A Deep Dive: A Guest Post by L B Gschwandtner
I’m on maternity leave! During this time, a few of my favorite authors offered to step up and write guest posts so that this blog would remain active while I adjust to my new role as a mother. I may also be a bit slower to respond. Thanks for understanding and for being so supportive of me, my family, and my blog. Want to donate a few dollars to keep this blog running or perhaps contribute to my diaper fund? You can do so on Venmo or Paypal.
A Deep Dive: A Guest Post by L B Gschwandtner
I've published seven novels. None of them required research since all but one were really, truly, pure fiction requiring only my imagination. But one of those books was loosely based on an experience I had at boarding school. Writing this one required remembering a variety of details, not only about the inciting incident but also about details of the school and people at the time. Then I had to embellish and, of course, construct a tight story that veered from fact whenever necessary. Such is the story telling wealth that fiction allows.
But now, I'm working on a story based on a very famous person’s life. A VERY famous person, now dead, but who remains very much in the public domain. It will not be a biography or a memoir but will be told in first person making the famous person the main character and the story’s narrator. Writing in the fictional voice of a real person requires a new way of imagining the story and also a whole lot of research.
So much has been written about this person that it was easy to assume I knew the whole life story before I started. But the eight books I’ve read and 40 videos I’ve watched have convinced me that I’m just getting to know her (yes a woman). In this process of getting to know my subject I'm finding that fame itself is a fiction. The public persona constructed by the celebrity and others is intertwined with the real person. Yet behind the created public face I’m finding two distinctly separate characters.
My challenge will be to make the fictional real and the real fictional. I’m thinking about how to do that and still tell a compelling story. Indeed this is a deep dive into research but also into character. It’s a challenge I'm finding both daunting and exciting at the same time. So off I go diving from the springboard into the depths of story and character based on a real person.
A Deep Dive: A Guest Post by L B Gschwandtner
