It's my pleasure to welcome Terri Bruce, who's touring her new contemporary fantasy novel, Hereafter. Terri shares her thoughts about how research for fiction can be fun and absorbing, even for the reluctant researcher. As you'll see, Terri set quite a task for herself as she prepared Hereafter!
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To the Books—Researching
Hereafter
I never thought I’d like doing research for a book; after
all, writing is fun and researching is tedious, right? I mean, who actually
liked researching term-papers in school? Yuck! Not me! I love to read
well-researched, authentic books—historical fiction and historical romance are
two favorite genres—but I always think (accompanied by a sorrowful shake of the
head), “Oh man! How tedious must it be to have to research the exact shape of a
dress sleeve in sixteenth century France? God bless ‘em, historical fiction
writers are either saints or masochists!”
When I set out to write Hereafter
I knew I wanted to create a story in which every culture’s and religion’s
beliefs were true. Going into this project, I already knew a bit about quite a
few cultures—the Greeks, the Norse, the Egyptians. Well…that was three. If I
was going to include “every” culture, I was going to have to expand my
knowledge. So I did a little research, visited a few websites, boned up on what
I already knew and added some more cultures to my repertoire—Romans,
Babylonians, Sumerians, Aztecs, Mayans. I even discovered a few cultures I had
never heard of, such as the Etruscans.
Well, okay, that was a start, but that was, quite frankly, a
whole lot of focus on a few geographic and ethnic clusters—which was reflected
in the amount of similarity in the beliefs. I needed more diversity so I
started poking into Australian and Africa aborigine, Inuit, and North and South
American indigenous Indian beliefs. Now we were getting somewhere! And, wow,
this was all really fascinating stuff!
Of course, this was a whole lot of “culture” but I was still
missing “religion.” While I absolutely did not want Hereafter to be a religious book and did not want it to appear to
subscribe to or advocate for a particular religion or world view, I knew that
the story could not be completely divorced from religion and spirituality. I
already had a good handle on the modern Christian afterlife and a little
knowledge of modern Judaism. I was going to need a lot more than that. Back to
the books!
I researched everything that all of the modern religions I
could identify had to say on the matter—Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Baha’I,
Confucianism, Taoism, and more; then I discovered some rich source material on
several ancient religions, like Zoroastrianism, ancient Judaism, and such,
including quite a few I had never heard of. Around this point, several critique
partners reading early drafts of Hereafter
asked if I had a degree in comparative religion and after a while, it started
to feel that way.
So now I had a ginormous three-ring binder full of source
material. And yet, something was still missing—I had a lot of great information
on what would happen to Irene after she went through the tunnel, but very
little about what she would encounter on earth, as a ghost, which was the main
plot of Hereafter. Say it with
me—back to the books.
This time, I focused on funeral customs and beliefs related
to ghosts and spirits. I already knew about the Egyptian custom of
mummification, Irish Banshees, the Jewish tradition of sitting Shiva and
burying the dead without embalming, and Chinese Ghost Festival and the idea of
Hungry Ghosts. I knew a bit about ghosts in general and a few
charms/superstitions meant to either repel or call ghosts. Now I learned about
the funeral customs of a hundred different cultures—both ancient and modern—and
the names and forms of every type of ghost, evil spirit, and death omen. Oh my!
My binder grew fatter and graduated from a 2” shell to a 4”.
I was feeling pretty good about the research I had done at
this point; the world-building of Hereafter
was rich and intense, full of both subtle and obvious references to a hundred
different cultures and religions. And everything fit together much more neatly
than I had thought it would. Then…halfway through completing the first draft of
Hereafter, I went to two workshops on
world-building. One was on “place as character” and the other was about
creating realistic cities in fiction. It struck me that I had not been paying
enough attention to “place” in my story; or more specifically, to the history
of the place where my story was set. Hereafter
is set in Boston—a place rich with history, and the ghosts of people from the
past were very probably still wandering around the city. If Irene was stuck on
earth as a ghost, then it was just as likely that people from other eras were,
too. I realized that Hereafter was as
much a time travel story as it was a story about the afterlife.
Back to the books!
So now it was once more back to the research, but this time
on the history of Boston. I have never been much interested in history and have
a terrible time keeping names and dates straight. However, I do love the
history of cities—I love learning how they have grown and changed, both
physically and culturally. I collect old guide books and love to try and follow
their touring instructions, just so I can see what’s changed—new streets that
have been added and old streets that have been renamed or disappeared
altogether, new buildings that have gone up and old buildings that have been
torn down, and the changing borders or even identity of the various districts
or neighborhoods. Cities are alive and organic and they constantly grow and
change. So for me, researching the history of Boston became just as fascinating
and engrossing as researching the afterlife. And what an education! I learned
that the South End had once been known for its rooming houses, that the subway
line I thought was the newest was actually one of the oldest, and that the
clean, business-like “government center” area had once been filled with
burlesque halls. In short, I learned that a city I thought I knew intimately, I
didn’t actually know all that well, after all.
Finally, I reached a saturation point. I had more than
enough information to write Hereafter;
there was no point to doing more research, and in fact, time spent doing
research was time away from writing. There was no help for it, I had to put
down the books and pick up my pen. To be honest, I felt a little bereft. Occasionally
I needed to look up a stray fact, verify a spelling, confirm the veracity of a
source, but it wasn’t the same. I had become a research junkie and I was cut
off, cold turkey. Gradually, the love of writing replaced my newfound love of
research and I learned to cope with no longer needing to read obscure texts at
odd hours.
Then…then something happened.
It was time to write the sequel.
To the books!
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You learn more about Terri Bruce by visiting her website.
All the recent news about bullying the the schools has made me think a lot about the role literature can play to help kids with self-esteem issues. There are
many wonderful, moving examples of kids’ books where characters learn their own
strength, and come to love how special they are.
And then there is the cartoonish, or fantastical, or
metaphorical lesson in self-esteem. A classic is George Selden’s The Cricket
in Times Square. Lost little cricket, tiny and alone at the Crossroads of
the World, manages to make friends and even be a hero. Or how about Jeff Brown
and Macky Pamintuan’s Flat Stanley series? Stanley gets flattened to
half an inch thick. Does he give up? No! He saves the day in his special, flat
way.
