Research, please!

Kathleen Buckley brings us an engaging and eye-opening exploration into the world of research for historical fiction. With lively examples from her own writing journey, she reveals why getting the details right isn’t just important—it’s essential for creating stories that truly come alive for readers.

Years ago when I started going to writers’ meetings, I often heard the advice, “Don’t do more research than you need to.” At the time, I suspected that was balderdash. This was in part because an aspiring writer at a panel discussion of firearms at a mystery convention asked, “Why can’t I just make one up?” Disapproving silence, until a panelist explained that real background details make a better, more believable story.

Learning How Much Research Is Really Needed

Fast forward twenty years. I began writing my first historical novel and learned one important lesson: you don’t know how much research you need to do because you have no idea how little you know about whatever period/culture/place you’re writing about.

I made some mistakes in my first mid-eighteenth century novel for that very reason although I think they were all minor. In the second, I knew I’d have to research flintlock muskets that might have been smuggled to Scotland from France in time for the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. Fortunately, you can find almost anything online.

Unexpected Research Topics

By my third novel, Captain Easterday’s Bargain, when I introduced a lantern as an offensive weapon, I had to research eighteenth century lanterns. They used candles. The windows might be either glass or flattened, thinly-shaved horn, which would not break if the lantern was dropped and therefore avoided the risk of fire.

The Pitfalls of Inadequate Research

Some historical novels are carefully researched, others are not. Dual-time novels are especially problematic. Their current popularity means they’re often written by authors who have no experience with historical fiction.

Food Mistakes in Historical Fiction

Food is the most neglected research in historical novels, yet it’s the easiest to do. Hundreds of cookbooks are available online, often for free, for all periods and any country that had or has cookbooks. These are the most common errors: chocolate bon-bons, baking powder biscuits and scones in books set before the late 1800s. The process to produce chocolate for candy, and reliable baking soda and baking powder, did not exist before the 1840s and did not catch on for several decades. Cake was leavened by eggs, like pound cake, or else by yeast, like bread.

Alcohol Errors

I’ve read novels in which English gentlemen of the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries drank whiskey (or whisky). They only became popular there when many French vineyards were wiped out by an aphid-like pest, reducing the brandy supply. The 1880s seems to have marked the rise of whiskey/whisky in England.

Legal Errors

Law is another pitfall. In England, it was considered incest for a man to marry his brother’s widow or for a woman to marry her sister’s widower, and there were similar prohibitions that would never occur to us. The “special license” for marriage so beloved of historical fiction was far more complicated than it’s depicted, too.

Conclusion: How Much Research Is Enough?

How much research is enough? Researching almost anything on the internet is easy: maps and books on a variety of topics from the period, paintings, engravings, clothing and other artifacts in museums, and all sorts of other sources. Do I do too much research? My readers don’t seem to think so.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After a career which included customer service, light bookkeeping, working as a paralegal, and a stint as a security officer, Kathleen Buckley began to write as a second career, rather than as a hobby. Her first historical romance was written after re-reading Georgette Heyer’s Georgian/Regency romances for the tenth or twelfth time and wondering if she could do something like that. Apparently she could, as her eleventh will be released on 3/24/2025. As a change of pace, it’s a murder mystery, but still set in the mid-1700s (but still with some romance).

Warning: no bodices are ripped in her romances, which might be described as “powder & patch & peril” rather than Jane Austen drawing room. They contain no explicit sex, but do contain the occasional den of vice, mild bad language, skulduggery and crime.

Ellen Cuthbert’s husband, Randolph, is now the Earl of Keswick’s heir. Their marriage is a sham, and Randolph’s mistress, Lydia, is present at the house party. When she is found murdered in a locked room, all the evidence seems to point to Ellen. And how could the murderer have escaped the locked room except by witchcraft? Sir Hugh accompanies his cousin, a magistrate, to the scene of the murder. They investigate, appalled to find their childhood friend Ellen appears to be the chief suspect. Hugh’s lack of prospects years ago prevented their marriage. Now if he cannot find the real murderer, there may be only one final service he can perform for Ellen to spare her a slow death at the end of the hangman’s rope.