When I retired from teaching elementary school, I began my second career—writing fiction. My first stories centered on my interest in dance. Seventeen years of lessons and performances throughout the Pacific Northwest provided fodder to keep my fiction real. Still, my experience alone didn't seem quite enough, so I researched professional dancers and read ballet stories. Then I sent Marta and Lynne, my two seventeen-year-old dancers, off to join a ballet company set in Billings, Montana, in the late fifties.
My original intent to write a single young adult story grew into a trilogy, 84 Ribbons; When the Music Stops—Dance on; and Letters to Follow—A Dancer's Adventure, which follows the budding careers of my two aspiring ballerinas. Sharing their hard work during practices and performances provides opportunities to accurately depict classical ballet, while focusing the story on my own growing up years, the 1950s, adds interest and authenticity. For example, the girls lived with relatives or in a boarding house, they used phones that hung on the wall, and they traveled by bus and train. I knew that time well and could convey it with realistic ease.
The trilogy also introduces readers to real places. In book one, 84 Ribbons, Marta comes to appreciate the prairie about Billings, the vista from The Rims, and the Yellowstone River near Lake Josephine. In When the Music Stops, book two, she returns to western Washington and the Pacific coast, an area where I've lived my entire life. Book 3, Letters to Follow, showcases Lynne on her trip to France to join a summer dance troupe and tour famous locations, many of which I'd personally visited. (The rest were thoroughly researched before being included.)
Did the careful attention to authentic details pay off? Absolutely. The trilogy received recognition, including a ForeWord Magazine feature and awards from Feathered Quill and Moonbeam Children's Book Awards, and was an Eric Hoffer finalist. By adding facts into my fiction, I created interest for a wide range of readers, ages 13 to 90—from young girls currently hoping to have a career in ballet to seniors who remember the time period in which the story is set. Tasman, my fourth novel and a very different kind of story, was runner-up in the 2018 Hollywood Book Festival.
After finishing the ballet trilogy, I jumped back a century into 1850 to write about my visit to the ruins of the brutal British Port Arthur penal colony on the southern tip of Tasmania. We toured the Isle of the Dead and the settlement, stepped into convict cells and the isolating silent prison, and visited the prison church. The quiet rural setting held ghosts of its former purpose that I couldn't forget. I knew I had to write the story of the real young man I'd learned about through the museum displays. After months of researching and reading fiction and nonfiction, Ean McClaud emerged. Once he stepped onto the page, the adventure began. Tasman—An Innocent Convict's Struggle for Freedom tested his patience, his strength, and his resilience as he grew into a three-dimensional character that compels the reader to keep turning pages, all the while cheering him on.
It has been said we should write what we know. I say, "Write what you know and what interests you." Add facts to your fiction to bring depth and authenticity to your stories. In my case, realistic fiction grew from a mixture of personal experiences, interests, and research. No matter the genre, using facts in fiction makes stories spring to life for both writers and readers.
If you wish to connect with me, please visit PaddyEger.com I love to talk about writing.
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| Paddy Eger is the author of The Ballet Trilogy, and Tasman - An Innocent Convict’s Struggle for Freedom. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter. |
