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digging into the past – J.E.S. Hays http://www.jeshays.com Author, Worldbuilder, Wordsmith Sun, 25 May 2014 23:21:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 http://www.jeshays.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cropped-sitelogo-32x32.gif digging into the past – J.E.S. Hays http://www.jeshays.com 32 32 Digging Into the Past Again http://www.jeshays.com/?p=494 Fri, 16 May 2014 23:13:48 +0000 http://www.jeshays.com/?p=494

In addition to digging through the old newspapers in San Francisco, I was lucky enough to find two old almanacs from the years that Kye and Chance would have been living there. Not as much information as a newspaper offers, but lots of flavor.

WP_Almanac

An almanac, if you can find one for the correct year, is a great way to  spice up your writing. This one had “receipts” (recipes) and home remedies along with advertisements. There were even a few jokes, some of which actually withstood the test of time and were still humorous.

Imagine how much more real your characters will seem if they spout the latest  notions or head for the store to purchase the latest patent medicine.

What’s the weirdest medical treatment you’ve ever heard about?

 

]]> Digging Into the Past http://www.jeshays.com/?p=491 Fri, 09 May 2014 22:47:11 +0000 http://www.jeshays.com/?p=491

Spent the day in the San Francisco library researching old newspapers. There’s something satisfying about reading an old newspaper — even if it’s not from the 1800’s. Some of the material is dated, of course. You may not recognize the famous-at-the-moment names in the articles, and the products advertised might be obsolete, but you can see that folks back then lived a lot like we do today. They worried about the same sorts of things. They enjoyed the same sorts of recreation and entertainment. They traveled, voted, lost and found or bought and sold items … newspapers bring the past to life for us in a way that history books can’t.

WP_Old_Newspaper

The really old papers, such as the ones I was reading, are like a little time-machine. Even without photographs, you can see drawings of what people were wearing or buying. You know what they paid for that ferry ride or train trip. You know which play they saw at the local theater. Newspapers are better than almost any other resource when you’re after historical facts and flavor.

If you can manage it, make a trip to the library and read through the old papers (or microfilm) yourself. It’s worth a day of reading. Your characters will become more alive as they move about the town, taking in a debate or play, paying for a taxicab with the actual fees, or even just looking at the local advertisements and dreaming about something they’d buy if they had the money.

What is your favorite historical resource?

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