A Books Eternal Glory is very excited to welcome a guest this week. Today we have Thomas Hoobler, the author of Come Sit By Me who wanted to talk about the research he conducted to write the novel.
"Research I did for Come Sit By Me
For
a novel, there are two kinds of research you can do. The first one is to find
out as much as you can about the setting, the time, the background, and the
subject generally. A good example of this kind is the research my wife and I
have done for our mysteries that are set in 18th-century Japan. When people ask
if we have ever been to Japan, we say we have visited the Japan that we write
about the only way you can: in books.
You have to be careful that this kind of
research doesn’t turn your book into an encyclopedia article. You have to use
it only as part of the main thing: the story. It’s a place where your
characters live.
When
I decided to write a book about a school shooting, I read a book titled Columbine by Dave Cullen. Cullen is a
reporter who investigated the shooting at a high school in Columbine, Colorado.
He was very thorough and I learned just about as much as I could about the
school and the two shooters. But when I finished, I decided that wasn’t the
kind of book I wanted to write. I also decided that the book didn’t answer the
most important question of all: Why did they do it?
So
I used the second kind of research: I used my imagination.
Now,
this doesn’t mean that I didn’t do any research. I had gone to high school. I
later taught in a school. In both places, I observed the students around me. I
drew conclusions about what motivated people. I saw how certain people were
rejected by others, and I understood how that made them feel because I myself
experienced rejection. I observed how some people lead others, and saw that
some of these leaders were not (in my opinion) good people. I saw that people
who were otherwise good shunned people who were unpopular. I saw that people
can be cruel and thoughtless. All of this was research for writing about a high
school and the students in my book. Anybody who writes stories about people has
done this kind of research. Let
me add that nobody in any schools I attended ever shot up the place. In
addition, none of the characters in my book are exactly like any students I
personally knew.
When I wrote the book, I felt that I had a character down on
paper when he or she acted the way I knew real people behave. When that
happens, the characters start to do things by themselves. That’s when you know
you’ve done your research.
I
think I should mention one other book I used as research. I really struggled to
find the right voice for Caleb, the shooter. (If you want to know how a dead
person can speak, you have to read the book.) I don’t think I ever knew anybody
who was quite so damaged as Caleb. Yet I didn’t want to make him a monster who
acts without reason. That would be a cop-out. So I read a story by Nikolai
Gogol titled “Diary of a Madman.” That helped me find a way to give Caleb his
voice."
I just want to thank Kellie Sheridan who initially contacted me about joining the book tour and for also helping set the date and for providing all of the material used in this post. I look forward to seeing the other posts that come as a result of this book tour.
