 For Authors: April 08, 2015 Issue [#6914] |
  For Authors
This week: Research is Your Friend! Edited by: Fyn  
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Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. ~ Zora Neale Hurston
Google is my best friend and my worst enemy. It's fabulous for research, but then it becomes addictive. I'll have a character eating an orange, and next thing I'm Googling types of oranges, I'm visiting chat rooms about oranges, I'm learning the history of the orange. ~ Liane Moriarty
Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing. ~ Joan Didion
You discover yourself through the research of your work. ~ Carine Roitfeld
What is research but a blind date with knowledge? ~ Will Harvey
In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand. ~ Neil Armstrong
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I love the TV show 'Jeopardy." I sit there shouting out answers. Sometimes it amazes me: the sheer amount of information I can dredge out of the cob-webbed nooks and crannies of my brain. Trivial Pursuit? Aside from Sports or Entertainment...I rock. I have an inordinate amount of minutia clogging my head. That being said, I spent almost two years doing research for Journey to Jukai.
I can tell you how many seconds it takes to fall into the waters of San Fransisco Bay from the Golden Gate Bridge ... depending upon where one jumps from ... and that it is the number one spot in the world for suicide. I can tell you all about the harbor seals that frequent the bay. I know how many hundreds of years the myths of the ghosts of Aokigahara have persisted and how many movies have been made about Jukai which is the second highest place for suicides. I know enough about the train station nearest to the forest (at the foot of Mt. Fuji) to feel as if I've actually been there. I know where the 'ribbons' are sold and where one should not get them. I know suicide percentages by age, sex, sexual and gender orientation, career and mental conditions. I know which medicines have proclivity to cause suicidal tendencies and how being prescribed multiple medicines like that increase said tendencies exponentially. I learned about mental places one is at in pre and active suicidal moments from interviews with suicide survivors. I knew about some things like parachuting, hang gliding, Versailles and Scotland, but I still did more research. I learned about 'dub-stars' and what one does when the chute doesn't open. I learned about the various injuries that can occur when those actions are not successful and how one can survive the fall. I learned about police procedures, art galleries and how one gets around in small Japanese villages.
Everything (and so much more!) came into play in my book. Many things I learned while researching something totally different. I'd get side-tracked and stumble across yet something else I could use in some way to add a layer of nuance or depth. Sometimes i found what I was looking for and other times I discovered that what I was hoping was true or feasible was simply not. Switching paths, I'd then have to figure out if 'such and such' could work and then follow-up that idea with more searching. Most times, I looked until I found multiple places where information was verified because, as we all know ... or should know ... just because something's on the net doesn't mean it is necessarily so!
Working on my next book, much of what I learned the first time 'round is still lurking in the depths of my brain, but now I am adding to it with hours more research on every thing from transgendered people to glass blowing. Interviews galore meeting all sorts of interesting, happy, frustrated, sad and disillusioned people. I've talked to parents whose kids have 'come out' in varying forms and ways. I've talked to both supportive and non-supportive parents, wives, husbands and kids. I have watched numerous videos on everything from sexual reassignment surgery to glass blowing. I've talked to patients, doctors and glass blowers. I've been to a glass studio to watch the glass blowing process and will be taking a short class soon to experience it for myself. I've learned which glass art concepts that are spinning through my head are feasible and which are not. I've learned about how it is the moisture in one's breath that makes the bubble expand far more than the air breathed into the pipe. I now know how the rod is always spinning and why, how it is a process where air, moisture, heat and gravity dance with the creative spirit. It becomes almost addictive, that urge to have what my characters experience absolutely be real and true and right.
I find myself shaking my head when I read of 'strawberry bushes' (they are plants) or lambs being born in June (they are born in February or March) or a car stopping for a four-way traffic light in Los Angeles in 1918 when the world's first four-way traffic light was at Michigan Avenue and Woodward Avenue in Detroit in October of 1920. And, I smile when I read of wagons or stage coaches being pulled down plank roads made literally of wooden planks of wood in 1852. Or I nod at an author having the time it would have taken to drive a Model T (at 45 MPH flat out) to drive a hundred miles on dirt roads correct. Little things, really, in the overall story, but they can make a big difference in how a reader views the writer. If a story takes place on May 9th in 1954, don't say it was on Friday when it was a Sunday. Or if the story takes place in 2492, that day is a Friday. (Yes, I looked it up!)
Details. It is all in the details!! The best story concept will be an epic fail if the information is incorrect. As writers, it is imperative that what we use in our story-lines be correct. One of my authors recently had a book published based upon the Detroit Tigers in the mid 1950s. (Yesterday's Tiger Heroes by Jim Sargent) He actually had a fact checker go through it and verify every single detail, stat, score and player, their number and correct spelling of their name. Another author, Dennis Clotworthy, wrote a book, Al Kaline's Last Bat Boy. Both authors did not entirely rely on their phenomenal memory and adoration of a team, but double checked for accuracy. This is simply how it is done. Or should be. It is a matter of respect, truth and integrity in both the writer and the tale.
Just because a book is 'fiction' does not mean that the laws of physics can be suspended unless you have a viable alternative. A tornado is a tornado regardless. A hurricane reacts in certain ways and they weren't named until 1953. You can't have someone riding a specific train if that train didn't exist (or exist yet) because even in fiction it is based upon a preset gathering of consistent truths. The environment of a story must be conceived and remain true to itself and its place within its world. It is far easier to incorporate a dragon into a tale than it is to have flying cats. (One would have to look into possible evolutions, how, when, why wings appears and know enough cat (lions, jaguars or toms) info to possibly make it work. Research. And yes, one can indeed, do research on the newly created concept. (Might they be a variation on a flying squirrel perhaps?) Or maybe viewing the 1952 one-reel animated cartoon of 63rd Tom and Jerry cartoon could give viable ideas.
Talking animals? Think Animal Farm and how the animals therein were portrayed. Writing about teenagers? Have you interacted with any lately? They are vastly different in many ways from when you or your kids were teens. Their world is different now from say in the 1960s. Appropriate music, language, connectivity and social mores all come into play differently fifty years ago than they do now.
As writers, we must first be readers. Why? Because every book you read becomes a stockpile of both possibilities and plausibilities that you, as a writer, can mine for what works, and possibly more importantly, what does not.
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Steve adding writing to ntbk.  says: Thank you for your newsletter. Your picks were priceless and if there is one thing I learned in this reviewing session was to be consistent and read in full the story, no matter the length, for you never know what blessings you will find in the words others create and publish.
Copenator out!
uh huh!
Osirantinous  writes:Fyn, a perfect newsletter!! Especially your points under Number 2. We get all freaked out with the randomness of ratings and we shouldn't. Everyone is, after all, different and we should expect that. This is a newsletter to print out and pin up on the wall.
Awww thanking you! Nice to feel we reach folks now and again!!!
CasualWriter~thanks, Anon! adds: Wonderful newsletter! So much "oomph", I loved the anecdotes. Thanks!
Thank YOU! And it is nice to see responses from a newer member!
The Northern Optimist says: Hi. I enjoyed reading this article. I found it encouraging and useful. It really brings value to your readers. Reading something useful and encouraging is better than reading junk food for the brain, fluff or what ever you want to call it. Keep the great newsletters coming.
Thanks :)
~Minja~  adds: I wonder if I can find someone to help me with my murder scenes for the novel that I have in mind. Thank you Fyn for awesome newsletter and your inspirational words!
Oh dear...um...not me! lol. And thanks!
Mara ♣ McBain  comments: OMG I love that story! I remember you telling me about hubby helping you but I didn't recall the neighbor. I bet the look on his face was priceless! lol It's good to be a crazy writer! 
Sure is!
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