Gemma Tizzard on Researching for Historical Fiction

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I love facts. For example, the construction of the Empire State Building used 50,000 steel beams and 203,000 rivets. Some people would feel nothing at all about this information, while others might find it mildly interesting. Me? Well, as soon as I heard these facts, many years ago, I started to imagine what those huge numbers looked like, and think about the manpower required to haul it into place. As my imagination ran away with itself, I thought about how proud those men must have felt to be part of creating what was going to be the tallest building in the world. I also thought about how no women got to have the thrill of that feeling. And that’s how a novel is born. But this one was different from the others—this one scared me a little. I felt that familiar rush at realizing that I could make something happen. I could put a woman up on the steel, in fiction at least. But to do it, I would have to learn how to build a skyscraper.

It took me years to research what ultimately became Grace of the Empire State. I was working full time, so it was snatched moments on lunch breaks, evenings, weekends, and the odd few days I took to immerse myself in some obscure details of skyscraper engineering. Research shaped every part of the novel, and changed it too. Sometimes I learned something too good to leave out, and had to find a place for it. Other times I spent weeks learning about something that I later found out there was no room for in the story, or it got cut in the edits.

As with all aspects of writing, you have to be ruthless, everything has to earn its place, no matter how many pages it took up in my notebooks. The economics of skyscrapers is fascinating. At the time, the optimum and maximum economic return of a building came at 63 stories, anything above that and it starts to diminish, until it reaches zero at around 130 floors. So the height of the Empire State Building made it a very expensive publicity stunt. As the tallest building in the world, it was designed to make the news, not money, but my characters didn’t know or care about that, so it had to go.

I tend to think of my research in three different categories. The first, is the facts I need to tell the story. If I want to write about the people who constructed a skyscraper, there is no way around it, I need to know how it is done. The second, is the facts I need to make the story believable. For me this means understanding the times my characters are living in. It’s 1930, no one is going to be texting each other, television didn’t exist, how did they entertain themselves? And lastly, the facts I need to set the scene and add some fun.

In the novel, Connie, the main character’s younger sister, goes to the New York aquarium at Battery Park for her birthday treat. That scene was added because the descriptions I read of the aquarium in the WPA Guide to New York City from that time were so good, so rich in detail, that I could see everything clearly in my mind and felt compelled to include it. That visual understanding of what I’m trying to describe is very important; after all, I didn’t exist in 1930, I’m not even American, and (whisper this bit) I’ve only been to New York once.

One of the most difficult—and also one of my favorite—things about writing historical fiction, is that you need to research everything. In a contemporary novel I could write about a young woman’s morning routine with no problem in just a few minutes, because the chances are it is pretty similar to my own. Put that woman in 1930, and here are just a few of the questions I need to know the answer to.

Did families have their own bathrooms, or would they have been shared with others? They didn’t have refrigerators, so how did they store their food? What food was available? What would have been a typical breakfast? How would she curl her hair? What did her normal clothes look like? What shoes would she wear? What form of public transport would she use? That’s eight questions to answer, just to get her out of the house. It might take an hour or two to research the answers satisfactorily, just to write maybe three or four fairly inconsequential sentences of a 100,000 word book. It’s not a job for the faint of heart, or the impatient. But for those of us with brains that crave this kind of work, it is bliss.

Do you want to know the cost of cornflakes at the time? Of course you do. Eight cents for an eight ounce package. What about the population of New York in 1930 by borough? There were 6,930,446 people living in New York, and 1,867,312 of those lived in Manhattan. Although I imagine those figures were only accurate for a very small window of time, as people constantly left, arrived, were born and died, but still, if you want a fact or figure, I probably have a version of it somewhere in my stack of notes, and very little of it made it anywhere near the book. What it did do was allow me to absorb 1930 New York until I could feel it, and live it, like my characters. I like to write my first draft of a novel in around six weeks, and so with this book, I didn’t do any real writing, just made notes for almost three X years, to get the vibes right, as the kids might say. I did that until I felt I could write the story without stopping, with most of the facts I needed in my head or very close to hand.

I don’t recommend this as something that will work for everyone. There is some evidence (supplied primarily by my loved ones) to suggest this is an insane way of writing a book, but it works for me. Only then can I get into a flow state and write, keeping things consistent and moving forward, because I know how much the daily shopping is going to cost, and how Grace would get to work, or how the men would work together to rivet steel, what they would see and hear and smell.

During the fun research phase, I read widely, fiction and nonfiction both from and about the era, location, and subject. I read ten or twelve books about skyscraper construction alone, most of them specifically about the Empire State Building. That’s another thing about research—don’t make it impossible for yourself. If I wanted to know about the construction of a random, non-famous building, it would have been much harder to find the information.

But I knew the chances were good that the creation of one of the most iconic buildings in the world would have captured the attention of others before me and been well documented. Reading the same explanation of how something was done in four different books, gives you confidence in it, which helps. I also read newspapers and articles when I can find them, and watch documentaries and films.

Sometimes, research unintentionally leads you to something that becomes important in the novel. I remember reading about the way that the four men in a rivet gang trained and worked together “like a trapeze act.” That was a lightbulb moment, and resulted in Grace having a background as a circus performer, as well as a dancer. Her dance skills give her elegance of movement, and balance, but until that moment I was finding it hard to believe that she would attempt to take her brother’s place as a riveter with only that training. Once she had a circus background, and I could add strength and experience with heights to her resume, it seemed more believable to me, and I’m the first person I have to convince of the credibility of the story. This one phrase was a great help and added layers to the main character.

I have no idea if my research process is anything like other historical fiction authors, but I imagine some parts are similar, as we all have the same aim: to immerse the reader in a time and place, and do it well enough that they trust you to take them on the journey.

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Grace of the Empire State by Gemma Tizzard is available now via Gallery Books.