h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

To recap. I came up with an idea for a novel, called Brothers at War. It was to be set in France during the Second World War and centre round two brothers who fall out over their love for a Jewish girl. I did a NaNoWriMo dash in November 2016 and wrote 50,000 words. Since then, I've been rewriting it.
It's my experience that writing is a bit like creating a garden . You can draw up plots and character sketches, but when you start to write, your ideas grow and flourish, or wither and die. So, as weeding, cutting back bushes and replanting are important in gardening, rewriting is essential to writing.
So my second draft is proving quite different from my first draft. It starts in a different place at a different time:the isolated farmhouse that belongs to the Lacombe family in June 1940, instead of the pharmacy where Ferdinand Schneider lives with his daughter Danielle in summer 1939.
Michel Lacombe returns from the French army to find Danielle Schneider and her father living as refugees in the family farmhouse. He falls in love and marries her, despite the resentment of his older brother Henri, who also fancies Danielle. Michel, Danielle and Ferdinand go and live and work in a garage. It is Ferdinand who first gets in contact with the beginnings of the Resistance, but Michel and Danielle get involved. They hide refugees in their house.
Danielle has a son, Jean-Jacques (Jeannot) by the time their activities are betrayed. They have to flee. They ask Henri to shelter them in his farmhouse, but he will only let them stay one night. As they face life as refugees, Michel convinces Danielle that she would be safer without him, as he is more likely to be suspect. Reluctantly, they part. Michel goes and joins a small maquis group, while Danielle

Oh dear, I didn't mean to break off in the middle of a sentence!

Danielle finds work in a house where Jewish children are cared for. She meets Guillaume Roux, who appears to be friendly but she doesn't completely trust him.

That's as far as I've got and I'm sure this project is too hard for me. Why? Firstly, it's got to be true to history. The dates when things happen in my story have to fit with real events. Secondly, I need to know a great deal about people's lives at the time: interiors of houses, food, clothes, tools, vehicles - all sorts of things. I've read a number of books about the history of the time, as well as novels set at the time, and websites in French as well as English. But I still don't know enough. I probably need to be sitting in a library in Toulouse reading the archives in French.

I think that your analogy with gardening very apt.

Many writers have found that at some point a particular character becomes so real that you basically find yourself following what the character is doing rather than leading the process. Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill Sherlock Holmes off, but a combination public demand and his own helplessness in the face of Holmes's magnetism forced him to bring the sleuth back to life.

Sometimes this can go even farther. I've heard of authors who have come to speak at literature classes, only to found that students and teachers were finding things ion the author's work that the author neither intended nor even foresaw.

Writing is a mystical process in some ways. The world you create can be more real to your readers than the real world. Pat yourself on the back if you ever find that you have captured people's imagination. This should be the highest compliment you can get.

Thank you Paulh

Are you writing this for fun or as a commercial project? Is it a love story set in war torn France or a historical novel with a love story thrown in?

I think a lot depends on target audiences. Are you likely to have nitpickers pointing out such an event happened in February not March or that brand of cigarette only came out the year later?

So what's more important to you, the research and factual accuracy or your characters and the tale they tell?

I have recently become totally bogged down with matching time lines and events of Mayan, Arabic and European histories. The story was more important to me, so my answer, keep the bones but move the time and setting.

But that's just me writing for fun, good luck, enjoy!

Writing for fun can be a way of sharing the fun with others.

That's a good question you ask FWR. I write because I love writing, and because it's better than doing the housework! I'm not expecting anyone to publish my stuff (apart from h2g2 of course.)

I think my story is a love story set in war time France, rather than historical fiction. So maybe I don't have to get every last detail right, but I do need some believable settings. My present approach is to write a second draft which nails down the main characters and events, and then do a bit more research to enable me to go back and fill in the details.

Housework? I do so little of it that most of my dreams center around grass and wildflowers growing in the dirt that has piled up on my living room floor. I also regularly dream that trees have taken root in my living room, and are tall enough to poke through the ceiling.

Now if that's not a starting point....

I was meant to live outside in the woods and meadows. The down side is the stretch of cold weather from October first to late April. My subconscious knows what it wants. I just can't provide it for seven months of the year.

You'd like our house in France. The barns have trees poking through the roof and birds nesting in them!

I'm sure I would like almost everything about France -- except for snooty waiters in prestigious restaurants. Not that I would have enough money to eat in those places.

You can find Oriental places on the outskirts of towns, where they offer 'Buffet a Volonte' - all you can eat.

Flunch!

Do you like a sit-down meal with lots of meat, FWR?

We don't eat meat, so it's sometimes difficult to find places to eat in rural France. And we end up cooking our own!

I think that minestrone may be popular in southern France, as that area is so close to Italy. There are lots of good French soups that can be made with cannellini and cabbage, and no meat.

I suspect soups are made in households all over Europe, because they're good for using things up.

Onion soup is certainly a French classic and mushroom soup with dried ceps added.

I truly adore French onion soup. There used to be a chain of restaurants that I went to specifically for their onion soup. I miss them.