Research help?

[zinnith]

Dear smart people on my f-list!
When writing a story set in Victorian London in the late 19:th century, where is one most likely to fail in regards to gender/class/race/etc? I have a ton of research to do for this thing and I need somewhere to start.

Also - resources?

Comments

[theeverdream.livejournal.com]

resources: little_details.livejournal.com - research first, and if you can't find it, people there will help!

[zinfic.livejournal.com]

Brilliant! I will have much use of this, thank you!

[sgamadison.livejournal.com]

That women in this era are by and large the property of the men in their lives. Which is why Irene Adler was such a different character for Holmes.

I think your best bet is to read books written during that time frame. Even the fiction is revealing.

*claps hand in glee that you've taken on this challenge*

[zinfic.livejournal.com]

*is mildly freaked over taking on this challenge* :)

Yep, that much I knew and I'm considering how to work it into the story. It's difficult to write characters whose world-view is so completely different from mine, especially when they're the good guys. One of the many pitfalls of writing historical fiction.

[sgamadison.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean--several times when I chose to research something I was terrified of getting the details wrong but remember this: ADC himself made some huge whoppers (The Case of the Scarlet Band comes to mind, where he said the snake had been trained to come to a saucer of warm milk...) and he still knew how to tell a thumping good tale. You tell great stories and Stricken tells me you already have Watson's written voice and style nailed down. I can recognize that while at the same time realize I could never achieve that. Seriously, it was a thing of beauty.

Oh and if you are so inclined for a bit of fluffy fun with Watson overtones, watch Young Sherlock Holmes. It's a Spielberg AU movie (what if Holmes and Watson had met as schoolboys) that I'd always liked (I own a copy) and I recently found out they recruited boys from D's school for extras. :-)

Definitely a case where the characters transcended the writing, captured the imagination and lived on long after the author, loathing them, wished them dead. Not unlike SGA... :-)

[zinfic.livejournal.com]

It was probably a special snake... That's what I love about writing fantasy and sci-fi - if you don't know something, you can just make it up. I'm a hopeless history nerd so I tend to go a bit overboard with the research when I'm wiriting historical stuff. Part of the reason for why I dropped out of Merlin BB last year - I just couldn't make sense of the timeline! Never mind the fact that BBC's Merlin is pretty much an anachronic mess. But it's good to know that I at least have the language sorted out :)

That definitely sounds like a film I should dl and watch this weekend :)

[sgamadison.livejournal.com]

It has the flavor of a SH story with a Spielberg twist. There is no slash and Watson is portrayed as the usual tubby, thickwit, but the story was engaging and I have a thing for English schools apparently (I could watch the third HP movie for *hours*. How is it that a place you've never been can speak to you of home? Oh right. Atlantis.

Anyway its a bit of fun that will show you just how much you can bend the rules and no one seems to care. :-)

[anyanka-eg.livejournal.com]

If you have specific questions ask me and I'll ask my mum who knows everything about everything with regards to history. She'll love helping you. She might even beta it for you, if you want a history pedant to read it :-)

She has access to all the census surveys and can look at what people were living on which streets. Might not be what you need but it does let you know where certain trades congregated, how many people were crammed into slum housing or how many servants families had.

Tell you what might be good is this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0753820900/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R17CWA2E0P1VT3

I'll ask mum if she can recommend anything to give you a real flavour of the period, bookwise. I suggest the Sherlock Holmes books, maybe a couple of Dickens (A Christmas Carol perhaps), Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman, can't think of anything else.

[zinfic.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That would be much appreciated. It's a Sherlock Holmes fanfic (can't resist holmes_big_bang) so the period would be the 1880:s. I've just started doing research and I anticipate a long list of questions before I'm done. Maybe I can call on you and your mum for the ones I can't find the answers to myself, or hoist off on my own history teaching mother?