Bittercon: Research--Finding the Hard-to-Find Details

This panel is about researching those little details that will make your story's setting feel real. Particularly research for a time and place that's not easy to find specifics about online or in one's local library.

This idea was sparked by my difficulties in finding information about 17th century Wales that will distinguish it from England during the same time period. Also by the experience of having my first published story, set in modern-day Chicago or a facsimile thereof, reviewed critically for its failure in this regard. (Not that it would actually have been difficult to research, but I got carried away and sent it out without doing the research that would have made that one telling detail work. Mea culpa.)

Experts, historians, librarians, and anyone else with awesome superpowers of research will be served virtual chocolate and very real accolades.

The official start time for this panel is Friday, but since we're online please feel free to drop in whenever you want to.

Bittercon: Limits and Stereotypes - Do they stifle, or spur creativity?

My eldest son and I were talking this afternoon and he brought up the issue of limits, such as censorship, which can sometimes have the effect of increasing creativity, rather than decreasing it, as writers (and other artists) find creative ways around and through the censorship. He commented that he sometimes wondered if such concepts as stereotypes, or archetypal characters, might not opperate in much the same way, by spurring us to find new ways to make "old" characters "new." It was such a wonderful, thoughtful comment, that I decided to add it to Bittercon if there were no similar topics. Finding none, I will host this one.

What are your thoughts?

Can we see stereotypes or archetypes as limits? And, if we do, do those limits hem us in, making writing more difficult, or do they push our creative buttons?