RomanceEverAfter

The Writing Craft/Elisabeth Fairchild

Example Two
Excerpt from "A Fresh Perspective,"  by Elisabeth Fairchild 

"The sight of Symonds Yat, ocher-tinted, through the lens of his new Claude glass, held Reed spell-bound. Leaning his elbows on the window frame of the coach he established a foreground on one of the elms that lined the road, carefully framed the copper green glint of the River Wye snaking around the base of the crag and fixed the sky-raking bulk of the Yat itself asymmetrically on the horizon of his view.

"Do you know, Mr. Mollit, I believe the Yat is worthy subject for a watercolor."

"The Yat?" Mollit yawned. Mollit had yawned often throughout the course of his tenure as Viscount Talcott's tutor. He had, in fact, just yawned his way through the wonder of Reed's first Grand Tour of Europe. The man's talent for boredom never ceased to astonish."

Here, the novel's theme, (and title) a fresh perspective is revealed from the opening line by way of a historical detail in (the prop) a Claude glass, through which the hero, Reed views his homecoming with fresh insight inspired by his recent Grand Tour in the company of his tutor. (period custom of the nobility) Period detail is also evident in the sensibilities of a gentleman who would paint a watercolor, and the language chosen to describe Reed's opinion of Mr. Mollit's boredom.)

C) Historical detail can offer a better understanding of 
character through direct means.

Example One
(London in the spring of 1817)
Excerpt from "The Love Knot,"  by Elisabeth Fairchild 

"Miles Fletcher suffered not the slightest premonition that a page in his life quietly turned in the hands of Fate. Sunk in one of the comfortable leather chairs at the Travellers' club, blissfully unaware, he was leafing through a book of maps, making careful notes--Hertfordshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk--a seasoned traveler preparing for yet another journey. Miles liked to be prepared. He liked his travels, his very life, to go according to plan.

It was a quiet, mild, rain-scented evening perfumed by the promise of spring, but Miles had closed the door on the smell of freshly-turned soil and green things. Here, no matter the season, the odor that met one's nostrils was that of cigar smoke and colza oil, traveler's pie and a strangely piquant blend of exotic colognes from every corner of the globe. It was a comforting and familiar bouquet.

The languages of at least five different nations could be heard drifting from the card room, but this evening #106 Pall Mall was neither crowded nor noisy. In fact, the bas relief characters in the Roman frieze that encircled the ceiling evidenced more animation than was to be witnessed between the rows of stylish Corinthian columns in the library."

Here are historical details in one of two different club settings chosen specifically to begin the book with a definition of two pivotal characters by way of the clubs they frequent.

Example Two
Using historical detail to establish character with a symbolic parallel.
"The Rakehell's Reform," by Elisabeth Fairchild 

Early in "The Rakehell's Reform," my hero, Jack, a gambler, demonstrated in my imagination that he liked to, in idle moments, flip a coin, a natural enough thing for a gambler to do. I could see the coin in my mind as one of the big, old fashioned coppers, not worth much, a talisman of some sort, like a rabbit's foot. A gambler would believe in and trust in Luck. I didn't think much more about it until the character, Jack Ramsay, lost everything including his horse, and yet it never so much as crossed his mind to gamble away the coin.

Now that made me curious. And looking at this historical detail carefully in my imagination, I realized it was a worn coin, and that Jack's pockets had worn spots where he always carried that coin. He'd had it for a long, long time.

So, I asked Jack about it. I admit, l sit down once in awhile and chat things through with my characters. Jack told me he had carried the coin with him since he was a child, since the day his mother died, in fact, that it was a completely worthless coin, a Welsh penny token just like my husband had brought back as an interesting bit of period history on his last trip to England.  (Which is how the coin got embedded in my subconscious in the first place).

I got out the Welsh penny token to do prop research. I needed to feel the heft of it, to see what the symbols were on each side. I realized that Jack would have played heads or tails with the coin in flipping it. A sort of gamble against himself in his spare time. But in studying the coin found there was neither a head nor a tail on it. There is a crown with three plumes through it on one side, and on the other a castle ringed in a sheaf of wheat. So I had the character think crown or castle instead of heads or tails.

The castle side had in Latin, the words "Industry" and "Virtue" stamped around the edge. That seemed the height of irony, for Jack was neither industrious nor virtuous, and yet it seemed symbolically appropriate that he had, for years, as he slipped further and further into the grips of gambling, clung to, of all things, a worthless coin that spoke of virtue and industry. The spark of those concepts was still within him, still held close, if only in the form of a worthless coin.

All of this from a small historical detail, and yet it tied inextricably into many elements of the story.

Elisabeth Fairchild - 3 (Continue)