I had the good fortune to be raised by a father who shared with me what my mother referred to as his “morbid curiosity.” He was an avid reader, almost exclusively nonfiction, and he found the real world as fascinating and unpredictable as our imaginations. I think the reason why I always had a story going on in my head or how my favorite question was always “what if” was because of him. His endless curiosity brought us to visit places like Stonehenge, the Lizzie Borden house, the Gettysburg battlefield, and a trip to DC to see the supposedly cursed Hope diamond. 

It’s no surprise to my family and friends that I always seek out the weird and the unusual and the kinds of things that despite them being absolutely true are actually stranger than fiction. (Which, by the way, was the title of one of the books my dad would read to me as a small child and was also the singular reason why I was afraid to sleep in my own bed at night.) This unwholesome interest is how the idea germ for That Last Carolina Summer sprouted during one of my sessions of procasta-scrolling through the Internet.  

Both of my parents were from Mississippi and every summer I would spend a few weeks with my maternal grandparents and assorted cousins. Mississippi experiences frequent thunderstorms and ensuing lightning strikes in the hot summer months because of its location in the warm, moist air mass of the Gulf Coast region. My grandmother lived in a tiny house with a metal roof, and during those almost daily storms, the rattling boom of the thunder would shake pictures from the walls while the blue-white lightning lit up the night. My grandmother would try to calm me by saying it was the angels bowling in heaven, but I never really bought into that. I’m still not a fan of lightning storms and the havoc they can wreak.  

Which is probably why during an Internet scroll I latched on to a story about people getting struck by lightning and suddenly claiming to have premonition. This outcome is hotly debated by experts, but as a writer of fiction, it didn’t matter if it was true or not. What mattered to me was that if people had claimed it enough times that it could be true.  

Being a writer, my imagination began to spin. What if a child was born without any supernatural power but acquired it after a catastrophic event? And what if the child was old enough to know that her new gift made her stand out as being different? And maybe for a while standing out was a good thing because it made her the center of attention when before she had hidden in the shadows created by the brightness of a beautiful older sister. But what would happen when the gift shows her something dark and foreboding in a relentless dream that follows her night after night until she flees across the country to escape it? 

And that is how the story of Phoebe Manigault begins. Set against the luscious backdrop of the South Carolina low country where storms seem so much closer to the ground because of the flat and watery landscape, I pictured the terrifying opening storm scene for Phoebe at age nine where she is crabbing off the deck behind her house and is struck by lightning. She is left with a jagged scar on her back and the ability to see the future in her dreams. 

Her premonitions are always about people she recognizes and occur before the event itself. But there’s one lingering dream where she doesn’t recognize any of the participants, and she doesn’t know if it’s something that has already happened or something that will happen. It’s a dark and disturbing chain of events and it haunts her almost nightly into early adulthood. It is one of the reasons why she fleas to the West Coast, where she finds the dream and her gift become dormant. It also puts needed space between Phoebe and her sister and mother. She thrives in her new Oregon home until she is summoned home again by her sister saying their mother is ill and she needs Phoebe to come home.  

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Reluctantly, Phoebe returns to South Carolina, and the dream returns with her. Except now every time she has the dream, a little more information is revealed, each bit opening up a Pandora’s box into her family’s past until it is thrown wide open, revealing a dark secret that was meant to stay buried. 

As a child I used to wish I could see into the future. What kind of a career would I have? Would I get married? How many children would I have? Would I be happy? As I grew older, I began to see that knowing the future might not be the gift I’d once imagined. Because a positive outcome isn’t guaranteed, nor can mere knowledge alter the future. While creating Phoebe’s character, I tried to envision what it would be like for her to be able to see an approaching disaster, but be powerless to stop it or give warning. 

Do I still want to see the future? I don’t know the answer. It’s one of the reasons why I wrote the book—to explore the possibilities. Through Phoebe, I wanted to imagine what it would be like to be gifted the knowledge of foresight, and if it would be considered a gift or a curse. Or maybe a little bit of both. And what I might do with the knowledge. 

That Last Carolina Summer is primarily a story about the bond between sisters, mothers and daughters that begins with a single strike of lightning that informs and illuminates the characters’ life choices and shines a spotlight on the difficult path toward forgiveness.

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There’s something about writing that strips me of all embellishment. Writing for me tricks the deeply embedded taboo of breaking the silence about long-held family secrets, or stories ensconced in shame. Maybe because writing is done in silence. Writing is like whispering; it keeps a truth secret even as it’s being shared.  

As a feminist theologian, I often feel like I’m telling secrets about religion that many know, and even agree with, but rarely talk about out loud. And I couldn’t tell the truth about a forgotten saint named Thecla, without also telling the truth about how her story inspired me to finally heal a pattern in my life that had me trapped for over a decade. 

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Thecla’s story is found in a text that scholars date back to as early as 70 C.E. titled The Acts of Paul and Thecla. When the world stood still in 2020, I felt this gravitational pull to start studying it again. I had vaguely remembered it from seminary, especially that Thecla—a teenage girl with little to no power in the world around her—ends up baptizing herself and living a life no one thought possible.  

After studying it for months on end, a template of spiritual transformation became discernible in her story—Thecla moves through seven distinct stages to go from a girl trapped in a life that is based on fulfilling the expectations of others, to a life ordained from within her, a life that she chooses and wills for herself even at a time when she wasn’t free to do so. 

Thecla somehow reclaims her innate power to choose the life she wants for herself. And this is what inspired and changed me so profoundly—no one comes to save Thecla. All throughout Thecla’s story, she is called on to save herself. Or, she’s saved by the person she has to become in order to save herself. She has to keep morphing into more of the truth of who she is, revealing with more authenticity, more vulnerability, what she knows is meant for her.  

And it’s this precise inversion—this living from the inside out with absolute integrity, this is true power. So in order to tell her story, I had to let myself be changed by it. I had to put the wisdom I found in her story into practice. And I could only do this by finally figuring out how to end a harmful pattern I kept making when it came to love. I had to figure out how to reclaim my power to choose as Thecla had, a life no one thought possible. 

The maxim that emerged in the writing process that summates what Thecla taught me is this: The only way out is within. Thecla inspired me to write the truth about what has been hardest for me to endure. And the truth, as promised, set me free. 

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Those old paperbacks were of mixed quality, but they offered an opportunity I didn’t appreciate immediately: The chance to travel back in time a bit. Digging into those old books offered a break from the bestseller lists and the constant focus on what was new, to experience examples of writing from other time periods—they were lessons about what life was like decades or even centuries ago. 

The first time I was conscious of learning something about everyday life from an old book involved Dorothy L. Sayers’ classic mystery Whose Body?, featuring her aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey.³ Published in 1923, the story could be updated to the modern day pretty easily, except for one detail: The way everyone treats telephones. Phones weren’t brand-new in 1923, but newspapers were still publishing articles chronicling the astonishing growth of phone networks, and phone calls were expensive and complex, especially long-distance calls. In the novel, not only does Lord Wimsey keep his phone in a special room, but making a long-distance “trunk-call” is a notable activity, and one that involves politely asking someone to make the connection and ring you back when they have your party on the line.⁴ 

This one detail, capturing the way people viewed telephones (as a new and expensive technology), reminded me that the book had been written in a reality that no longer existed, and reflected a set of attitudes and social behaviors that no longer made much sense. And that’s when I realized that if you want to know what life was like at any specific point in the past, one of the most effective (and interesting) ways to research it is to dig into the pop culture of the era.⁵ 

The Other Way to Research 

When we think of research in terms of writing fiction, we usually default to the usual stuff: Hours spent squinting at a computer screen as we pick our way through Google searches or sifting through reference works at the local library,⁶ falling down rabbit holes of information. Some more ambitious folks might arrange to travel places so they can get a firsthand understanding of the geography, topography, and culture of a specific area, or to see locations with historic interest in real life.⁷ 

While that kind of research can give you a strong factual and physical basis for a historical or history-inspired setting, what it can’t give you is the vibe. History has a way of flattening cultural attitudes and lifestyles into simplified versions, leaving the more complex and nuanced understanding to scholars who have the time to dig through original sources. Consider the American Revolution, which is usually presented in hyper-patriotic terms as if every single resident of the original Thirteen Colonies was an ecstatic supporter—when the truth is much, much more complicated.⁸ 

That’s where old novels, plays, movies, and TV shows come in. These are works of fiction, yes, but when fiction is set in the writer’s current moment, they often reflect—very, very accurately—many of the unseen attitudes, traditions, and perspectives that get hidden by the necessary simplification of even high-quality history.⁹ Both well-known classics and lesser-known works can give you a clear sense of what life was really like at the time—how people dressed, spoke, and lived. 

The key here is that most of this stuff wasn’t consciously included by those creators—when you read a book published last year and set in the modern day, you don’t even notice details like what people are wearing, or the apps they use on their phone, because we’re immersed in these details ourselves every day—they’re invisible. But in 200 years, those details will likely leap out at future readers in the same way someone looking up phone numbers in the Whitepages does to us.¹⁰ 

If you want to get a ground-level sense of how people actually lived and thought back in The Day, supplementing your research with some old-timey pop culture is a smart move—those musty old books and movies can offer a wide range of information you won’t find cataloged in more formal sources. Here are a few benefits of digging into our pop culture past. 

Contemporaneous Attitudes 

Times change. Attitudes change, and the Overton window of acceptable behavior constantly shifts.¹¹ History books are usually too high-level to dig into the details of common attitudes that might have been top-of-mind for people living in that moment, and even well-researched historical fiction will commonly overlook problematic behaviors and beliefs if they don’t serve the story’s themes. But pop culture created in that moment—or reasonably close to it—can offer a glimpse of what those attitudes were, because they were common at the time. 

If you want to know how people viewed everyday life in the Middle Ages, The Canterbury Tales is a treasure trove of information about how people viewed a wide range of subjects, from society itself (comically corrupt) to gender roles (surprisingly messy).¹² If you’re looking for an accurate depiction of early 19^th-century attitudes toward sexuality, read The Scarlet Letter, itself based on the sensational murder of Sarah Maria Cornell in 1832, just 18 years before, as well as what may be the first work of what we’d recognize as true crime, Fall River: An Authentic Narrative by Catharine R. Williams, written just a year later and digging into Cornell’s sad story as satisfyingly as any modern podcast. If you wonder how the public broadly viewed life during the Great Depression, the film It Happened One Night is a frothy screwball comedy that offers several insightful glimpses of how people survived one of the worst financial crises of modern times.¹³ 

The Little Details 

History books often give you little information about how people actually behaved—how they spoke informally (as opposed to speeches or interviews) and the little details that occupied their thoughts. But contemporary books and other media can offer a glimpse. 

The Catcher in the Rye is not just a terrific book, it’s also a strikingly accurate time capsule of how teenagers spoke and interacted in early 1950s America. While Holden Caulfield is a singular character with unique privilege, obsessions, and goals, the way he communicates with people throughout the story gives you a sense of what people were talking about and how they talked about it. Do the Right Thing isn’t just a terrific film, it’s also a film that captures a specific moment in American urban life—as well as its speech patterns and dress codes—that would be invaluable for anyone writing a story about that time and place. 

Local Knowledge 

Something else The Catcher in the Rye offers as a research resource is a sense of place. If you pay attention as you read, you get a pretty clear idea of what New York City in the 1950s was like—Holden travels around quite a bit, and you could construct a workable map of the city from the details he drops along the way.¹⁴ As challenging as James Joyce’s Ulysses is to read, it’s also an incredibly accurate rendering of Dublin in the early 20^th century that you could mine for any story set there. 

It’s not just famous old novels that can offer this kind of historical detail. The 1948 film Act of Violence isn’t exactly top of mind for people these days, but it was shot on location in a Los Angeles that literally doesn’t exist anymore, including a terrific chase sequence through the old Bunker Hill neighborhood that was completely redeveloped in the late 1980s. Films and TV shows filmed on location can be goldmines of information about places that simply no longer exist. 

The Invisibles 

Something that pop culture—especially novels—captures that more formal history usually misses are the unspoken, invisible attitudes of people at that time. When I read The Grapes of Wrath or watch the film adaptation, it’s extremely informative about the way people lived and survived during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era.¹⁵ But when I first read the book, I was struck by the complete lack of self-pity among the characters. There’s anger, exhaustion, and fear, yes, but everyone regards the economic catastrophe that has driven them from their homes in a desperate search for survival as something that’s happening to everyone—the entire country—not as a particular tragedy happening just to them. It’s a subtle thing, but it’s instructive—in large part because the story deals with events that were still happening when it was being written. 

There is one caveat to keep in mind if you use pop culture to better understand a past era: Be cognizant of the limitations of the creators. We all have weak areas, and writers, like everyone else, are a product of their times.¹⁶ A book, film, or other piece of pop culture might be very useful for one aspect of your research (geography, or attitudes toward a new technology) but not useful at all—possibly even deceptive—in other ways. It pays to do a little meta-research into the creators you’re relying on. 

Old-school pop culture is often a snapshot of a past time, filled with real, accurate information that can be difficult to pin down in other ways. If your current work-in-progress requires a little research into the past, set up a movie night, find out what everyone was reading that year, and settle in for some eye-opening entertainment.

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Ahh, research. Love it or hate it, a story can’t be built without it.  

Many writers struggle with forging an article out of piles of background research, interview notes, and attempted outlines. We all know it’s much better to have a mountain of research than next to nothing, but extracting the value buried in that mountain can feel as challenging as actually mining for precious metals.  

In the last year, I’ve found a reliable tool for shaping research into nonfiction stories. I believe it can work for all kinds of writing—nonfiction, fiction, poetry, even commercial copywriting, or technical communication. The practice of visual note-taking—also known as sketchnoting—has improved my ability to see patterns in my research and helped me define the structure for these stories, leading to the creation of better-written articles with less stress.  

One of the pioneers of visual note-taking is Mike Rohde, author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook. Like many writers, Rohde, whose primary occupation is user experience designer, struggled with taking notes at events and trying to make use of them later. He reached a breaking point in 2007 facing a design conference in Chicago.  

Shaking up his normal approach to note-taking, Rohde brought a small Moleskine notebook and a pen to the conference and gave up on the stenographic approach to capturing everything. He created titles and headings with hand-lettered type, and he added small hand-drawn pictures to his notes. The results amazed not only him but his audience on Flickr. 

“I was getting comments from people who were not at the event who said, ‘this is really helpful,’” Rohde said. “They would comment, ‘I got value from the notes you took because they were very concise and to the point’ … That’s when I stopped and said, wait a minute. There’s something interesting happening here.” 

Rohde is among a handful of experts to shape the practice of visual note-taking over the past dozen years. After discovering this fascinating approach to organizing ideas and concepts, I’ve realized its benefits when generating new article ideas, organizing research, and outlining stories.  

The Brain Science That Supercharges Sketchnotes 

Visual note-taking helps writers in a way that conventional notetaking can’t. The human brain is primed for visual stimuli; words, much as we writers love them, evolved to stand in for images, not the reverse.  

A team of researchers at MIT reported in 2014 that the brain can successfully process images it sees for as little as 13 milliseconds. By contrast, the brain takes between 130 and 150 milliseconds—10 times longer—to make sense of single words or simple three-word sentences.  

We also retain text that’s placed alongside visual information longer than words alone. Author and molecular biologist John Medina, in his 2008 book Brain Rules, cited a study finding participants who viewed (or listened) to text-based information remembered just 10 percent after three days. If they viewed the same information through a combination of text and images, they retained 65 percent three days later.    

Tom Wujec, a designer/technologist and the author of Pumping Ions and Five Star Mind, summarizes the advantages that sketchnotes bring to communication: “We are visual creatures. When you doodle an image that captures the essence of an idea, you not only remember it, but you also help other people understand and act on it.” 

Anatomy of a Sketchnote 

Each element of visual notetaking adds value to research and idea-generating tasks. Let’s take a look at what the elements are and how they amplify the value of the note.  

Icons and images are the most obvious additions to sketchnotes, and they help anchor the meaning of the text. These tiny visuals are rarely works of art; the level of expertise you’re aiming for is that you and your reader understand what the image/icon means.  

Lettering for banners, section headers, and body text helps convey to readers the importance of words used.  

Two powerful aspects of sketch notes are “containers” around related content and “connectors” (think arrows or roadways) to indicate navigation between chunks. Connectors direct the viewer’s eye from concept to concept. Creating this sense of direction defines the story path. 

Color can also be a powerful tool for emphasis. Carol Anne McGuire, who blogs about sketchnoting in educational settings, shares that color can be used to highlight a concept, add texture or shading to an image, or reinforce a connector’s path. Don’t overuse color—one or two colors, used sparingly, make important points pop out.  

While researching this article, I used an initial sketchnote in an A5 notebook to organize my research. Although I crowded a lot on the page, I discovered an effective visual metaphor—eyeglasses—around which to describe and illustrate significant parts of the story:

After refining the note a little and adding color and directional markers in a larger (A4, closer to a traditional 8.5 x 11 inch) notebook, there was a clear outline for the story. 

How to Get Started With Sketchnoting 

Sylvia Duckworth, Canadian educator and author of How to Sketchnote: A Step-by-Step Manual for Teachers and Students, encourages those new to sketchnoting with these three basic rules: 

1. Everyone can draw. 

2. You will improve with practice. 

3. It’s about the ideas, not the art.  

Rohde’s books help readers build images from just five basic shapes: square, circle, triangle, line, and dot. Other authors use different numbers of basic shapes but still boil everything down to a handful of elements.  

Beyond learning the ground rules and building blocks of visual note-taking, there are a couple of other important pointers.  

YOU determine what’s important. Visual note-taking summarizes an experience, interview, or idea. Leave the archival-level detail to recordings or transcripts. With sketchnotes, think like a curator, not a court reporter.  

Different parts of pre-writing work call for different types of sketchnotes. Sifting through research? Draw a note with a mind map or “popcorn” structure and look for patterns. Want to structure a story? Try a sketchnote with a path-like pattern taking the reader from beginning to end.  

You can also use sketchnotes to brainstorm. Here’s a sketchnote of mine summarizing ideas for career-related articles. It provided a great view of the ideas I wanted to develop into queries/pitches: 

Lean into the visual aspects of sketchnotes to maximize value. According to Rohde, what really sets visual note-taking apart is the ability to shift ideas and concepts around. Add images and icons liberally and place your concepts with intention on specific parts of your page. 

Practice, practice, practice. You don’t have to become a skilled artist to create great sketchnotes, but practice helps you add visual elements to your notes with less stress and more ease. 

Use visual note-taking outside of work. Look to hobbies and community activities for inspiration. Rohde hones his sketchnoting skills illustrating his pastor’s sermons and by creating game summaries for his beloved Green Bay Packers. Here’s his sketchnote for a 2023 game against the Kansas City Chiefs (my hometown team!): 

I’ll never be Picasso—or even Katherine May or Diane Ackerman—as a result of my sketchnoting, but learning how to use visual note-taking has given me a newfound confidence as a writer. Not only can I better visualize my stories, but I can see results in terms of queries accepted and articles published. That’s definitely a benefit well worth cultivating this skill!  

Top Visual Notetaking Books 

I’ve found these books helpful as I’ve developed my sketchnoting practice. 

• The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde 

• The Art of Visual Notetaking by Emily Mills 

• Visual Thinking: Empowering People and Organisations Through Visual Collaboration by Williemien Brand 

• The Doodle Revolution by Sunni Brown  

• Pencil Me In: The Business Drawing Book for People Who Can’t Draw by Christina Wodtke

Click to continue.

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(Common Journalism Terms for Writers.)

Journalists have been exposing society’s ills through covert methods for almost two centuries and the term ‘going undercover’ is, of course, universally known. But what does the work really entail?

When undercover, a journalist conceals their identity and purpose while secretly gathering information, often recording either audio or footage with a hidden camera. This can involve infiltrating a group, getting a job where discrimination is suspected, or even something as risky as becoming institutionalized. The purpose is to uncover evidence impossible to acquire through regular reporting methods. It usually involves allegations of corruption, unethical practices, criminal activity, or abuse.

In its Code of Ethics, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) advises us to, “avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information unless traditional, open methods will not yield information vital to the public.”

This is great advice on a subject dear to my heart, as my most memorable (and potentially dangerous) assignments involved undercover work. Infiltrating an alleged cult in Cardiff, Wales, and spending five weeks secretly filming, was both exhilarating and exhausting. This was my biggest undercover role, and it affected my personal life in many ways, which I’ll discuss shortly. For another story, I posed as a chinchilla breeder while investigating illegal fur farming. I spent several nights ‘spying’ on a group of unruly youths and recording their noise from an elderly lady’s bedroom window. And being ‘conservative with the truth’ was necessary when asking permission to film at a greyhound racetrack for a piece exposing the cruel treatment of retired racing dogs.

The moral dilemma for me—which mirrors some of the concerns expressed by many in the industry—was having to make up a story to conceal my identity. In simple terms, I had to lie. A lot. Pretending to be someone else when you’re acting in a play is one thing, but deceiving people in real life? It’s dangerous and emotionally draining, especially when long term and when there are innocent people involved, who you cannot help without blowing your cover. But the end justifies the means. In my case infiltrating and exposing the (allegedly) second most dangerous cult in the UK, accused of ruining many lives, was reason enough.

Breach of trust is one of the issues that emerges with undercover journalism and why some professionals are concerned. When you must lie in order to reveal the truth, do you lose credibility and the public’s trust? Does the outlet gain a reputation for deceit? I would argue that it depends on the story and most people are savvy enough to understand the reasons for a journalist’s exposé.

Undercover journalists have been exposing society’s ills for a long time, telling important stories that would have otherwise remained hidden. In 1887, journalist Elizabeth Cochrane (Nellie Bly) spent 10 days undercover as a patient in a New York sanatorium. Her six-part series, “Ten Days in a Mad-House,” was published in The New York World, and exposed terrible conditions and abuse, leading to improvements in the treatment of those with a mental illness. And in 1935, journalist Marvel Cooke and activist Ella Baker went undercover to expose the working conditions of Black women domestic workers in the Bronx, and their piece, “The Bronx Slave Market,” was published by The Crisis in November 1935.

But the journalism field has dramatically changed, and the media landscape is now vastly different.

Undercover work is not easy, it’s not cheap, and it can have serious repercussions. My assignments were only possible because we had a team of experienced professionals, a healthy budget, the luxury of time, the tools, and… lawyers. To successfully pull off these types of investigations today you need money, bottom line. Money buys you the staff that can spend weeks, months, or even years on a story. It buys you expertise, training, and equipment. And because there could be legal actions, it pays the lawyers’ fees—before and after getting sued. And our program did get sued. This also occurred in the mid to late 90s, which was a completely different era in journalism.

“This is expensive work, it ties up staff for months on end, it’s stressful, and it requires all kinds of legal vetting,” says New York University professor, Brooke Kroeger, author of Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception. She adds that journalists should “think really hard” before undertaking this type of work, while emphasizing that, “historically, the impact of these stories, when they worked, was just extraordinary. And they are the stories we remember.”

Today, traditional news outlets still employ investigative teams, but budgets have been severely cut and undercover work is not as prevalent. According to the Associated Press, the country has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005. This amounts to more than 3,000 closures, especially affecting local newspapers in rural areas, causing some regions to become news deserts. With fewer journalists, cutbacks, and closures, it’s little wonder that undercover journalism is in decline.

In addition to budgetary issues, there are legal repercussions. The famous Food Lion case explains some of the media’s reluctance to pursue undercover journalism. In 1992, ABC journalists working for “Prime Time Live” went undercover as Food Lion employees and secretly filmed, exposing possible unsanitary practices. Food Lion sued ABC in federal court in Greensboro, NC, alleging fraud, breach of the duty of loyalty, trespass, and unfair trade practices under North Carolina law. Food Lion claimed ABC used illegal news-gathering methods to obtain the information.

The focus here therefore was not defamation, but the methods used. This is a landmark legal battle addressing whether journalists can be protected by the First Amendment when they lie to gain access to private facilities for the purpose of news-gathering. (More information on this case, the appeals, and the 2023 challenge to the ag-gag law by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) can be found in the Resources section below.)

The group I infiltrated and secretly filmed tried suing me and the TV show for invasion of privacy, but luckily, the station lawyers dealt with it.

But what about personal consequences? As I mentioned earlier, going undercover can be stressful and risky. I joined the alleged cult ‘cold’ with no knowledge of the group and having never watched interviews with former members accusing them of brainwashing and manipulation. This way I started my investigation with a clean slate and no preconceived ideas. But this also left me vulnerable to their tactics, which do wear you down, even when you’re ‘in the know.’

When developing a cover story, we stuck to the truth as much as possible, to prevent slip ups. This meant using my real name, address, and phone number, and telling them I’d just moved back from the US with my American husband and was unemployed. Unfortunately, work and home life often intertwined. A prominent member started calling my husband to persuade him to join the church. When the show was broadcast one of his colleagues confronted him, saying, ‘Your wife did that hit piece on my church.’ 

It turned out one of his smoke break buddies was a member. We ended up moving to a different apartment and changing our phone number a few weeks later. I did suffer from nightmares for about a month, but there were no lasting effects. Overall, it was an interesting and challenging time. Would I do it again? I doubt it.

While this is not work for lone freelancers to even contemplate, many independent outlets and documentarians have, and still do, engage in undercover work, with varying degrees of success. Groups like Project Veritas became well known for their undercover stings but were largely criticized by the mainstream press for being sensational, and they have since suspended operations.

Many argued that undercover journalism became overused as ‘stunt journalism’ with one Guardian columnist back in 2007 describing it as “entertainment puffed up with a fake significance,” and a “journalistic addiction, a habit we need to kick.”

Undercover work can appear exciting and appealing. But it’s unacceptable and can ruin lives when used in isolation, for example one short clip on TikTok with no reference material and no interviews with the ‘accused’ or the other side.

But when done correctly, and is part of a wider, well-researched investigation and included in a report alongside supporting material conducted through traditional journalistic methods, it’s a powerful and potent tool for good.

But just like they say on TV shows, please don’t try this at home.

Resources:

• https://gijn.org/resource/gijns-guide-to-undercover-reporting/
• https://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_ethics_of_undercover_journalism.php
• https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/898547327/ghosting-the-news-author-says-local-journalism-freefall-is-accelerating
• https://freedom.press/issues/is-it-time-to-revisit-undercover-journalism/
• https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/women-reporters-undercover-most-important-scoops-day-180960775/
• https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/the-long-shadow-of-food-lion
• https://www.rcfp.org/journals/news-media-and-law-spring-2012/landmark-food-lion-case/
• https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-supreme-court-leaves-in-place-a-court-victory-for-peta-over-north-carolinas-undercover-gag-law
• https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2007/jan/21/goingundercoverisajournali
• https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2012/august/nyu-launches-history-of-undercover-reporting-database.html
• https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/how-journalists-ella-baker-and-marvel-jackson-cooke-exposed-domestic-works-slave-market

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(Writing Dark Fiction.)

As I began my research about Livermore, I soon learned that by the 1920s he was the archetype of a Wall Street bad guy, part of the cadre of wealthy insiders who colluded to move the market in the direction they wanted it to go, usually at the expense of the average investor. This wasn’t my hero. I wanted an investor the reader could root for, someone who challenged the idea that rich equaled bad and poor equaled good. I like to write about strong women taking their place in a man’s world so I made my protagonist a woman: Bea Abramowitz.

Bea is an underdog, a young Jewish woman with a gift for numbers, who wants to be a stockbroker. I knew creating her path would be hard, but I didn’t think it was that unusual for a woman to be investing on Wall Street in the ‘20s. After all, this was a liberated moment in women’s history with the suffragists finally succeeding in getting women the vote and flappers living independent lives. 

This was also the first “egalitarian” moment in the stock market. The whole country had gone stock crazy and more average American people were investing than ever, particularly in the years leading up to the crash. So, while I knew it might not be typical for an “everywoman” to succeed on Wall Street, I didn’t think it would be nearly impossible. Turns out I was wrong.

I love research. The puzzle of asking a question different ways to find the answer you need. The joy of discovering facts and people you never might have considered. But researching the early days of women in banking was challenging. I only found three books on the topic, one of which was published in 1959 and was more the history of a specific women’s banking association than a survey of the landscape. I was able to connect with archivists at some of Wall Street’s institutions, but the information they were allowed to give me was limited. It turns out there was very little about women in banking, because it was such an anomaly.

Fortunately, I reached out to a professor at William Paterson University named George Robb, author of one of the three books I had found: Ladies of the Ticker. What I learned from him dramatically changed Bea’s arc and the direction of the story overall. Here are some of the most surprising things I learned and how they influenced The Trade Off:

1. Women in banking were mostly college educated, well-connected socialites.

With the economy booming, banks were desperate for bodies…as long as they were male. Men on Wall Street could come from any walk of life and didn’t need a college degree to get hired at a bank. Women, on the other hand, were evaluated first for their social standing and second for their academic credentials. 

Robb explained that it would be common for a male banker to be less educated and have less social status than his secretary. This was a light bulb for me: Bea could have a twin brother who would be able to get the job she wanted, simply because he was a man. And that would be her back door into being a stockbroker.

2. While many prominent bankers were Jewish, very few Jewish women were hired for any position on Wall Street.

In retrospect, it seems naïve, but I hadn’t considered how much antisemitism, even among Jews, would have existed in the era. Some of the most famous banks (Kohn Loeb, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Salomon Brothers) were founded and run by Jewish men; but the typical female bank employee was more likely to be able to trace her lineage back to the Mayflower than to the shtetl. 

In fact, when I casually mentioned to Robb that Bea was Jewish, he immediately said “Oh now that would be even more unusual; then she would be an outsider in two ways.” 

Even before the recent uptick in antisemitism in our world I wanted to capture this idea that Bea wouldn’t be accepted on Wall Street—even by the other women—because she was Jewish. This subtle bit of information dramatically altered the emphasis I placed on Bea’s background as a Jew, and the amount I focused on the distinct culture of Judaism; it became the cornerstone of her struggle.

3. Women on Wall Street in this era didn’t have front office jobs. Period.

Robb suggested the opening scene in my novel in which Bea is standing on Broad Street looking around and seeing loads of women, but then enters the bank and sees virtually none. This is because women were relegated to jobs behind doors or in back offices. The exception was the Women’s Departments, essentially separate banks within the bank that catered entirely to wealthy female clientele, and were therefore staffed by wealthy women. Some of the Women’s Departments were even in alternate locations from the main institution. This information is why Bea ended up where she did, in the wire room, a sliver of the bank that I learned did hire women for some clerical functions.

Thanks to my research and the help of George Robb, the surprising realties of Wall Street as a place for women in the ‘20s shaped Bea’s journey in The Trade Off. It was one thing for a wealthy woman to “gamble” with her allowance in a banking environment created just for her and staffed by people just like her; it was entirely different for a poor immigrant to actively participate in the market the way Bea wanted to. 

Perhaps I should have been less surprised; women couldn’t take out their own lines of credit until the mid 1970s and are still considered diversity hires at today’s investment banks. But I hadn’t expected to find such constraints. Once I did, that became the core of the story and one of the most important pieces of the history of the era that I wanted to share with readers.

As an author of historical fiction, one of my greatest hopes is to accurately capture the spirit of the time, to offer the reader a window into another world that makes them feel like they lived it. The way we do that is through careful research. I sent George an early copy of The Trade Off when it was completed, and his feedback meant more to me than any review ever could: “I think you did a great job of evoking the atmosphere of Wall St. in the 1920s and conveying the restrictive lives of women. The novel would make a great film or TV series!” 

Check out Samantha Greene Woodruff’s The Trade Off here:

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(Avoid Common Research Pitfalls in Historical Fiction.)

As a writer, it probably won’t shock anyone to know that I grew up loving to read. But there are a few details people may not know about me that inform my writing today. When we were children, my sister and I had a beautiful set of encyclopedias in our house. The leather-bound reference books proved to be a never-ending source of wonder as I perused the pages, eager to read their seemingly inexhaustible contents. The other detail is that as a child, I would ride my bike to the Los Angeles Public Library branch near my home and sit on the floor for hours, pulling books off the shelves. Many years later, I became a newspaper reporter, eager to glean the facts of my stories before putting them down on paper.

This brings me quite obviously to vampires. Traditionally, vampires only come out at night. In Dracula, the inky blackness of the midnight hour is terror-filled as the vampire stalks poor, unsuspecting Mina while she sleeps. Her dreams are full of longing for a beast she cannot name, only to awaken with small puncture marks upon her neck in the morning. For decades, in most vampire novels or movies, everything terrible happens after the sun goes down. Lights are turned on, fires are stoked, but no one, it seems, is immune to the ruthless hunters as they stalk their prey. Thanks to Dracula and countless similar stories, we learned that the only way to kill a vampire is to drive a stake through its heart, cut off its head, or expose it to direct sunlight.

But what if you want your vampires to walk in the daylight and drink whisky? The answer, of course, is an encyclopedia, specifically one devoted to “Vampires, Werewolves and Other Monsters.” Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley, it’s a masterful A-Z guide of everything you need to know to stay true to the genre. In her introduction, Dr. Guiley writes, “The vampire is the entity, force or presence that brings illness, misfortune, death, and destruction. It is the demon parasite that threatens to suck health, vitality, and life away from its victims.” That is, of course, the basic framework of what vampires signify. If you want to know how to move away from that trope and blaze a new path for an ancient horror character, you have to understand their beginnings so you can write them into a new future.

In my case, the vampires in The Others, the first book of The Council Trilogy, my new urban fantasy series set in San Francisco, work for the common good of humanity rather than against it. They are players in a secret society of supernatural beings that meddle in human affairs to keep the balance between good and evil stable. William and Josef appear in the daytime and drink Jack Daniels neat when it suits them. Ethereal William, with his creamy white skin and shocking red hair, is also known to eat a bit of raw fish now and again, his almost 200-year-old body able to digest what younger vampires cannot tolerate. Of course, he still feeds, drinks blood—and offers his own to Olivia, the book’s heroine, to help heal her wounds after she’s been gravely injured.

Olivia unlocks her hidden supernatural gifts with the help of a strong peyote tea brewed by her spirit guide, Elsa. I picked up some important physical characteristics of the peyote plant using a slender but impactful book in my library called Wicked Plants, by Amy Stewart, which is a delicious compendium of deadly plants that can and do kill.

My small but burgeoning writer’s library is full of helpful books I can turn to at a moment’s notice to help assemble the contents of a deadly potion, identify a lethal weapon that can be worn under a cocktail dress, or choose the proper offerings for a Voodoo altar. When I was working on my series, I knew that I wanted my main characters to be modern versions of witches, vampires, and shapeshifters who hide in plain sight of the people around them. 

But there must always be a connection to the origins of the species for our characters, no matter how much we push them to evolve. William, for example, can be an ambulance driver in World War I, but he can’t go to a fancy restaurant and eat a three-course dinner with a rack of lamb and mashed potatoes. Make no mistake, they are old souls, and their centuries of experience help create the book’s tension, but they also don’t sleep in a box filled with dirt from their homeland to survive like Dracula.

I love and still use public libraries for research. After one particular visit to the Main Library in Seattle, where all the books about witchcraft were checked out, I knew I had to have a collection at my fingertips. My library includes books about witchcraft, tarot cards, astrology, ancient weapons, poisonous plants, and cursed objects, to name a few. The latter is of particular interest to me as I am toying with a new series that involves retrieving magical objects that have been lost or stolen—a particularly dangerous avocation. I can’t wait to dig into my research to identify what the first adventure will be about. I may even have to head out to flea markets and garage sales in search of curious objects to collect. There is nothing I love more than adding to my library. 

Check out Evette Davis’ The Others here:

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In this interview, Angélica discusses the process of writing her new historical fiction novel, The Curse of the Flores Women, her hope for readers, and more!

Name: Angélica Lopes
Literary agent: LVB&Co
Book title: The Curse of the Flores Women
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Release date: July 24, 2024
Genre/category: Drama/Historical
Elevator pitch: Eighteen-year-old Alice fights against the female oppression in Brazil when a family veil is passed down to her and she discovers it hides a secret code in the stitches of the lace about a case of domestic violence that happened 100 years before with her ancestors.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I wanted to talk about a group of oppressed women who find a clever way to bypass the surveillance of their husbands: They invent code in the lace to send secret messages to each other through tablecloths, blankets, veils … I combined this initial plot idea with the desire to talk about the land of my ancestors in the interior of Brazil. A place and a time when conflicts were always resolved in a violent way.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

Four years, including the pandemic. As I was stuck at home, I was able to discipline myself to finish the book, which was already halfway done in 2019. Without the lockdown, it would have taken me an extra year or two since I work as a screenwriter and my workflow is intense. For literature, my time is different. I need to be in a very specific mental state of serenity to dive into the text.

I added some unplanned layers during the writing process. The initial idea was to tell a story of violence that occurred in the past with which today’s young woman could identify herself. I want to show that, despite progress, women continue to be victims. As I wrote, I chose to weave the narrative with quotations of some current cases of violence to reinforce the theme. Another decision that helped convey the idea of connection among women was to have a pair of characters in the central plot: the narrator and protagonist. The story of the Flores is not about one. It’s about all.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

One of the surprises was the interest from other countries that arose even before the launch in Brazil. It shows that the theme of violence against women is universal and needs to be debated. People want to think about the subject.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Since the story talks about lace makers, I wanted to learn to embroider to understand the movements and subtleties of behavior among women who work with threads. In my opinion, a writer of historical fiction should research the period to recreate the environment with verisimilitude, but also cannot risk becoming too expert in the subject to the point of limiting our creativity. It’s a balance.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers get to know a bit of Brazil and identify with the feeling that we are all interconnected by bonds of affection and ancestry. No one is alone. The book tends to show that we are tied to other people in a straight-line of past, present and future, but also sideways, like lace, that spreads around.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

My advice is to write without expectations or future. The paths of our fictions are beyond our control. The only thing we can do is make them concrete. I see many people with the desire to write but needing a plan and some prior guarantee. Write. If someone ever reads it, you did what had to be done. By focusing on the activity, it frees the writer from the pressure of performance that limits our art.

The post Angélica Lopes: On the Importance of Research in Historical Fiction appeared first on Writer's Digest.

As a former reporter with a master’s degree in journalism, Christopher will share with you best practices from the three years of research he conducted for his award-winning debut novel. He’ll also show you how that research helped convince more than a dozen media outlets to publish stories about his book—and how you can do the same.

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If you want more online education, see the full list of WDU courses here.

Register for the 2024 Writer’s Digest Annual Conference!

Writer’s Digest Annual Conference is excited to meet in person this October in the home town of Writer’s Digest!

Writer’s Digest Annual Conference offers everything you need to advance your writing career creatively and professionally. Gain invaluable tips to improve your craft, explore publishing options and learn how to establish a sustainable career—all while being inspired by successful authors and your fellow attendees. It’s all brought to you by Writer’s Digest, the experts at nurturing and developing writers at every stage of their career for over 100 years.

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Write in Italy With Writer’s Digest!

From Editor-in-Chief Amy Jones: In my blog post announcing the Writer’s Digest Writing Retreat to Florence and the Tuscan countryside, I mentioned that writers throughout history have found inspiration from their time in the region. Because I so quickly fell in love with Florence, I’ve spent a lot of time reading books that take place in Florence and that are inspired by the sights there. It was reading about those specific places that informed what I made sure to visit, and subsequently what inspired the itinerary for this retreat. Here I’ll share some photos I took for my own writing reference and the reasoning behind the places we’ll see.

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Listen to the Newest Episode of “Writer’s Digest Presents” Now!

In the sixth episode of season three of “Writer’s Digest Presents,” editor-in-chief Amy Jones and content editor Michael Woodson are joined in conversation by Zachary Petit and Charlotte Strick to discuss book design!

The post How to Research Your Novel like a Reporter appeared first on Writer's Digest.

At that moment, it was hard to believe I had actually paid for this. The four of us captives hadn’t really been kidnapped by terrorists. Instead we were attending onPoint Tactical’s Urban Escape and Evasion class. Past participants have included Navy SEALS and special ops folks from various federal agencies. Hannah and I were the first novelists to attend.

(Dislocating a Thumb to Escape Handcuffs.)

The first two days were spent in a hotel room, learning how to pick locks, improvise weapons, create fake IDs, shake off pursuers, get out of zip ties and handcuffs, and more. The third day we were taken hostage by men wearing ski masks and carrying long guns.

We had to use everything we’d learned, first to escape, and then to avoid the 10 hunters looking for us. We had no idea who they were, but they had our photos, and they knew the route we were required to take. We also had a series of tasks to complete, such as convincing strangers to give us rides or let us use their cell phones.

Urban Escape and Evasion was the most intense (and useful!) research I’ve ever done, but I research everything so that my fictional worlds feel real.

Read

Reading is the first step. In Stay Dead, my main character, Milan, is the only survivor of a plane crash. Mike Pewtherer’s Wilderness Survival–Living off the Land with the Clothes on Your Back and the Knife on your Belt was very helpful. Later I got in contact with Mike and he helped me brainstorm more survival strategies.

In Girl Forgotten, which just won the Edgar Award, my teen protagonist starts a true crime podcast, so I read books about podcasting. Those books helped me ask smart questions when I interviewed a real true-crime podcaster.

Reading is also useful for adding sensory details about something you personally wouldn’t want to experience. I have Googled phrases like “I almost drowned” or “what it feels like to be shot” to find first-person accounts.

Watch

You can find an amazing amount of information on YouTube, often uploaded by someone doing something inadvisable while filming it. I’ve seen what happens when people get sprayed in the face with a fire extinguisher, or try to Taser themselves through a towel wrapped around their arm. (Both choices were poor—but watching them helped me get the details right.)

Documentaries can also be extremely helpful. Thespians, which covered a regional high school theatre competition, helped inform the imaginary competition in Two Truths and a Lie.

Ask

People like to talk about their jobs, hobbies, or things they know well. I managed to track down one of the teens in Thespians. Now a working actor, she helped me understand the world of drama kids.

For Girl Forgotten, I talked to a teen who used a prosthetic leg so I could do a better job of writing about a character with one.

I’ve had good luck emailing experts I find online. That’s how I got in touch with a specialist in theatrical rigging when I was writing Two Truths and a Lie. While we were FaceTiming, he did an impromptu demo with his iPhone charging cord. Later he had his shop build a setup just like the one that appears in my book and took videos of how it worked.

You can also try asking on social media if anyone knows the type of authority you need. You’d be surprised how quickly a connection can be made. That’s how I was able to interview both a drone operator and a private jet pilot for Stay Dead.

Check out April Henry’s Stay Dead here:

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Try It Yourself

Reading, watching, and interviewing people will only take you so far. At some point, you need to experience what you can in order to gather sensory details that will make your book come alive.

When I was writing Stay Dead, I brainstormed what self-defense possibilities a rundown hotel room might offer my main character. Then I purchased an old telephone on e-Bay, brought it to my dojo, and tried using the handset attached to the curly cord as a bola-like weapon. It was surprisingly effective.

Take a Class

A class can give you in-depth knowledge you can’t gain any other way. I’ve taken classes in firearms training, knife fighting, knife throwing, close combat, self-defense, and active shooter response. I’ve attended the FBI Citizens Academy, the Writers Police Academy (held at an actual police and fire academy), and gone on police ride alongs. I’ve taken classes with Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue volunteers. I even got certified in wilderness medicine for a book.

Because I have a blue belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, and have trained in a half-dozen other martial arts, I can write about physical confrontations with first-hand knowledge

Get It Right!

Don’t rely on your best guess, making stuff up, or using something you saw on TV. You owe it to your readers to get it right by reading, asking questions, and experiencing things yourself. And research will make your book so much better!

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