Plus ça Change – April 26, 2026
There are chapters, and then there are chapters. I suppose it depends upon what sort of “thing” you’re writing about. Mine are family stories, tales of life, the universe, and everything, set back in time. I want the characters to be real people to you.
Because I write historical fiction, many of them actually lived. And, because they lived, they died. Of course, the personalities and words I give them, well that’s made up, isn’t it. Nonetheless, they become real to me, the humble author.
I do a ton of research, and Magic happens as a result. I’m there. The scene is real. The characters talk to me. Yes, yes, yes, it’s my imagination. It is imagination informed by a lifetime of experience, and uncounted hours of reading about what it was “really” like. When that magic arrives, there I am. Marie lives her life, and I float nearby, watching what happens.
Antonio de Sedella, Père Antoine, died on January 19, 1829. He really was in Marie’s life: her baptism; her wedding to Santiago Paris; the baptisms of children, the time she became a godmother. Marie was a devout Catholic. When she had interaction with the Church, Père Antoine was there. He was the parish priest, and they knew each other.
In my fiction, he is Marie’s confessor and her chosen grandfather. He’s a major character in Laveaux: Dancer. Of course he’s here in Laveaux: Mother.
I know these characters so well now, I decided to relax my geeky need to plot every detail and just let it happen. About the time I made that choice, this chapter showed up. It’s Marie, it’s her fault. She looked at me and said, “You know, he’s going to die, and I need to be there when it happens.” See Motivation. This was nowhere in any plot, totally not considered. But of course this has to happen.
I write (mostly) serially, so the narrative flows, and I reach the day when Père Antoine dies. I ducked it for a couple of days doing more research, because I’ve done this before and I know what I’m in for. But—truly, the author says—this is the good stuff, the human stuff, the other side of the coin that has joy as heads. This is tails.
So I create the draft. There are tears because one of my faves is dying. I’m the author, you could say I’m killing him. In a way. He died for real, but I have to make the scene come to life.
Put it down. Come back the next day, rewrite, add here, remove there, make it more real. There are tears.
The next day. Edit, start applying some serious craft: word order, word selection, polish it up. To use a baseball metaphor, I am now in the park, I want to find home plate. There are tears.
The next day, today, the final (HAH!) buff. Find me the word that has a particular aroma about it, will give the reader the feels I want in this scene. From word one to word last, I want to write the right word. So I am deep into the scene, immersed in the human nuance of an old friend dying.
There. Are. Tears.
Again and again I revisit the death of a loved one. It’s fiction? Yes, but the tears are real. And every time I do this I am back in Père Antoine’s ramshackle little hut behind the cathedral, where he chose to live the life of an ascetic. Marie sits by his side, holds his hand as her friend dies. And I cry with her.
Lovely. The sweet pain of tears when writing, when reading THIS, is surprisingly core to the creative process. If we can’t feel while creating or documenting, how can a reader appreciate the weight of the prose when reading?
Amen!
Someone once told me that if you didn’t cry when you wrote it, no one will cry when they read it.
There is another dimension to this, though. Since he was a real person, you are essentially mourning a man who died long before you were born. A real man, who really lived in a way you have embellished and brought to life.
Just something to think about.
Paige
Yep, not my first rodeo. François’s funeral in La Rochelle in the 1640s… oh my god. I can’t read it, even a couple years later, without balling my eyes out. For all the emotional heartache, this is glorious.
The joy of writing sorrow, eh? For sure.