Researching a novel setting, using maps, editing and keeping going

Prompts that help me edit

I've always been fascinated to see writers' scrapbooks and research notes. Because I'm writing about a remote historical time, research is vital to imagine how people lived

 Maps help me track the route characters need to take to get around the village. I have an outline of the key buildings, the river, the valley and the forest. I can see where the sun will be shining in the morning. 

I'm doing a line edit at the moment but it still helps to remember the context and to remember the feelings I had when I envisaged the landscape.

My book is set in the Neolithic period, or new stone age so I check through the images I have of stone age artefacts which play a big part in the story. 

Cave sculptures like this amazingly life-like creation remind me of the artistic creativity of the people and their relationship to animals. 

Totem animals may have had a spiritual significance, animals played a huge part in people's lives.

This photo reminds me of visits to neolithic sites. This stone circle in County Cork is close to a stone house that still has stone beds and and a stone sink. 

A lot of my research was from illustrated books and archaeological digs. I copied the drawings that might be significant to the story. Whenever I spent time in a library or a museum I always did some free writing about what I had seen that day. I feel this helped me internalise my learning and imagine how people felt when they wore these clothes and lived in these houses.

These are the things that help me keep going.

I have more suggestions on novel editing to come...