The absolute worst thing you could do to a novel is pull its structure from someone else's secondhand, possibly third hand, account. Interviews and word-for-word's aren't bad, however I can tell when an author's monotonous recounting comes in. I know when you've pulled your information from the pages of a historian. Usually, I let this slide for a few paragraphs, but some authors let the boredom slither in and out of their text and at that point you've lost me.
Today's question is, as you might have guessed, how do I present an accurate depiction of the time frame/people/culture/etc I'm writing about?
Well, I'm no expert on this. Yet I've seen it done tastefully and have managed to pull the wool over a reader's eyes a few times. Junot Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" has plenty specific pieces of Dominican history sifting through it. Diaz manages to keep most of his explanations in footnote form, however even the footnotes have glimpses of his witty and arrogant banter. When I first flipped through the pages at Barnes & Noble and saw the small font at the bottom of the page, I remembered rolling my eyes and thinking, "I'm skipping all that sh*t."
It wasn't until after the first pair of footnotes that I realized the little annoying black font was crucial to deciphering most of the novel. The KEY to its awesomeness was that Diaz actually kept me ENTERTAINED while spitting history at me.
Listen, I know you just went out and bought every book possible on the Black Panther Party. (Shakes my finger at myself in my mirror.) However, you can retrieve authentic movement, discourse, and scenarios; from going to events that feature the remainder of the party. You can email advocacy groups and political prisoners that will give you pieces of information that no textbook will dare cover. You can even ask your family members, that were alive back then, what the party was like.
I caught myself in the middle of a book filled with boring historical details and I was horrified it would bore my audience. It was at that moment that I realized that I needed to go forth and hunt for authenticity.
So make your move monotonizer! Yea, I made that word up. *Pulls out creative license.*
-Riv
Smocker Deuce
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