A Writer's Melting Pot by Victoria Chatham
Beginning a new book is always an exciting project for me. There are places to research, houses to build, characters to create and plots to devise, all or some of which may eventually find their way onto my pages.
I start with my characters, getting to know them as I build their backstories, their life histories with all their strengths and weaknesses, failures and successes. Whether I am writing historical or contemporary Western romance, my character questionnaire follows the same pattern. The characters have to reflect their era, so I'm careful about naming them, and if I'm writing a Regency romance, then I have to make sure my characters' titles are correct.
Next, I work on my settings, the stage on which my characters perform. My Regencies have a mix of city and rural settings because the peerage split their time between London, for when Parliament was in session, and their country estates when it adjourned. The busiest time, known as the Season, was between Easter and when the House adjourned in July. By then, most people were keen to get out of town because of the smell.
Country estates are
lovely to create, and many of my imaginary ones come from illustrations in books
like Country Houses From the Air or The English Country House and
the very useful Georgian and Regency Houses Explained. I have floor
plans for country houses and smaller but no less impressive townhouses. From
there, I can create my settings with a measure of accuracy and viability. What
might be included on any of these estates as far as farms and crops are
concerned, are all gleaned from internet searches for letters and records of
the big houses, some of them going back hundreds of years, and depend on what
part of the country (being England, Scotland, or Wales) the estate is. Building
styles change somewhat from county to county depending on what materials are
available or how wealthy the lord of the manor might be.
Weather, with all the
light and shade that comes with it, plays a part in my settings, too. For
information
and to pin-point a timeline for where my characters are, I consult https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=1818&country=9.
The weather can affect so many aspects of my character’s mood. If it’s warm and
sunny, then likely she is too. If it’s raining, all sorts of events can
transpire from that. Think Marianne Dashwood getting soaked in the rain in Sense
and Sensibility. Rain heralded my hero’s arrival in Folkestone in my book His
Dark Enchantress. It fit his mood and the seriousness of the situation in which his wife, my heroine, had been abducted.
Plants and flowers play a part, too, and for this, I use
a Reader’s Digest book of English flora, plus Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. It
pays to know what plants grow in which part of the country because someone will
surely call you out if have a daffodil growing where it never would or a lark
singing in central London as this is a bird that likes open countryside.
How I dress my
characters also comes into play, and for this, I use an Illustrated
Encyclopedia of Costume, Fashion in Jane Austen’s London and just because, The
History of Underclothes. When I go home to the UK for a visit, I'll go to museums. One of my favourites is the Costume Museum in Bath. YouTube can be particularly useful, especially
clips like Undressing Mr. Darcy. I guess I’m a bit of a nerd because I
do enjoy research, and if I come across a particularly interesting snippet, it
makes my day. Whether I can use it or not in a book becomes another matter altogether.
Victoria Chatham