#one day I'll run a short course on researching for novels and creative work

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

let's say i need a crash course into early modern/late middle age criminal law of wallachia, not in-depth enough to defend a thesis but good enough to write a historical crime novel in a way a salty historian wouldn't completely tear it down.

what pointers would you give me, what should i read up? what should i, in your niche and macabre-esque tastes and opinions, include? what mistakes are obvious to someone who's studied the era, but a layperson would miss?

(it's for, uh, dnd reasons)

oh hey oh hey!

[I want to front-foot with something I end on and that’s don’t write with the opinions of others in mind. This includes, don’t research for your writing with the opinions of others in mind. It’s stressful and there’s no pleasing everyone. I get into it a little bit at the end of this reply, but I wanted to mention it quickly at the start as well.]

Oh man. Man oh man. Giving myself a crash-courses on a new field can be a bit of a ride. My personal approach is the: Bibliography Rabbit Hole. 

If I’m net-new to a topic, I’ll get a decent overview text—wikipedia works fine for this purpose, as do some “laymen’s” history books—which allows me to get my bearings. My sealegs, so to speak. In this case, something on mediaeval and early modern Wallachia—just to familiarise myself with the big players (voivods, other landowners, church leaders etc.) and what the systems are that people were operating in (casts/classes, treaties, ruling families, liege-patronage systems, legal system, religious and cultural systems, education, gender/sexuality/marriage etc.). 

As I’m going through my overview I’ll make note of anything that’s relevant to the specific avenue I’m after. So if the text glosses, perhaps at a high level, the importance of the jurisdictional difference between ecclesiastical and secular courts of law, I’ll see if there’s a reference/bibliographical note to follow up on. 

Historians tend to focus on specific areas of study therefore if John Doe wrote about church law in Targoviste in the 13th century���there’s a high likelihood John Doe has also written about church law in other areas within Transylvania and Wallachia. Indeed, there’s a chance he’s written about the legal system more broadly in that area in the mediaeval period. 

From John Doe I can see who he references, what books he’s contributed chapters to, what conferences he’s attended and like as not I’ll find more references and historians whose work I can look into. 

Some good places to start searching around on are google scholar, academia.edu, jstore, researchgate, SAGE journals, public library and so on. Google books will sometimes let you preview a text to see if it’s worth chasing down. And I know you know this - but discernment is key when picking through sources. Peer reviewed, reputable publications, when was it published etc. etc. 

So that’s my approach to crash-coursing a topic. In terms of what I would want to see/recommend including? I’m afraid I can’t really answer that without knowing more of the story! Who are the characters, what’s the rough plot, what aspect of the law are we seeing? that sort of thing. That would help me have an idea of what I might want to see if I was reading something (or playing dnd? I’ve never had the chance to play, unfortunately, so I’m answering this more as a general writer). 

It’s hard to explain how I can tell if another writer is deeply engaged in a topic with which I’m very familiar, but I definitely can. Some stuff will be little things - like in Confessions of the Fox the modern interpretation of a 17th century municipal bylaw drove me nuts. Other things will be more glaring, though I can’t think of anything off hand. It also depends on what the creator is trying to do—these are film references, but I don’t go into "A Knight’s Tale" expecting accuracy lol. When "Little Hours" played around with including modern things (she’s on drugs!) it was doing so winkingly and in a way I think Boccaccio would have enjoyed and honours his original work.

In my own work, I definitely blend in modern-isms because I’m going for essence and texture of living, breathing people over strict accuracy of how they would have sounded when speaking because as modern readers, it can detract from the overall experience. How Anne Carson approaches translating poetry is how I approach translating the past to the present in fiction. Not everyone is like that though, and if you’re writing a hard-core, serious history novel then yeah, I’d say keep language as close to how they would have sounded in, idk, 1432. 

Also, there’s no pleasing everyone. So I wouldn't, fundamentally, worry about what curmudgeonly historians will think of your work because they’ll never be happy. I would approach it in the sense of “I did what I could, with the resources I had to hand, and the work I have created does what I want it to do. It tells the story how I want it to be told”. If you later want someone to do a history-check on it, that’s always an option. But yeah, I wouldn’t hyper-focus on that. 

In addition, when I research I like to think of it as exploring a new world and I want to make that world feel alive to readers. I want them to know the smells and soundscapes and feel of the air. If I come at it from that perspective, that it’s about painting with words and knowledge, and not the perspective of: oh gods, I hope my old supervisor doesn’t judge me horrifically for factual inaccuracies, then I find the research to be that much more enjoyable and the process of writing/creating that much easier and less stressful. 

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Addendum: Lent by Jo Walton, she references the Savonarola Chair as if it were of his design and it’s not, it’s just a relatively modern term for a popular type of chair at the time (Dante Chair or Luther Chair is also what it’s called). This brings me to a point: always double check the well known “facts” or “common knowledge” of something. That’s a good general rule of thumb for sure.

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Thank you so much for the ask! <3 <3