The joys of research

Research is always much more fun than writing. Always. And some people label it displacement therapy and maintain that you should get it all out of the way before you write a word.

When I ground to a halt with the current WIP – Luke’s first adventure “A Dangerous Destiny”, it never occurred to me that there were solid things I could do to get things moving again. I use Scrivener to write my books, so decided that perhaps I hadn’t remembered the details of earlier chapters and that was what was holding me up. I printed off the ‘index’ cards for each chapter. Then I used Easy Timeline to put the main events of the novel in sequence and yes, they both helped.

It wasn’t until I needed to know how the royal household was run that I hit pay dirt. This book is set in November 1546, two months before the death of Henry VIII. I needed to find out in basic terms, how the royal household worked. My favourite writers for Tudor history are David Starkey and Alison Weir. The former writes narrative storytelling history and the latter is always readable and has an innate sympathy with female figures like Anne Boleyn. In fact, Weir’s is the only account I have ever read about what happens to the body when a person is beheaded. If you want to know the details, read “The Lady in the Tower”.

So I went first to Weir’s ‘Henry VIII: King & Court’ and then Starkey’s ‘Henry: Virtuous Prince’. Starkey maintains that the reason all historical palaces are cold and without atmosphere these days is because they were originally built to be just big white rooms. When the King and court were about to visit, the houses would be cleaned. Then there would be a frenzy of putting up wallhangings and bringing out carpets and then a few hours before his arrival, all the plate would come out of the jewel house. A bit like putting up Christmas decorations. 

I read further and Weir mentions the political shenanigans in the last months of the reign. And suddenly – yes, the adverb that all editors hate – suddenly I realised I had not peopled the court in my book with real people like Somerset, Wriothesley, Cranmer, Gardiner and Surrey. Neither had I appreciated the factions and in-fighting that accompanied Henry VIII’s last weeks. I am currently remedying that and can see all kinds of “what-if” possibilities for the plot. 

Who says research is displacement therapy?