storytelling

Dianna asked:

I was just wondering if you ever hide historical information in your stories.

For example, I just learned about how green-papered rooms killed many in the 18th century via arsenic fumes. Of course, people didn't figure this out for a long time.

And I got to wondering if authors, such as yourself, hide this kind of historical information in the plot without making it explicit. For example, having a character die an unexplained death in a bedroom with green wall paper.

Do you write in layers - the explicit layer and the secret layer?

Just wondering - it's a lark of a question by a non-professional.

This kind of thing has come up a number of times when I'm writing about illness. I know what is wrong with character X because I've researched it, but medical knowledge of the time wasn't so far along. For example, I'm guessing nobody picked up on what killed Dolly Wilde -- beyond the fact that she was suffering from exposure during a winter storm. There are a lot of hints, but unless you were really paying attention and were able to sort out one set of symptoms from another, you probably wouldn't pick up on it. Any quesses?

The other more obvious case was the epidemic in Paradise when so many people died of what seemed like very different causes -- sepsis, childbed fever, putrid sore throat. The same agent (strep) was at work in all these cases but in 1802 that hadn't yet been determined.

There are a few other such cases, but I'm not going to point them out, specifically.

Posted by at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)