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The Pleasures and Terrors of Research and/or “Inspiration”

The Joys of Research

Congratulations to my esteemed co-blogger John Hornor Jacobs, whose Southern Gods hits stores this week. He’s giving away a free signed copy to a randomly-selected commenter this week. Just comment on any of this week’s posts for a chance to win.

The Pleasures and Terrors of Research and/or “Inspiration,” If You’re the Sort of Person Who Calls It That

I’m crappy at research, because I very quickly get convinced I don’t know enough on a given topic to write anything. For instance, I had this awesome plan to write a novel set in the Caucasus until I confused my Avars with my Cherkessians, and that is never a good idea.

What works better for me is to consume a lot of information on topics I’m interested in. Sooner or later, something comes back up — to use an unsavory digestive metaphor that my detractors would surely find all too accurate.

Once lightning has struck, to use a less alimentary and more complimentary metaphor, the problem is to fact-check things that came exploding out of my brain. They’re rarely as accurate as I hoped, but they’re rarely as wrong as I feared.

In my first novel The Panama Laugh (which is in stores, I’m told, incidentally — holy shit!), I had read some things that inspired me in the first place — I’ll talk about those in a minute. But there are a lot of machines of one form or another in my zombie apocalypse, from molecular to nuclear-powered. When it came time to figure out if I’d biffed it on the technical details, most of the things I imagined I’d gotten wrong — or not as right as they could be — were the sort of thing I couldn’t find in books or online.

For those, I found people who knew something about the topic — when possible. The Panama Laugh features ships and small civilian airplanes and a blimp and a zeppelin and the Panama Canal, and a castle, and guns…lots and lots of guns. Information about small civilian airplanes was provided by two friends who are pilots. I’m lucky enough to know a graduate of the California Maritime Academy who helped immensely in figuring out where to put the bilge bay and what Shaft Alley would sound like. I already knew a fair amount about guns, but Alan Beatts at Borderlands Books knows a whole lot more. Crime writer Christa Faust knows a thing or two about Lucha Libre, which figures briefly in The Panama Laugh. These people and others were extremely generous with their time and expertise.

On many other topics, I was pretty much on my own. I sometimes looked for people online who could answer questions, but it just wasn’t always practical or necessary. On certain topics, I had to find out things for myself — which takes a lot of Google searches, a lot of time checking Wikipedia references, and a lot of time tracking down books at the library. It takes a lot longer than having an expert on tap. But in many cases, doing online research and looking things up provided that thing I value far more than accuracy in my writing — inspiration. (more…)
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Holes in the Internet

Book Giveaway

It’s finally out! John J Horner’s Southern Gods! Comment on a post this week and you might win a free copy!

While it would be lovely if the Internet has magically solved all our research needs, there are definitely soft spots in the data shell. Yes, online thesauruses and dictionaries help us find and use words like defenstration, but good Youtube videos of it? Still a work in progress. For the longest time, I had a hard time finding in-depth medical knowledge (Normal ranges for bilirubin in urine sample or X-rays of all the varieties of morphology of the human spleen, for example). It was a dead zone, but that has been filling in. Same thing for abstract mathematical theory. You usually have to go get the book. There still isn’t a comprehensive searchable online database for math research, but Google Research has its moments.

At the other end of the spectrum is researching your characters. How does a Muslim fireman in Bolivia feel about marriage? What would a vat-born cyborg soldier think about raising kids? Yes, there are a million blogs out there, a million voices shouting unheard, but if you really go looking, it’s hard to find truly interesting people talking about what makes them interesting. For example, I wanted to research this idea for a Water World concept, so I went looking for boat people blogs. Sure they are out there, but nobody just online journaling about how what they had for breakfast, how they shower, their favorite shoes, etc. Actually, Cameron’s blog is really quite good. A diabetic lesbian science fiction writer in middle America? That’s frickin’ interesting. And she occasionally just talks about her life and includes pictures of her blinged out insulin kit? That’s a good blog.

Figuring out how to see the world through another person’s eyes is a facet of writing fiction that really requires you to go out and talk to the people of the world. Which is fine by me. One of my favorite weekend pastimes is pouring liquor into strangers and asking them wildly inappropriate questions. (more…)
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Some Days, I Hate Research

The Joys of Research

Congratulations and a hearty round of applause goes out to John on the release of his debut, Southern Gods. Remember to comment on any of the posts this week for a chance to win a copy!

I have to admit right off the bat that I don’t read a lot of non-fiction. First of all, I read slowly. Second of all, I find most non-fiction to be rather dry. Probably I’m reading the wrong books, because I have found ones that I enjoy. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel jumps to mind, as does Thomas Cahill’s Hinges of History series.

In any case, what I tend to do is research a somewhat wide area around the story I’m working with, though not too deeply at all, and then I start diving into specifics. For The Winds of Khalakovo, I researched Muscovite Russia, Russian culture, customs, and so on, just to steep myself in the period. Winds is not a one-for-one with that place and time, so I wasn’t too worried about historical accuracy, but I wanted to get the right sense of it. I wanted to give the impression that the story was playing out in a fully realized world with fully realized cultures.

I also spent some time with Medieval Persia, and a bit on Ottoman Turkey, because these two cultures come into play quite a bit as well (especially in the second and third books in the series). Once I had a decent idea of what the world felt like, I dove into the story, coming back to the research now and again to stay true to the things that got me excited about them in the first place.

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Garbage in, garbage out, and all that…

The Joys of Research

Hey, we’re giving away more FREE, awesome books! This week it’s the southern gothic/noir/horror novel Southern Gods by John Horner Jacobs. Comment here or on any other post at the Night Bazaar this week to enter to win.
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I’m a historian by training, which is a fancy way of saying I spent four years kicking around fallout-shelter-like libraries in Alaska and dusty archives in South Africa, trying to find links between unrelated bits of recorded knowledge and then writing more-or-less intelligently about them.

It was great training for fiction writing, really.

When it comes to creating new people and new worlds, you’re only as good as what you take in. So if all you’ve ever read are Tolkien knock-off’s and endless re-runs of Saved by the Bell, well, it’s highly likely that your fiction is going to sound a lot like a watered-down Tolkien ripoff populated by 20th century teens. Garbage in, garbage out, and all that.

I’ve been asked quite a bit about worldbuilding, and how exactly do you do it? And the answer is, well, you don’t really. You’re not really making things up. You’re just taking existing things and smooshing them together in new and different ways. But in order to do that, you need to actually… know things.

I know!

So before I embark on any big project, I’ll spend 3-6 months just… reading stuff. When I finished a (now trunked) fantasy saga and went on the lookout for a new series to write, I already had some knowledge of female revolutionaries and guerilla fighters from my work delving into how the African National Congress recruited female fighters during the apartheid era. From there, I branched out into all sorts of stuff. Half a dozen books on the genocide in Rwanda. Books on more modern warfare, and killing, and military history in general. Then came books on Iran, the Iranian revolution, Assyria and Babylon, half a dozen books on Islam, some stuff on Roman-era Christianity and marriage, Islamic feminism, Iraq and the Iran-Iraq war, Afghanistan, and more western feminism and military history books.

Basically, if I found something vaguely interesting, I picked it up at the library – that and dozens of others at the same time. I’d pick and choose from every stack, skimming or tossing ones that were no longer interesting, and culling the bibliographies from some of my favorite for more reading ideas. The books I really, really liked – or that I got for cheap at big library sales – I went ahead and bought. My book shelves look like about what you’d expect – weird fiction, feminism, southern African history, Middle Eastern history, and war books. Lots and lots of war books.

Ideas come from everywhere, and if you’re lacking in funds to travel, books are the best place to look. Libraries are the best. It lets you just pile on 20-30 books at a time, sift through them, and keep winnowing and refining until you find what you were looking for.

Once I knew I wanted to write about a team of bounty hunters, I returned to a few fantasy favorites to see how they’d accomplished that peculiar tension that drives the best groups of mercenaries and outcasts.

I suppose I’m a big believer in research, though I can’t pretend any of this was really formal. Basically, I sat down with a notebook and simply took notes on interesting things. Printed out interesting architecture/evocative landscapes, etc. After a few months, everything just sort of percolated into the opening of God’s War, with a bounty hunter on the run who’d just sold her womb for liquor in a grand attempt to lose her pursuers. I had no idea why exactly doing this would help her get away, and certainly had no idea that the book had bugs and magicians in it, but it was a start. I had a character tied to a setting, and some tension to start.
It was enough.

Building the world happened as I was writing the book – and well after I completed the first draft. To some extent, I do this with a lot of fiction. The first pass is just throwing stuff onto the page and seeing what sticks. It’s the constant revisions – which often take 3-4 times longer than writing the book – when I actually figure out how everything works, and make it as unique as I possibly can.

And the key to that?

Research.

Garbage in, garbage out.

The next time somebody tells you they just “make stuff up” ask them why the earth revolves around the sun in their books. Or why the sun sets in the west…. Or why it doesn’t. Everything we create is based on our own thoughts and experiences and the media and information we choose to ingest.

So choose wisely.
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L-I-V-E! Live!

The Joys of Research

A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life. *Reach* out. Take a *chance*. Get *hurt* even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room. — from Harold and Maude

Hurray for John and the release of Southern Gods! I haven’t had time to read it yet but my husband has and he enjoyed it quite a lot. (Dane reads much faster than I do, you see.) Anyway, I wish John the best and hope all goes well. John is giving away a free copy. So, comment on this post with a novel set in a different time period that you enjoyed, and you’ll be entered to win.

This week’s topic is actually a favorite: research. Seems odd, but keeping your setting and characters real is especially important when writing fiction. It helps the reader immerse themselves in your story. Strangely enough, the more you stray from normal, every day life, the more important immersion is. It’s something I learned from reading Horror (my second favorite genre) and Stephen King. So, things I’ve done for research include — a tour of an actual sword forge* where they make Damascus steel, taking Irish language lessons, reading a great deal of nonfiction, studying other genres**, fencing lessons (Japanese and Western European styles), horseback riding, auto mechanics, and rally racing. Most of all, writers have to have a keen sense of observation because so much relies on your ability to recreate reality for a reader. How do people really talk to one another?*** What’s it like to get your heart broken? What’s it like to lose a parent? What’s it like to fall in love? What does it feel like to laugh? Cry? Dive into cold water from a great height? Skin your knee? Dance? Have surgery? Survive a car accident? Ride a motorcycle? Experiences are key. You’ve only your experiences to pull from. That’s why so many great authors are older. They’ve had time to experience life. It’s also one of the reasons why so many great authors are famous for having a million really odd jobs over the expanse of their careers. (That, and the lack of a regular income.) Of course, it’s possible to use others’ experiences. So, interviewing others is important as well. (But one has to listen, really listen.) Interviews combined with your own experiences are your best tools.

Do you need to be an expert in everything? No. But you do need to be familiar enough to provide key cues to the reader. They’ll fill in the rest for themselves. They need to exercise their own imagination, or they’ll grow bored. So, you’ll have to allow space for that. (That is, don’t put all your research out on the page. There’s no faster way to bore a reader.)

Long story short… live your life. There aren’t many professions where that’s a requirement. Literature, done well, is about life after all — yes, even Science Fiction and Fantasy.

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* There’s one located in Wimberly which isn’t far from Austin. It was amazing.

** It’s a good idea to read outside your chosen genre. Limiting your reading to one genre also limits your creativity.

*** I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t how it’s done in television in film.
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Research By Osmosis

The Joys of Research

Congratulations to John on the release of Southern Gods! I can’t wait to read it myself – it’s sitting on my Kindle whispering read me now, read me now…sadly, I’ve had to hold to a strict “work before reading” policy this month, lest I get buried under an avalanche of book-related and day job tasks. But oh gosh, it sounds awesome. (Don’t believe me? Go check out John’s Big Idea piece at Scalzi’s blog.) So don’t forget, comment on this post to tell me a novel you enjoyed that was set in a different time period, and you’ll be entered to win a free copy!

This week we’re talking about what kinds of research we’ve done for our books. In my case, most of the research needed for The Whitefire Crossing was completed long before I so much as dreamed of writing a book.

I first put on a climbing harness and scrabbled up a cliff back in my sophomore year at Caltech. (For a college full of scrawny physics and math geeks, Caltech has an awesome selection of P.E. courses. Rock climbing, scuba diving, wind surfing…guess they figure they’ve got to tempt the nerds out of the labs somehow, or else our muscles would atrophy away entirely.) (more…)
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J.M. McDermott on Worldbuilding

Book Giveaway

J M McDermott‘s first novel was plucked from a slush pile and went on to be #6 on Amazon.com’s Year’s Best SF/F of 2008, shortlisted for a Crawford Prize, and on Locus Magazine’s Recommended Reading List for Debuts. His short fiction has appeared in Weird Tales Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Apex Magazine, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, among other places. He has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston, and an MFA in Popular Fiction from the Stonecoast program of the University of Southern Maine. By night, he wanders a maze of bookshelves and empty coffee cups, and by day he wanders the streets of Atlanta, where he lives and works. He tries to write in between.

[Editor's Note: J. M. McDermott will give away one copy each of his novels Last Dragon and Never Knew Another to one lucky blog reader - just comment on this post by 11:59PM MDT Saturday August 20th to enter the drawing!]

I’ve been invited to speak, and told the subject of the week is world-building. Do I have anything to say that I haven’t said before? I suspect I’m writing for writers, here, and not for people who would prefer to identify themselves as readers first, and writers never. In this, I wonder what new can be said on the subject. I can’t think of anything that hasn’t been said before.

Different processes produce different results. I use Microsoft Excel. I’ve talked about this before. I like spreadsheets. Some people like to use the same tools they use when they run DnD campaigns. Some people just make it up as they go. Others keep detailed notes, in hand, or draw maps in mapping software, or all sorts of other things. World-building is a good idea in fantasy, because you get to make the world your own.

What does it matter, really, what tools you use as long as your world suits your narrative?

Often, I am bored by world-building in the books I read. I’m not really into “cool” worlds. I read for characters and to find the questions of my life that I did not know I was supposed to be asking. I mean, really, what matter whether a river is purple or a mountain is made of glass if the people of that world are not changed by it in some fashion, and not just in that they need special shoes to walk on the purple water and climb the glass mountains? I mean imagine that the glass of the mountain is a metaphor for a bright, shining, religious lie, and it is so massive that all the stained glass windows in the world have been thrown up together into one, huge monument to the lies. I mean that the character who climbs this mountain discovers a truth upon it that makes the monument a lie, because the thing that inspired it all was wrong to begin with. Things are different for a reason, and it has to do with art. Otherwise, we’re just messing with reality for the sake of making reality cooler than it is, and it feels lazy to me because reality is actually very cool, already. (more…)
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