tunelessly to himself as he staggered along, Jacob heard carnal
groans coming from an entryway just below his window. It
was all what his mother used to call wickedness, but Jacob, in
his sweaty clothes and tangled sheets, struggled to convince
himself that there was no such thing as sin, only ignorance
and error, that the poor souls cutting each other in the street
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like ships run aground in the mud.z This scene worked because research and imagination played off
each other powerfully. Research revealed what a night in the
Haarlemmerstraat would have been like, and imagination enabled
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single character.z In the end, the lesson to learn from this case study is that you need
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every bit as important as getting your facts straight. Indeed, we
might say that research is just another tool in the service of the
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character, and dialogue do: It helps to suggest, to evoke, to put
readers in a time and place they might otherwise never experience.Crace, “The Art of Fiction No. 179.”
———, 7KH*LIWRI6WRQHV.
———, +DUYHVW.
———, 4XDUDQWLQH.
Hamilton-Paterson, *HURQWLXV.
MacFarquhar, “The Dead Are Real.”
Mantel, %ULQJXSWKH%RGLHV.
———, “Hilary Mantel on Teaching a Historical Fiction Masterclass.”
Suggested Reading