Writing a Story Book for Children - Part 3, Research, research and more research.

The idea of writing a novel seems simple. You sit down with whatever medium you intend using and begin to let your imagination run.

If you set your work of fiction in a fictional place with fictional characters no one can question whether it is accurate or not. It just has to be believable.

I, on the other hand, have decided to set mine in a real place, in a real historical time. London, 1665. Building design, street layouts and much more changed in 1666 when it was rebuilt after the London fire, and there are no photos in the archives.

And so, the research I have done has been extensive, sometimes hours of research for one sentence on my novel. I am not writing about the specific event in 1665, that is simply the background setting but it is important to me that it is factually correct. For example, my first chapter started during a thunderstorm which I later had to change when I found out that the summer of 1665 was hot and dry and drought like.

Tonight's challenge was to find out when the moon was full in June 1665. It took a few tries in Google to get the words in the search correct, but finally I got the answer I wanted and only 10 minutes of searching.

I can't even imagine where I would have started to find that information in the years before Google. The hours I would have spent in Libraries, the places I would have travelled to, museums, galleries and much, much more. Maybe it would have been more fun to research in that manner but it would certainly have taken longer. For starters libraries here are not open in the evenings when I do most of my work. 

Ah well, answer found, it's back to work...