I plan family vacations to include possible ‘future book settings’, ‘historical events’, ‘regional foods’—well, you know where I’m going with this.
Research often required hours spent at the public library using the card catalog. Oh, how the Internet has simplified my life.
However, breathing life into your heroine, and bringing your story to life, are all elements that writers spend hours and hours perfecting.
Sensory details, setting, motivation, and that ‘something’ which is the spark of each and every story is often elusive. Sometimes, just sometimes, the pieces of your fictional universe fall neatly, and unexpectedly, into place.
Today this is what happened to me.
While sorting through my closet, I discovered a treasure of carefully-packed-away-items. Being the eldest daughter, I’ve acquired the family photos, was blessed with the oral histories of grandparents and great-grandmother, and other relatives. I carefully placed the items on my bed. I was fingering a silk scarf of my maternal grandmother’s, noticing blending of colors, threads of silver catching the light when I realized I was holding a moment of her life. A snap-shot of who she was, who she wanted to be—a time before she was my grandmother.
Had she gone shopping with her sister or her mother to purchase this scarf? Or had she ridden the EL, after work to a department store in Chicago? Was she going to a dance? To the theater?
Her parents immigrated from the region of Bohemia in Czechoslovakia (before it became the Czech Republic) and she was the youngest of six children.
I located pieces of her jewelry, the scarf still smelled faintly of her perfume (or was it simply my memory of her fragrance?). I found her beaded evening bag. I recalled a photo taken when she and her sister worked as extras in the motion pictures of the 1920 and 1930s. They stayed with their older brother (musician, Tony Lada of the Louisiana Five) in San Monica, California. I was certain I had it in a box, perhaps already scanned to my computer.
YouTube Louisiana Five
This is how I discover my heroine and my hero. My characters become living, breathing people—step by step; their stories are revealed to me piece by piece.
I may have the start of a synopsis for my next novel in the works. What do you think?
Rudolph Valentino? (Catch his silent movies on YouTube—he was a hottie!)
I also have my great-great-grandmother’s butter churn from the 1800s—but that’s another story.
So, what treasure do you have hiding in your closet?
I'd love to hear your family history story :-). What treasure did you find?
Happy Reading,
Connie Vines
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