just the facts, ma'am

Are you going back in time through writing a historical novel? Then you’ll be doing research on the fashions, mores, diet, and customs of the times your characters live in. Don’t rely solely on movies, TV shows, or <heaven forbid> wikipedia for your information! Sometimes the movies got the information shamefully wrong. You wouldn’t want to have any anachronisms, would you?

Here are the kinds of books that would help. They make for fun reading even if you aren’t writing a historical novel—or is that just the English major in me?

Below: covers from City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London

and Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England



in medias res

in medias res. Defined in Creative Writer's Handbook as "'In the middle of things.' The strategy of beginning a literary or dramatic work in the midst of the action rather than at the beginning of the chronlogical sequence. See point of attack."

Okay, so point of attack is: "Moment in a literary or dramatic work at which the plot, but not necessarily the story, begins."

Sometimes when we read back over a rough draft, we can see that a revision where we begin in medias res would be better than a chronological organization of events.

A movie that begins in medias res:

Raging Bull.

A video game that begins in medias res and goes backward:

A novel? Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: