So, I'm attempting to write my first period piece and I'm having more logistics issues than I thought I would. I know there's a few people on here who know more about history than I do, so I was hoping someone could help me out. It's set around the early 1900's, I think, in the south, doesn't really matter exactly where.

1) Would it be reasonable to think that someone could live in a country house built pretty close to a train's tracks?

2) Would it be believable around this time for a train to regularly (at least twice a week) come through a rural southern town?

3) Say a girl was raped by two men then killed at this time period. Would doctors in a small rural town have the technology to be able to know that she had been raped by two different men?

4) What curse words would a 60-70 year old rural southern man use? I'm assuming 'hell' or 'damn' or in extreme cases 'Goddamn' are a given, but I don't know about, say, the f-word or the s-word.

Thanks for your help in advance!

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...or not. :huh:

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I hate everyone and everything seems stupid to me. - Randal Graves

1. I think it would be a little strange..to have all this land to choose from to build a house (or lay train tracks) and someone chooses to do either?

2. Most definitely. Actually more than twice a week also.

3. Probably not. Unless there was something simple like she pulled hair out of their head; different color hairs, etc.

4. Most of the common ones today were used "back then."

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Scrap the whole thing. Go with centurions on guard at Hadrians Wall in great britian!:cof:

Sorry dude. Just kidding.

Man. I don't know any of the answers to your questions.

1) Would it be reasonable to think that someone could live in a country house built pretty close to a train's tracks?

Yes with an explaination...house there first, refused to sell, land cheap, etc.


2) Would it be believable around this time for a train to regularly (at least twice a week) come through a rural southern town?
]

Sure, on it's way to a bigger, better town? :laugh:

3) Say a girl was raped by two men then killed at this time period. Would doctors in a small rural town have the technology to be able to know that she had been raped by two different men?

Agree with GZ.

4) What curse words would a 60-70 year old rural southern man use? I'm assuming 'hell' or 'damn' or in extreme cases 'Goddamn' are a given, but I don't know about, say, the f-word or the s-word.

My great grandfather said Jaysus Murphy, 'You're full of McGullicutty' and 'cross' instead of mean or vicious, a lot.

No. Prior to forensic use of DNA sampling (which is extremely recent) semen was analysed referencing blood grouping and even then that is comparatively recent.

Thanks for the info, guys. RWA, unfortunately, I think I have given it up. As I've structured it, it just wouldn't make sense in the context of a police report or confession, and for some reason I have no interest in writing it as a straight-ahead story, mainly just because I think the plot itself is pretty uninteresting, or at least it's nothing new. Still, I might work on it a little bit tonight, we'll see.

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I hate everyone and everything seems stupid to me. - Randal Graves

Go read an O'Henry story... You'll get the vernacular down... EEE-Gads!

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LOL! Very similar to what I was going to say.

Dan, they knew the words, but wouldn't be proper for any character interesting enough to have in a novel to use.

South at turn of century: You're only 15 years outside of reconstruction. The South is rebuilding, adding railroad lines to a guage that matches the North. They are instituting and enforcing Jim Crow laws, Plessey v Ferguson is 1896 I believe. The Klan is rampant. Sharecropping entrenched.

The South loathes the North. Many Southerners are migrating North and West.

That gives you some things to research. My guess, if you wish to get the setting and characters correct, you'll spend more time at research than writing.

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