Researching Other Locations

I’ve been to my real-life setting in my next book, but it’s been many years since I was there.    So one of the things I did was subscribe via RSS Feed to the local news.  The town itself doesn’t have a local newspaper, so I went up a level and subscribed to the one in San Luis Obispo.  This is a great way to see events that are typical of the area, and those are things that could be filtered into the story itself.

However, if you’re trying this with Washington, DC, then subscribe to the main news.  This area doesn’t have local news.  So much so that when I got out of the army, they told us that we would experience culture shock at seeing local news in the newspapers!

News Voyager gives a list of all the newspapers in the United States.

Making Research Easier

I’ve been checking out books from the library for research for an upcoming project.   Whenever I run across something I think I might use, I record it in my research notebook (a spiral bound notebook with an index in the back).    Since the library has an online catalog, I print the entry for the book, which includes all the author information, date it was published, library call number,and the library name.  I cut it down and tape it in with the research notes.

I also use the library entry to copy and paste the book name into my information sheet’s research section.  Some of the titles can be quite long (non-fiction books always seem to have a short main title and then a long subtitle), so this makes it a lot easier.  I just use Paste Special>Unformatted to clear out any Web site formatting.

Getting Facts Wrong

We’ve all read a book and run into an factual error that the author made.   John Gilstrap discusses this in You Can’t Stand on a Broken Leg (I met John a few years ago).

I think the story should come first, because sometimes factual isn’t interesting.  About eight years ago, I tried writing a book about my Desert Storm experiences.  I had this section where I described in great detail soldiers marching off to war.  It was accurate, but not exactly a page turner. 

But I also think that story doesn’t mean blowing off facts or not bothering to research them at all.  I read one book where the author did both.  The book was about a woman Vice President someone tries to kill.  Though it was billed as a thriller, the story was a romance novel with some action, and I could see how a publisher would have jumped on a romance with a woman Vice President.

• Problem #1:  The character was twenty-something.  Maybe the author decided to ignore the fact that there’s age requirement (35) for the sake of the story–but it made the author look sloppy.  Especially on top of the other two mistakes. 
• Problem #2:  None of the politicians acted like well, politicians.  Not hard to research.  Any newspaper on a daily basis would have done it.  I think I could have bypassed that one if the story had been pretty good. 
• Problem #3: The character had egregiously bad judgement.  The kind of bad judgement that would have made her unsuitable for being one step away from the Presidency.  The lack of research and not caring to kind of get it right made me put this author on my “Do not read” list. 

What deal breaking problems with facts have you seen in books?

Organizing Research for a Novel

Once I went into revision for MAGIC STUD, I realized that the organization system that I’d really liked during the first draft fell apart once I started rearranging chapters.  I’d borrowed an idea from David Fryxell’s book Write Faster, Write Better.  He’d buy file folders and label one for each chapter.  This was great for me because a lot of my research is compartmentalized–it applies to a specific chapter, not to the entire book.  So all I needed to do was drop the copies in the corresponding folder.

Of course, once the revision started, I rearranged of chapters.  Chapter 33 just moved into the Chapter 19 slot.  So suddenly all those nice, organized folders turned into chaos!  Nothing I had in the folders matched any of the chapters.  I ended up taking out all the research and putting it into one folder. 

So I’m back to looking for another method to tame the research.  A lot of writers use the three ring binder method, but I find this a turn off.  Three ring binders tend to be heavy, even the smallest ones.   The AIW Writer’s Conference used to give out small three ring binders containing conference materials, and it was hard to carry around all day.   What’s a bigger one going to do at a library where I’m also checking out hardbacks?

I also heard a writer at ThrillerFest talk about using a database (sorry, I don’t have the Web site of the database).  It sounded like an interesting idea until I thought about when I’d created files of computer research and then forgot they were there!

So I’m looking at possibly using The Advantages of Keeping an Analog Work Journal as an all purpose resource.   This was particularly interesting:

The real power is the index I create in the back. It’s simply a list of major meetings, events, diagrams, and conclusions and their corresponding page numbers. I use key phrases so that if the subject comes up again I place a coma after the page of the first entry and add the additional page number. This is my “quick search” feature for the analog journal.

I can keep multiple research subjects in one book and have it indexed in the back.   I can use a spiral notebook, which I can get a good price on during the Back to School sales.

How do you organize your research?

When to Research

An article on Suite 101 called Research for Fiction writers notes that though a book is fiction, it does need to researched.  Looking at my style sheet, I can see how much research I’ve done for MAGIC STUD.  

Where I disagree:

Although writing a book is an individual undertaking, doing the writing research very early in the process, perhaps even before the characterization stage, is best. Early research can garner facts that will enhance the story as the writing progresses.

I research as I go along because  a lot of times I don’t know what I need.  In the past, when I’ve done advance research, I’ve ended up not using any it because the story changed away from it.   But, with my stories, they also aren’t dependant on the research to make them work.

For example, I just had to research on buying art.  No clue that I needed at the beginning of the story, and no clue I needed until I had to add this subplot.  The same thing for a character I have in the story.  I didn’t research her type of character, but when I ran across a book on “high maintenance” employees, I jumped on it to see what else I could add (it turned out I’d gotten everything right except for one thing, and that was a minor correction). 

None of the reseach I do is something that overall affects the story itself.  That is, if I can’t find a book on art, it’s not going to stop the story in its or tracks or make me do extensive revision to correct inaccuracies.  But at the same time, those details do add an extra flavor to the story that I’ve found people like (hopefully agents, too!).

Just the Facts, Ma’am

Jack Webb used to say, “Just the facts, ma’am,” on the old Dragnet TV show.  Facts and research are important for any book because something that’s obviously wrong will derail a reader.  This is prompted by When Writers Get Facts Wrong, and I’ve seen two extremes of this.

The first was a writer who had never been inside a hospital emergency room, but she had several chapters in her book that required one to be used.  Instead doing research, she described it like a doctor’s office.  Nurses at the desk were called clerks, and the general procedures obviously didn’t fit.  It made anyone who’d been in an emergency room stumble and then stop reading because the inaccuracies were getting in the way of the story.

The other extreme was a writer who was fussing about thrillers in general.  She didn’t get how thriller writers could write about such unbelievable topics because they weren’t factually accurate (i.e., the Elixir of Life; a sword made from a radioactive meteorite; a ship in the desert).  If I based my urban fantasy on that writer’s standards, I wouldn’t have a story at all because magic doesn’t exist!

Obviously, suspension of disbelief is in order, and those readers of that genre will do that if the writer does her job.

But consider:  If the writer is sloppy on the common, every day details that most people would recognize as being wrong, how on earth would they even be able to make a bigger, important issue that may be flawed sound credible?

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Writing update: Got 1,000 words done (4 pages) for my urban fantasy, MAGIC STUD.  It’s been a little hard becase I replaced my monitor last night.  The old monitor was starting to fade badly, and this new one is quite a shock!

Library Sales

The library sale is coming up this weekend.  I always try to hit them on Sunday, when the books are going for half sale.  It makes a great opportunity to pick up books for research. 

A couple of years ago, I was despairing that I would have to buy an auction catalog from an auction house.  Those are expensive!  They cost $60 before the auction.  I held back on buying it, reluctant to spend so much money.  It was a good thing I did!  I found five old auction catalogs at the library sale a month later.  It didn’t matter to me that they were old; I was just looking for a general format of one so I could put 0ne in a character’s hands and have him discuss contents.

My next book is set in California, so I’ll look for books on the state, and the one after that is likely to revisit history and antiques again.  So I’ll look for books primarily on California, beaches,seashells/sea life, and antiques.  I’ll also make a general sweep to see if I find anything that jumps out at me.  I did that last year and turned up a tourist book on Windsor Palace, which was something I needed and hadn’t realized until I saw it.

Accidental Research

Sometimes I stumble across a source I would never look at normally and find that it’s gone into a subject I need for my book.  In this case, I’ve been researching two families as part of proving elibility to the DAR.  One of the relatives was Havilah Babcock, who was one of the four co-founders of the Kimberly-Clark corporation.  There’s a photograph of the four founders on the Wisconsin Historical Web site.  Havilah is in the lower left corner (the name, by the way, comes from the Bible).

The newspapers have provided a great amount of information about him.  At the time, the local paper reported on the comings and goings of prominent citizens (i.e. patron for a party, went to New York, had a dinner party, etc.  I even found an obituary for a horse that Havilah’s brother owned!).

Since my story is also about prominent citizens and I’m having to add two subplots (sigh–I realized I left them out), the newspaper research on Havilah has got me thinking about what else I can do in my story.  Hmm.  If the character is a prominent citizen, why isn’t he having dinner parties?  But he can certainly be a patron for one in a hotel, or a fund raiser.

Being Creative With Research

I often see someone post a message online looking for help with research on a particular topic.  They state they’ve run of search of everything they could think of and couldn’t find anything useful.

Since I’ve routinely had to conduct searches like this, I know this isn’t necessarily true unless the topic is pretty obscure.  At work, I’m always having to hunt down images.  If you’ve never had to do this, it can be really tough to find the right image.  It means not just searching for one term, but coming up with variations that might yield an image.  For example, crowd shots of people in an auditiorum.  Search terms: Auditorium, theater, speaker, speech, presenter, conference, meeting.

Creativity is important because general search terms may not find what I’m looking for.  Since setting is very important in the next project, an urban fantasy/gotchic story, I have to dig out a lot of information on the setting, Morro Bay.  Searching for the town name yields the expected results:  The official website, tourism, hotels, restaurants, a co0l historical site, estuary (Morro Bay is known for its birds). 

So I searched for other criteria to see what that yield, sometimes with interesting results:

• Cayucos (this is a town next door to Morro Bay.  They have a fireworks show in July every year here.  There’s also a cemetary, which is likely to get mentioned in the story).  The name is pronouced Kay-U-Cus.
• San Luis Obispo.  That’s the county Morro Bay is in, but it’s also a nearby city.   There’s also a prison in the area if I want to research that.
• Morro Bay Sea Shells.  I was figuring that I might get a list of types of shells that are found in Morro Bay.  I landed on a Monterey aquarium website that listed the sea life.  What was really interesting was that I found a diver’s site, and he got into some details about the waterfront that might be very useful.  I also didn’t know there was diving in Morro Bay, so that was a cool find.
• Google Maps.  This one gave me a nice, simple map that showed the main roads and where the two signficant landmarks were–Morro Rock and Black Hill (both these are part of a chain of nine volcanic plugs called the Nine Sisters).

Every search can yield to other search terms,  In searching for Morro Bay beaches, I found an article on jellyfish that washed ashore.  That gave me the name of the jellyfish (moon jellies) to search on.  So I can have the character walk on Morro Strand beach after high tide and find jellyfish washed ashore.  When I went to Morro Bay, and also to the Puget Sound in Washington, I often found jellyfish washed ashore.  They were two different kinds, though.  The California flavor looked like a  pile of clear jelly; the Washington flavor were more solid looking and had a “sail” projecting from the top (they were called Sail Jellyfish that apparently floated on the surface).

Be creative when searching for research.  Sometimes the oddest terms turn up the most useful information!

Researching Googie

No, that’s not the well-known search engine.  It’s an architectural style from Southern California (with a sister style of Tiki).  I researched for a chapter I was working on because I wanted to use a Jetson’s style restaurant I remembered going to.  I tried search for space-age architecture and came up with Googie.

Most of them are torn down now.  Just last year a large car dealership in Virgnia in the Googie style was demolished after the owner decided to sell.  The dealership was nicknamed the “spaceship” because it looked like one. 

Here’s a picture from Webshots of a Denny’s in Googie style.  Just click on the photo to view the larger size.