Betrothals and Marriage Contracts

When I'm writing, I usually just put "[CHECK]" at the end of a sentence when I'm not sure I have the historical details exactly right, or when I don't want to bother looking up where hemlines and waistlines were in 1811 vs. 1812. However, when I was working on Madeleine and Ferguson's story last night (yes, I wrote after work! score!), I realized I'm at a point in their saga where I need to take a step back and do some research. Fudging the details in a first draft is all well and good when the details relate to a type of fabric; it's a much bigger issue when your whole story hinges on how betrothal contracts worked, because if it turns out they don't work the way you thought they did, your story may never be right again.

So, it's research time for me -- which is too bad, because I really just want to keep writing. But perhaps this is a lesson that I should do this type of research sooner; I knew about one hundred pages ago that this was coming, and if I had discovered then that the twist could not possibly work, I would have written the past hundred pages with another goal in mind. Fingers crossed that the betrothal contract is sound, or I will be one unhappy camper.