Research. People keep asking me about it. What’s the first thing you do when researching a new novel? Especially now that you’ve learned not to over-research–something I wrote about last time.

My books usually start with a scribble. I write down story ideas in my journal all the time, and most of them don’t have traction. When I look at them again, it’s usually a case of, “What was I thinking?” But when an idea stays with me and, importantly, I think of a title, I open a notebook to start my initial research. One of those school scribblers, sometimes one of the ones with black-and-white marbled covers from the drugstore, sometimes a nicer one from places like Muji and Oomomo. There are times when I start reading books or articles that might have a bearing on the idea, although I’m usually writing (and researching) something else at the time, so the first entries tend to be things I come across randomly.

I used to keep file folders to collect cuttings or scribbled quotations from my initial reading, many of them written on the backs of envelopes or the margins of magazines. Later on, I opened files on my laptop. But neither of these was interactive, meaning that I would shove a clipping or data into the file and forget about it. So I began to use a notebook, putting the title on the cover. (It’s amazing how many of these proto-titles have stuck.) I’ve kept doing that. When I have a thought or come across a compelling piece of information, I take the notebook off the shelf to scribble it in. I copy out text that interests me and note down dates that might be important. Sometimes I staple in photocopied excerpts from books or documents. Occasionally I even re-read a book that that I remember as having some bearing on the overall idea. I should probably paste in photographs, but I never do.

This initial research tends to involve information about places and ideas rather than characters, often places I’ve visited. The characters usually come along later, and when they do, I start making notes about them alongside the data. Yet that’s not really research anymore. That’s just thinking.

There’s no one right way to begin researching an idea, or to start a novel. But this is mine, and maybe reading about it will prove useful to somebody else.

I’ll close by typing out the scant contents of one of my notebooks. It’s for a novel I’m barely thinking of writing, and it’s made up of extracts from nineteenth century British material that deals with heating, cold, fuel and other forms of power. And I mean power in every sense of the word. I don’t have much in there so far, but now that I’m looking at it, the material tells a sort of story in itself. Or does it? You decide.

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From Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, published in 1847. In this passage, Jane describes the drawing room of the rich house where she is governess, a wood fire burning in the grate:

“Fortunately there was another entrance to the drawing-room than that through the saloon where they were all seated at dinner. We found the apartment vacant; a large fire burning silently in the marble hearth, and wax candles shining in bright solitude, amid the exquisite flowers with which the tables were adorned…”

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Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen, published in 1814, tells the story of a poor girl, Fanny Price, who is taken into the household of her rich aunt and uncle. She has not been permitted a fire in her small sitting room.

“(When her uncle knocked at the sitting room door) She was all attention… in placing a chair for him, and trying to appear honoured; and in her agitation she had quite overlooked the deficiencies of her apartment, till he, stopping short as he entered, said, with much surprise, ‘Why have you no fire today?’

“There was snow on the ground, and she was sitting in a shawl. She hesitated.

“‘I am not cold, sir—I never sit here long at this time of the year.’

“‘But you have a fire in general?’

“‘No, sir.’

“’How comes this about; here must be some mistake. I understood that you had the use of this room by way of making you perfectly comfortable. In your bed chamber I know you cannot have a fire. Here is some great misapprehension which must be rectified. It is highly unfit for you to sit—be it only half an hour a day, without a fire. You are not strong. You are chilly. Your aunt cannot be aware of this.’”

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Also in Jane Eyre. Jane describes her childhood in Lowood Academy, a fictionalization of the Clergy Daughters’ School that Charlotte Brontë attended as the daughter of an Anglican minister in 1824:

“During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and, after their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church; but within these limits we had to last an hour every day in the open air. Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had no boots, the now got into our shoes and melted there; our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet: I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning.”

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From Scottish Voices, 1745-1960, by historians T.C. Smout and Sydney Wood:

“The following account was published by Robert Bald, mining engineer at Alloa, in 1812:

“In those collieries where this mode was in practice, the collier leaves his house for the pits about eleven o’clock at night, (attended by his sons, if he has any sufficiently old), when the rest of mankind are retiring to rest. Their first work is to prepare coals, by hewing them down from the wall. In about three hours after, his wife (attended by her daughters, if she has any sufficiently grown), sets out for the pit, having previously wrapped her infant child in a blanket, and left it to the care of an old woman, who, for a small gratuity, keeps three or four children at a time, and who, in their mothers’ absence, feeds them with ale or whisky mixed with water. The children who are a little more advanced are left to the care of a neighbour; and under such treatment, it is surprising that they ever grow up or thrive.

“The mother, thus having disposed of her younger children, descends the pit with her older daughters, when each, having a basket of a suitable form, lays it down, and into it the large coals are rolled; and such is the weight carried, that it frequently takes two men to lift the burden upon their backs: the girls are loaded according to their strength. The mother sets out first, carrying a lighted candle in her teeth; the girls follow, and in this manner they proceed to the pit bottom, and with weary steps and slow, arrive at the hill or pit-top, where the coals are laid down for sale; and in this manner, they go for eight or ten hours almost without resting. It is no uncommon thing to see them, when ascending the pit, weeping most bitterly from the excessive severity of the labour; but the instant they have laid down their burden on the hill, they resume their cheerfulness, and return down the pit singing.

“The execution of work performed by a stout woman in that way is beyond conception. For instance, we have seen a woman, during the space of time above mentioned, take on a load of at least 170 pounds avoirdupois, travel with this 150 yards up the slope of the coal below ground, ascend a pit by stairs 117 feet, and travel up on the hill 20 yards more to where the coals are laid down. All this she will perform no less than twenty-four times as a day’s work… The weight of coals thus brought up the pit by a woman in a day amount to 4,080 pounds or above 36 hundredweight English, and there have been frequent instances of two tons being carried. The wages paid for this work are eight pence a day!—a circumstance as surprising almost as the work performed. 

“From this view of the work performed by bearers in Scotland, some faint idea may be formed of the slavery and severity of the toil particularly when it is considered that they are entered into this work when seven years of age, and frequently continue till they are upwards of fifty, or even sixty years old.

“The collier, with his wife and children, having performed their daily task, return home, where no comfort awaits them; their clothes are frequently soaked with water and covered with mud; their shoes so very bad as scarcely to deserve the name. In this situation they are exposed to all the rigours of winter, the cold frequently freezing their clothes.

“On getting home, all is cheerless and devoid of comfort; the fire is generally out, the culinary utensils dirty and unprepared, and the mother naturally seeks first after her infant child, which she nurses even before her pit clothes are thrown off.”

***

My scribbled notes from other sources turned into a paragraph:

Many Scottish miners remained serfs in all but name well into the nineteenth century, although they eventually unionized under the Scottish Miners’ Federation in 1894. Miners’ unions throughout Great Britain joined together in 1945 to form the National Union of Mineworkers. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher broke the union in 1985. And of course, coal-fired technology is now recognized as a major contributor to climate change.

Lesley Krueger’s most recently-published novel is Mad Richard, in which Charlotte Brontë plays a part. You can order it here.