Gemma Tizzard on Researching for Historical Fiction ‹ Literary Hub

I love facts. For example, the construction of the Empire State Building used 50,000 steel beams and 203,000 rivets. Some people would feel nothing at all about this information, while others might find it mildly interesting. Me? Well, as soon as I heard these facts, many years ago, I started to imagine what those huge numbers looked like, and think about the manpower required to haul it into place. As my imagination ran away with itself, I thought about how proud those men must have felt to be part of creating what was going to be the tallest building in the world. I also thought about how no women got to have the thrill of that feeling. And that%u2019s how a novel is born. But this one was different from the others%u2014this one scared me a little. I felt that familiar rush at realizing that I could make something happen. I could put a woman up on the steel, in fiction at least. But to do it, I would have to learn how to build a skyscraper.