Why I Write 2 - To Explore

This is the second installment in my series on why I write. 

Today I look an my desire to explore.

Last week I argued that learning is an essential part of my writing, so essential that I choose to write in part out of a desire to learn more about something that attracts my curiosity. But writing fiction is not just about writing down what we learn, it is also about using imagination to go beyond the known -- to explore the unknown. 

Some of that exploration can be physical. Working on a creative-writing project is a great excuse to travel to places I've never been before.  I love travel, so this is an extra bonus. No sooner had I started my Jerusalem Trilogy than I announced to my husband that it was "essential" that we travel (at last!) to Jerusalem.

 

It helped that we were living in Ethiopia, just a four hour flight from Tel Aviv, and that there were daily pilgrimage flights. The trip enabled me to explore many sites important to my novels -- Jerusalem itself, Bethlehem, Ascalon, Jaffa, Acre, and Caesaria, Ibelin (modern Yavne), and the Battlefield of Hattin. The visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher alone, however, would have justified the trip, and enabled me to write a more authentic and convincing book.  I always wince when I read descriptions of the Holy Land, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, that have clearly been written by authors who have never been. 

Yet even more important than this physical exploration of places is the mental exploration of attitudes, emotions, motives and more. Research may reveal a simple fact such as, for example, the daughter of Baldwin d'Ibelin, Baron of Ramla and Mirabel, married the brother of Guy de Lusignan. History also tells us that Baldwin hated Guy so much that he preferred to surrender his entire inheritance and abandon his wife and son to go into exile in Antioch rather than do homage to Guy de Lusignan. But what about his daughter? How did she feel? Did she sympathize with her father? or her brother-in-law? Did her husband blame her for her father's dramatic and public condemnation of his brother? Was there marital strife and tension? As a novelist, it is my job to explore possibilities. To try them out and find the explanation that seems to ring most consistent with known facts -- and human nature.

Or to take another example,  the Knights Templar were driven from the island of Cyprus by outraged, Orthodox inhabitants. Richard the Lionheart then sold the island to the deposed and discredited Guy de Lusignan. Within two years he was dead. Yet just five years after Guy's arrival on Cyprus, a stable dynasty complete with a Latin clergy had been established on the island. How? 

Again, exploring historical possibilities by examining contemporary developments, analyzing personalities, identifying options, and developing a plausible theory is not only legitimate, it is great fun! There is nothing wrong with it -- as long as the results do not contradict known facts but rather build upon and extrapolate from them. 

For more on the thesis I developed regarding Cyprus see: https://schradershistoricalfiction.blogspot.com/2017/07/an-empty-island-waiting-to-welcome.html, -- or better yet read the novel that resulted from my "exploration!

And don't forget! -- books make great Christmas presents!

Buy Now!