping tea and hopping from link to link in a frustrated search for the tidbits of information that will breathe a sigh of realism to my novel, research is a necessity for me as it is many an author.
This morning, I was deep in the process, looking for pictures and descriptions of life in the early 1890’s Wyoming. I want to describe a dress for my heroine that a woman of her age would have worn in a small town in southeastern Wyoming during that time. What would she have eaten? What kind of jobs could a respectable single young woman of the time have?
What should my fictional town look like? Could I put some brick buildings in my town or should they be wooden? Would there have been a railway nearby or would they have to take a wagon or stagecoach to meet the train and how long would that trip take?
I don’t use all of the information that I unearth, but it helps me visualize as I am writing. Yes, my novel is fiction and theoretically I can do what I want in my world. Were I writing fantasy, that would work as I would build my own world and decide if they had teal fronded palm trees that bore quarter sized rusted metal fruits.
But I’m writing about a small town in Wyoming in the early 1890’s and I want it to be believable. And so I research to find out if they’d have two or three story buildings and what kind of trees they might use to build the school house. Did anyone in the area have indoor plumbing? Did they get their water from wells or creeks or an indoor pump? What kinds of vegetables did they grow?
I’d best stop my dawdling and get back to work. Henry just asked me if the local saloons made their own sarsaparilla or if they had it shipped in. And I just realized that I don’t even know what a sarsaparilla is, other than it is supposed to be a non-alcoholic drink.