fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2321 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2321 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Yeah, the problem is finding her name in the list of marriages when the marriage wouldn't be alphabetical by her name. My character would have to read every marriage record for the city for every year beginning with the year the girl first might have gotten married until she stumbled across her name. And considering that my character doesn't even know for sure that the girl got married...that just doesn't seem feasible.

So have her stumble across it by chance somehow. It's not necessarily the most realistic thing, but this is fiction after all. Maybe that bothers you more than it would me, though.

I did think of a way that she could come across it, but then I realized I had another daughter in the line of descendants. So I could do that, but then I'd have to find out if it's possible to search mid-20th century marriage records by maiden name or else change that later descendant to a son, which would mean that the first girl's maiden name would be the same as the main character's mother's maiden name, which is...fine, but I'd rather there were another name in between them.

If the second one is that recently, just have her to talk to an extremely aged relative or something. Go to her great-aunt's house or something. I love that kind of thing.

Haha, these are all parts of my plot! My character's main conflict stems from not being in touch with any of her family, so chatting with a relative is out :(

You do have this thing sewn up tight! Is the fact that she's not in touch with her family due to alienation, or due to them just all being gone or absent? Because if it's the former, you could maybe give her one relative who's a fellow black sheep or something to talk to...

I don't know, you really seem to have this covered from all angles.

I know, I do :\ I felt like my plot was in really good shape until this came along.

Discoveries about her family are the big plot. Her mom left without a word when she was 10, and she inherited the house from her mother's sister, who was barely in contact before she died. I approach her family issues from a different angle (and later than this point), so I really wanted this to be more emotionless computer / paper-based discovery. And I thought that would be straightforward enough...alas.

So, is the ghost talking to the woman? Communicating somehow? Because you could always have the ghost have a feeling about a certain name as the lady's going through the books, and it would fit with ghost ~ness

The ghost talks, actually, but the records are all on microfilm in the library, so he's not there when she's looking them up. I also wanted to keep him unaware of what she's doing, though I could reconsider that.

Perhaps your character could look for newspaper information? If the family home is in a small town, there are often news clippings for achievements by citizens who have ties to the town, especially if the house was something of an old, Victorian-style house. Something like: "daughter of (man's name) from XXX village wins Best Garden at Country State Fair" with an article mentioning her (future) husband's name and plans, or her husband's name if she's already married.

But that would imply that people know in the village that she even existed. This reminds me of a book/film, perhaps you know it, Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources. Long story short: there was a girl who fled her village and had a boy. The boy came back after his mother's death to try and live on her land, which had its own spring. Someone else had an eye on that land and clogged the spring with the help of his uncle so that he couldn't use it anymore, and the poor man worked himself to death.

No one knew who the father was (I won't tell you who it is if you don't want to be spoiled) except a friend of the mother. Now your ghost lived in the 1860s so that rules out surviving friends, but what about letters? If your character knows where the daughter lived, perhaps there are letters, photos, kept in the orphanage she went to (assuming she went to one). Perhaps she made friends there, with descendants who have kept her letters. Perhaps there's a photo of her in the orphanage with clues about a wedding, or records mentioning when they left and what employment they have found, which could be the beginning of a trail. Perhaps she had links with friends of her parents who took her in and kept tabs on her, perhaps their descendants have photos of the girl and of the friends at the wedding...

Haha, Jean de Florette! We actually had to watch that back in high school French, and unfortunately all I took away from it was rabbits :D

Those are some possible ideas...I had figured the daughter was raised by neighbors or friends or something, because she was just an infant when she was orphaned. My character doesn't know any of that, and I'm not sure how she would find it out. I really thought of this discovery as being faceless names and records, more factual than emotional, but maybe that won't work.

Poor rabbits! :D

Manon des Sources was about his daughter, and the very end reveals who Jean's father was. I cry rivers every time.

Good luck with your book!

Thanks! You guys are so awesome for helping me.

Old records are constantly being transcribed to make them searchable. The only wrinkle is that the person doing the searching might need to watch for misspelling, as hand-written records can be hard to decipher.

Or the original documents contain misspellings...oi.

[ SECRET POST #2321 ]

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