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

[pameladlloyd]

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.

Comments

[jtglover.livejournal.com]

Will this be posted in the Bittercon community, or will we be commenting on this post? I actually asked a similar question at a con earlier this year and got a great answer, so I'll have something to share Friday... :)

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

As I understand the format (this is my first time, too) we post comments to the panel, here.

I posted a notice of the panel on the Bittercon community page itself.

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

But ... but I thought everything we ever needed to know was on Wikipedia!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The terrible thing is that once you want to get beyond the wikipedia level of specificity, you're plunged into the netherworld of bibliographical references and Jstor articles that you can't even access unless you're attached to a university. Grrr. So then you put in interlibrary loan requests and wait. Just like the old days!

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

lol

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Excellent, excellent topic.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Thank you. 8)

begin at the beginning

[marycatelli]

Read primary source!

Read lots and lots of primary source, even if you aren't setting a story in that particular era. Get your block knocked off so you start to get a feel for when you ought to ask questions, instead of writing what comes naturally to you.

Re: begin at the beginning

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Ah, but that's not always easy. We may not speak the language in which the primary source was written, and those primary sources may not exist in translation into our language. Also, getting one's hands on primary sources, or translations of them, requires 1) that we know what they are or how to find them, and 2) that we can obtain access to them.

Authentic Detail

[jtglover.livejournal.com]

I asked this question at RavenCon this year during a Worldbuilding panel. I am myself both a librarian and onetime history graduate student, and so I know a little bit about research. The answers I got from the panel were fascinating.

1) For quick background research, they all seemed to agree that Wikipedia, Google, etc., are useful. Just looking for a quick fact? Can't necessarily rely on Wikipedia for accuracy, but poke around a few sites and you're (probably) good.

2) The more interesting answer was: know people or get personal experience. Every single author said that the best possible detail came from someone who did something regularly or to do something yourself.

Example: a dozen books on horsemanship won't necessarily give you a feel for the pain of getting off a horse after six days in the saddle.

Example: one author found that wearing a motorcycle helmet while play-fighting with PVC-and-foam weapons and armor got hot. He sweated. Condensation formed on the inside of his helmet, which he noticed and used in a story. This was something, he felt, that he wouldn't have gotten somewhere else.

Re: Authentic Detail

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the trying-something-out. And sometimes, if you can't try it out yourself, looking at pictures of people doing it. Falconry, for instance: I saw photos of people hunting with falcons, and it gave me a very real sense of, not least, relative size! ... it ended up being a detail I didn't use, but who knows when it might come in handy.

Re: Authentic Detail

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

1) For quick background research, they all seemed to agree that Wikipedia, Google, etc., are useful. Just looking for a quick fact? Can't necessarily rely on Wikipedia for accuracy, but poke around a few sites and you're (probably) good.

I find that Wikipedia often makes a good starting point, especially since it often has links or references to source material, but I try not to rely on it as a single data point, especially for any kind of written work.

2) The more interesting answer was: know people or get personal experience. Every single author said that the best possible detail came from someone who did something regularly or to do something yourself.

Yes, this works for a lot of things. It's not always possible for speculative fiction, of course, but when you have that option, it's always a good idea.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In some ways this is easier for obscure places than for the well-known ones. Sure, you can find the information about Chicago easily -- but if you get a tiny thing wrong or choose to make it different in your fabulist Chicago, you'll have hundreds or thousands of Chicagoan readers squawking. Set something in 1950 in Helsinki and Inari (to take a not-random-for-me example!), and you could claim that they all walked on their hands and wore mittens on their feet, and most US readers would not be able to swear otherwise. The vast majority. If you get one or two readers who know the difference, you're lucky.

My main approach has been to get a "friends of the University library" membership for whichever university we're nearest at the time. It puts you below undergrads on the totem pole, but you at least get some chance of finding what you're looking for if it's more complicated than "three fun facts about Finland, with glossy pictures!"

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

In some ways this is easier for obscure places than for the well-known ones.

Yes. Well, my mistake was mostly in trying to be general about a specific place, when the setting was chosen to distance a story about a tower/high-rise office building from images of 9/11 and NYC (they were still very recent when I wrote the story). It was a short-short, just under a thousand words, and written in a blind heat, even if I dragged my feet at sending it out. It was my first published story, appeared in Realms of Fantasy, and got one review. Of the problems with the story, that one would have been easy to fix, if I'd had the sense to fix it.

My main approach has been to get a "friends of the University library" membership . . .

I looked into getting a membership right after I graduated, but they wanted to charge $100/yr and I didn't like the limitations. Why, for instance, would I not get the same Internet access from home (to online references like the OED and scholarly journals) that I'd had as a student?

[monissaw.livejournal.com]

Pack rat :) Gather usueful looking things that aren't necessarily related to your current interest but could be Useful One Day.

Web sites: I'm quite convinced the most useful sites are encountered when Looking For Something Else.

Newspaper articles, esp. interviews. I have one on bombing in WWII where the woman says that the handles fell off cups.

Odd books on small subjcts, the ones you see for a couple of dollars at a market or fair (fete?)

Old postcards & photos. You can pick up piles of them on Ebay very cheaply, esp. of street scenes or nameless people standing around in groups. Or if you're more selective, interiors of buildings, snap shots taken by soldiers, all sorts of useful stuff.

Museum exhibitions, always and often. Take photos of everything (are checking which areas allow this). And check the gift shop afterwards.

I take my camera everywhere and take photos of anything: windows & doors, coach houses & stables, carriages & wagons, churches (inside & out), tall ships (bow to stern, cabins & masts), gun battery, shot tower, assorted agricultural & laundry & dairy equipment.

Of course, this stuff is more useful for recent centuries, obviously, but you can get reproduction prints, views of museums, replica ships, brouchures from foreign tourist attractions (Ebay again). And it all helps to get an idea of how things like door locks or laundry equipment changes, or what an bread oven looks like inside (dark).

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. When I first saw the words "Pack rat" I thought you'd somehow blown my cover. ;> Then I realized you were just giving advice.

It is true. My natural tendency is to hang on to things in the event I may someday need them. Especially things that look like research material, even if the subject matter is not one I expect to be using in the near future.

I really need a good digital camera. The camera on my cell phone is inadequate.

Residential Library

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Gmail displays advertisements, based on the contents of my emails. As I have email tracking on, this has resulted in an ad for St Deiniol's Residential Library (http://www.st-deiniols.com/) which is located in Wales. I suspect going there would be like going to heaven for me.

All Knowledge is Contained in LiveJournal*

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with little_details? This is a community devoted to helping people get their fact right. Although I haven't yet posted a question, It's fun to see all the different creative topics, sometimes I learn things, and sometimes I'm even able to help.

* Title based on my memory of something coffeeem said in her journal.

[crinklequirk.livejournal.com]

Note: This is written without reading all of the other responses, that it may ring truer to what my original response is to the topic at hand.

It brings back a bit of conversation I had a few weeks ago with one of my MySpace friends, Thomas Greanias ("The Atlantis Prophecy" series) at one of his book signings.

You see, he has found that he has so much fun researching - part of his background is in investigative journalism - that he tends to spend more time researching than actually writing the story when he finally starts getting it written down.

I am having that problem currently with a novel I'm writing (and I'm only in recent years moving to accepting writing as a thing for me, rather than just a facet of whatever else I'm doing).

And since I need, in my very limited time, to either find someone who can map two or three variant colony ship courses, by the stellar object and the year, or figure out how to use this really cool, (yaay) free, and complex program called Celestia. . . let's say that the researching part is stalling my writing.

I know the story, it's been filing in very nicely and neatly into my head since the start of this year and a poem for a friend didn't quite work out as a poem (but is a very nice outline for the story). And I've all sorts of things planned for the story - assuming I know exactly where they are on their route at what time in their route.

It's been a frustrating dilemma, to say the least. Not un-solvable, no. But it uses up time I'm not sure I have to use only on frustration.

On the other hand, I'm a "garb snob" and recreationist, too, and I think that consuming need to "get things RIGHT" comes, in part, with having parents in the sciences (anthro/archeo/psychologies) when I was a kid, and having been a science major, and jr. librarian myself: the researching skills are right there, and it's FUN, and just how I look at things.

Anyway, I've got to go; but it's a great question, and I'll definitely be checking back over the weekend! :)

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

It brings back a bit of conversation I had a few weeks ago with one of my MySpace friends, Thomas Greanias ("The Atlantis Prophecy" series) at one of his book signings.

You see, he has found that he has so much fun researching - part of his background is in investigative journalism - that he tends to spend more time researching than actually writing the story when he finally starts getting it written down.

I think a lot of writers experience this. We are people who are mindful of and interested in what's around us. There is just so-o-0 much interesting information out there, languishing on some dark book shelf or in the bowels of a server, just waiting for us to find it. Even if we don't polish it up and offer it a chance to shine by including it in a story.

Have you considered looking for an astronomy student (or someone similar) who would be willing to do the work for you, either for a small sum, or for the glory of being on your acknowledgments page? Many people are willing to do quite a bit of work, just for the privilege of being able to be part of creating a book.

(There was this anthology, you see, which I helped to proofread. My only reward, aside from the work itself (and getting to read all the stories before anyone else did *g*), was a copy of the book and a listing in the front of the book. Oh! And having one of my friends dash across the hotel lobby at the local con, right past half a dozen big-name authors, to get me to sign his copy of the book. *G*)

vacuuming the cat

[marycatelli]

That's the downside of research.

It can be a form of cat-vacuuming.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

I think the strangest source I used was when I was trying to determine the historical accuracy of a particular rose being planted in England at a particular time. I found a fantastic website that listed hundreds of different varieties of roses, had pictures, and gave facts like where it was originally grown and what years it came to certain places (sometimes).

And I was SMART, and put a link to it in a place where I will almost always have access provided that LJ doesn't blow up):

http://www.rdrop.com/~paul/main.html

So in case anyone else needs to know about roses . . . have at it.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Cool link. Thank you.

I used to have a bunch of botany links, for trees mostly, and herbs, but they got lost when all my links got corrupted a while back (both IE and Firefox files were corrupted), and then again when I had computer problems; luckily, I'd downloaded a bunch of information, which I can use (with a bit of effort) to rediscover many of these links. A couple of links I've still got are Dendrology at Virginia Tech (http://www.cnr.vt.edu/DENDRO/dendrology/main.htm) and Trees for Life - Restoring the Caledonian Forest (http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/).

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I've just been reminded of another community that writers may find useful: askahistorian.

Just in case people miss this, hidden in the comments now that the discussion has slowed down. I'm going to also post this as a separate entry.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

That's one sign of a good discussion, I guess--big enough so that something can get lost in it.