In Ireland, horses were the way to get around in the 16th Century. I was writing a scene in which somebody was going to have to go get help. The distance would be 159km (almost a hundred miles) over mountains. How long would it take? I called my friend Timy who has raised horses. She thought if the riders were lucky, it might be five days.
First of all, I’m so used to calling someone on the phone and them coming in minutes, so five days there and another five days back was just too long to wait for help in the story. I wouldn’t know how to cope, and I sure don’t know how to write about that much coping.
There’s a great website, The History Quill.com, that has lots of tips for writing historical novels and specifically for writing about horses. Here are a few of their tips. There are a lot more, and you may want to check it out.
- If you’re writing about riding a horse, you have to write about the weather and road conditions. One of the problems for my horse riding scene was that I wasn’t sure there was a road at all.
- Horses, unfortunately, get tired and die. A rider may be attached to their horse and the author can show something about the character by how the rider treats the horse. Or, a horse can be a character in their own right.
- “A horse needs 5-10 gallons of fresh water and 15-20 lbs. of hay per day.” These are the kinds of information an author needs!
For my story, I ended up studying a map to find a way to sail much closer to the place where help would come from.