silver threads
wrapping gifts for Christmas reminded me of a line in my book that I am very fond of--and it reminded me just how much work can go into writing a single line of dialogue in a historical fiction novel
While I was preparing to wrap my Christmas presents last night, a line from the historical fantasy book I’m querying of course came to mind—and I say “of course” because this line is from one of the most heartwarming scenes of the book, in which two of my characters, Ehren and Adrian, have a first moment of positive connection.
The particular line that came into my head while I was prepping my giftwrapping is also notable to me because it was edited and revised after doing roughly an hour of historical research on Christmas traditions in late 1800’s Europe. I’ll get into that later, but for now, here’s the snippet 😊
“Well, I like it.”
“Hm?” When Ehren looked at her, Adrian was smiling at him.
“Your hair. It looks like silver threads…like the ribbon my mother used to tie on Christmas gifts.” Adrian lowered her eyes, appearing a bit bashful. “Anyway, I think it’s lovely.”
Ehren raised his eyebrows. “Did I hear that right? Did you just give me a compliment?”
Adrian laughed. “I meant it! The color is unusual, but it’s lovely.”
So yes, while I was getting out my spool of silver ribbon, I couldn’t help thinking about Adrian’s praise for Ehren’s silver hair :’)
BUT…that isn’t the original way I wrote that line.
Here is the first draft version of Adrian’s remark about Ehren’s hair:
“Your hair. It looks like silver threads, like stardust—well, like the dust that would rub off of the silver star my family and I used to put on the Christmas tree...”
My book’s genre is historical fantasy, and that means the historical fiction aspect of it is just as important as the fantasy aspects—and making details historically accurate to the year 1899 was very important to me as both an enjoyer of historical fiction and as someone who took several university courses about this time period in Europe (both a reason I wanted to set a book in this era and why I felt even more pressure to get it right!).
However, when I was writing my first draft—which included many hours of historical research and worldbuilding based on the myths I either included in this story or subverted to make my own—I did what is maybe the greatest beginner novelist’s mistake: I edited as I wrote the first draft, and I also did historical research as I wrote to make sure any slang or colloquialisms were historically and culturally accurate to my characters and setting. Even though I had the outline and major scenes already sketched out, a year into working on this book I got stuck on finishing the final 4th act—and it was also at that point that I realized I needed to just get the first draft done, even if it didn’t turn out perfect.
So to speed up the writing process, I stopped making sure every single piece of dialogue was historically accurate to 1899 and saved it for later edits/revision, if needed. Then after I finally finished my first draft and began the first edit, double-checking the historical accuracy of everything I wrote (or adapting changes to make them period-appropriate) became a top priority—even for small details like Adrian comparing Ehren’s hair to a silver star on a Christmas tree.
Well…that did not end up being a ‘small detail’ at all 😂
In the first place, much of our current Western Christmas traditions actually stem from German Christmas traditions that weren’t really widespread around the world until after Queen Victoria married Prince Albert and introduced German traditions to the English people. Then Queen Victoria’s traditions became so popular they spread to other countries, and I would say most Americans who celebrate Christmas today have a tree in their house—but that wasn’t really common in the U.S. until the 20th century, and outside of Germany and England, it was also difficult to say. This is important for the context of Adrian speaking about Christmas because she is Spanish (one of the first things we learn about her in the book) and while I found articles like this stating that the first Christmas trees were introduced to Spain in the 1870’s…how plausible was it that Adrian would have had a Christmas tree in her house growing up?
Furthermore, to check the accuracy of HOW people decorated their Christmas trees if they had one in late 19th century Spain, I looked up vintage Christmas stars in historical archives and antique shops—but I didn’t come across anything that went as far back as 1899. Then I did more research and found out that people didn’t even really put stars up on their trees at that time—if they had trees at all in their homes.
ADDITIONALLY, if I wanted to make the comparison of Ehren’s hair to dust that comes off a star you put on a Christmas tree, I researched when those types of stars/ornaments came into common use, and because most of those stars are either dipped in glitter or painted with a paint that contains glitter, I came across crucial info once I researched glitter: those stars couldn’t exist until after glitter first became a popular thing in the 1940’s/50’s.
SEE HOW DEEP THE RABBIT HOLE GOES JUST TO FIND OUT IF ONE TINY DETAIL YOU WRITE DOWN IS HISTORICALLY ACCURATE?
So obviously, I had to cut out the Christmas tree star line 😂
But I still liked the idea of Adrian seeing Ehren’s hair and being able to reference it to the Christmas of her childhood, so I did some more research on silver fabric, and thankfully silver fabrics were a thing in 1899! And I won’t digress too much here, but most metallic fabrics in the 19th century actually had metal in them, which made clothing more durable than what you get with modern day metallic fabrics, but using real metals in clothing of course also made them prone to problems with cloth/metal/water interactions… (maybe I’ll do a historical fashion post at some point to get into all that properly because it’s so fascinating—and it’s very important to know about when deciding what your characters wear in historical fiction.)
So then the silver star became a silver ribbon, which honestly fit better with Adrian’s first comparison of Ehren’s hair to ‘silver threads’ anyway, and I completely cut out any mention of Christmas trees—and voila! That’s the final version of that line, and I still think it’s as lovely as the original version, but goodness! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at silver ribbons the same way again—and that particular line, while it warms my heart, will always remind me about all this research I did about Christmas tree history 😂
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this peek into my process as a historical fiction writer! Let me know if you would like to see more about my writing process or any more fun historical research anecdotes while writing this book (and my current WIP, which is another historical fiction novel).