I’m excited to welcome #RRBC Spotlight Author Mary Alder!
WORKING SMART: PART THREE
TIMELINE
I write historical fiction, so it is important that the events in the story fit logically within actual historical events. While doing research, I note events that are significant to my story and create a timeline.
It is much easier to attribute facts to sources as I go along and to create a bibliography as I read each book. At the end of the novel writing process, I have a bibliography I can append to the back of the book or put on my website. It allows people to read trusted sources for issues in the book they might have a deeper interest in.
Here is an example of the timeline for the war in Poland.
1943 continued.
April 19-
New York Times: Editorialized that the Bermuda Conference: … important as the first attempt at international collaboration to mitigate the appalling horror of Hitler’s war of extermination since the outbreak of the war … it would seem that even within the war effort, and perhaps even in aid of it, measures can be devised that go beyond palliatives which appear to be designed to assuage the conscience of the reluctant rescuers rather than to aid the victims.” Allied Press response to defeatism of Conference. P 54 While 6 million Died
April –
Russia breaks off diplomatic relations with Poland in light of Katyn massacre discovery. Soviets blame Germans and British and Americans endorsed the lie.
May 12 –
Szmul Zygielbojm commits suicide in response to a message about the devastation in the Warsaw ghetto;
June –
Karski to U.S. Meets with Roosevelt. Cannot convince the U.S. of extermination or get them to help. At time, still 100,000 Jews alive in Lodz and large gas chambers at Auschwitz had just become operational.
August –
Yakov Wernik, an escapee from Treblinka, ran away during the uprising there in August-1943. He described vividly what had happened at Treblinka. His words were written down and his was the first report transmitted to London and published there and in America. P87 Memoirs of Ghetto Fighter
November 3 –
Fall -Time to liquidate Jews in work camps. “Erntefeste” – “Harvest Festival”
Lublin work camp. Could not liquidate it gradually because by now the Jews did not believe they would survive. Had been uprisings in Warsaw ghetto, (April) Treblinka (July), Bialystok (August), Sobibor (October)
Jewish prisoners dug zigzag trenches outside work camps; told they were for fortifications from air raids but became their mass graves.
I create a timeline marking the major events, and tape it on my wall. Then I weave the events of the novel into the timeline. Even if you do not write historical fiction, a timeline of your book will help you keep track of significant events.
Follow Mary online:
Author Bio:
Mary Adler was an attorney and dean at CWRU School of Medicine. She escaped the ivory tower for the much gentler world of World War II and the adventures of homicide detective Oliver Wright and his German shepherd, Harley. She lives with her family in Sebastopol, California, where she creates garden habitats for birds and bees and butterflies. She is active in dog rescue and does canine scent work with her brilliant dogs — the brains of the team — and loves all things Italian.
