Week 2: 10 Weeks of 10 Stories

It’s hard to believe this was the site of a Civil War battle. Yet, it’s where the Battle of First Manassas was.

10 Weeks of 10 Stories

Story #2 is off to a magazine for their May 31 deadline.  It was a steampunk story, set in an alternate universe for the Civil War. I made use of a trip to the Manassas National Battlefield Park a few years ago, plus some research for a shelved Civil War novel.  In it, women have been recruited into the army because too many men were killed, and they were going to lose without the extra people.

It was a lot of fun to write, though I’ll admit the first day of it was in panic, thinking, “This story is never going to work.”  Day 2 was only slightly better, and then Day 3, it began to work.

Not sure what the next story will be yet.  I have two ideas, but once isn’t due until October, and the other I can’t send until June.

See also:

• Week 1 of 10 Weeks of 10 Stories

 

Rule Y: You can’t avoid offending someone with your writing

Linda’s Rules of Writing

We’re onto the letter Y in Linda’s Rules of Writing of the A to Z Challenge, and You can’t avoid offending someone with your writing.

When I was writing with a cowriter, he asked a friend volunteer to read our novel in progress.  He told her it was a thriller set in Virginia during the Civil War.

She was a published writer, so it was kind of exciting because if she liked it, it would be a good referral.  She read 70 pages, and then gave back a 4 page critique that nitpicked the story to death.  I read it over and had set it aside for a few days.  It was scathing!  Her kindest words were “Your prose is clean.”  I read a few days later and immediately realized she’d hated the story and hadn’t known why.  So she’d picked it apart as justification.

A few months later, cowriter mentioned that the romance writer was vehemently anti-gun.  That explained a lot.

Seriously, it was Civil War. Did she think that we would leave out the guns?

You can’t avoid offending someone.  It’s simply part of being a writer.  Have you run into anyone you’ve offended for something in your story?

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Caption: A to Z Challenge Logo

 

The Civil War in Arlington, Virginia

As part of my research for my next book, I’ve been taking advantage of Civil War events around Northern Virginia.  One was on Arlington and the Civil War, given by Ed Bearss (pronounced Bars).   He’s the retired Chief Historian for the National Park Service.  The lecture featured a chronology of the events of the Civil War from the perspective of the area I live in.  One of the things that amazed me was that Mr. Bearss appeared not to have any notes — yet, he recited many, many dates throughout his lecture.  Right down to the day and month.

The lecture format was a little difficult for me to work with — my learning style requires more hands on.  But I was able to get an idea of what it must have been like for the people who lived here.  At the time, Arlington county had 1,000 people living here; now it’s over 200,000.  That’s quite a difference.  Arlington was also the only county in what makes up the current state of Virginia that didn’t vote for succession.  The other parts of Virginia that didn’t want to succeed broke off and became West Virginia.

There’s also a strip of land out by Culpepper where 100,000 people died during the war.  To put this into perspective, the total people who died during the war was 600,000.  That’s a lot of death on the doorstep of a potential character.  One of the most interesting things that I came away with showed up at the end of the lecture.  It’s not something I think I would have found in a book, so I’m glad I went — I think it might be a good thing to use in the story.  It’s on what women did during the war.  Did you know …

• That women worked at the Statement Department?  Not sure what they did, but that’s something I can probably dig out.
• That women worked at the Treasury Department.  They did facsimiles of the signatures that appeared on the bonds, and they were used because their penmanship was better.
• That women worked at the armory, loading cartridges?  They had better dexterity.  But it was dangerous work — the armory exploded at one point.

This is the kind of material I’m looking for as research for Masks/Spy Mage.

 

Describing Clothes in a Novel

I attended a Civil War Fashion Show this morning, as part of research for my next book, Masks.  I know I’m going to need to come up with a second plot for the story, and since the modern day part of the story ties into the Civil War, I’m playing with the possibility of the second plot being during the Civil War.

This got me thinking about clothes in the story.  A lot of writers don’t describe characters or clothes.  Some of the reasons I agree with.  I read a few of the Chick Lit books, and they dropped designer names left and right to describe the character’s clothing and shoes.  I was bored because it felt like it was just showing off designer label knowledge.  Telling me a pair of shows is a Givenchy didn’t add anything to the story.

Yet, I always bring clothes into the story in some way.  But not like that.  And it’s for a very simple reasons:  Clothes are setting.  With my contemporary fantasy thriller Miasma, it’s set in a place like Hawaii.  So it would be typical of the characters to wear shorts, t-shirts, and sandals.  If a character wears something different, there’s often a story-related reason.  I have a running joke about shoes, because the main character and his sidekick can’t wear the standard footwear.  Kind of makes it hard to fight monsters or run from them in beach shoes.

Likewise, if a character ended up in a situation where what they were wearing was completely inappropriate the environment — no jacket, and it snows — clothes suddenly become a very important part of the plot.  With the Civil War, things like patterns might denote what social standing a character has.  Someone who is wealthy might have a dress with a large print or lots of trim.  Or an enlisted man’s pants might be stained and worn.  So describing clothes can have a big impact on not just the setting, but the story and characters as well.

By the woman the model in the photo made the dress she is wearing.  She said that a lot of the materials dresses were made of from the Civil War can no longer be found today.  No one’s making them, and where they are available, they are terribly expensive.