On Researching

Due to not only my own experiences but some friends' experiences, as well, I can say the following with a rather large amount of confidence (excuse the expletive):

You find some weird sh*t in a writer's search history.

Why? Well, it's simple: we need to know some weird and admittedly alarming things in order to make our books realistic. And I mean things that would make J. Edgar Hoover cringe if he was tapping our internet. For example, today alone I researched: how to make a fake I.D., what would happen (generally) if a nuclear bomb went off in the middle of a city (I found a really interesting video from the history channel where they go through the consequences of one hitting Washington, D.C.), and history's deadliest diseases.

Fake I.D., nuclear bombs, disease. Honestly, put a fresh pair of eyes on that and what would you think?

The word "research" makes a lot of people cringe, including me. Three weeks ago I was finishing up three different research papers that were making my head practically explode. Research is no friend of mine.

But to everything I say, there is usually an exception, and the exception to research is: I love researching when it's fun.

Kind of a no-brainer, right?

When you're writing a book, the reins are more than likely in your own hands. It's your plot, which means that you're more than likely writing about things that stand out to you, that interest you. To give you an example, take my book, The Hollow Men: it's about a futuristic world erupting into war, and it centers around espionage and human/machine hybrids, to put it bluntly. Right away, I can give you three things that are worth researching with these things in mind:

-past wars and military techniques (I'm drawing heavily on WWII for this novel)
-espionage (current laws and also ways in which people might get dragged into it, and also how they might hide their involvement)
-the theory of cyborgs and advanced prosthesis (I think that's the word; I had to look it up), and theories of how a human body could endure/survive in extreme circumstances

That's more like six or eight things, but hey. And the best part: I love learning about these things. Hence, why I write about them. So while I would rather just write and hope I sound smart, researching itself isn't too heavy a burden because I enjoy knowing what I'm talking about (for the most part; the internet only gets you so far).

Researching for your own books can be fun, honestly. And to give your mood a boost when you're just not feeling it, look in your search history and laugh away at the fact that if the government's watching, they probably want to figure out a way to arrest you because it's honestly a it concerning what writers tend to research.

Happy writing!

Rae

When the Past Isn't Really the Past

For today's Questions and Quandries, I thought I'd hit up something especially important, especially (in my case) for writers of futuristic fiction. in particular, I'm looking at anything that involves a war, an uprising, a revolution. You've probably heard people say that history repeats itself; yes and no. But, to take a page from Rafiki's book (that is one wise baboon): we can learn from the past. In the world of fiction writers, you can even use it to your advantage.

I'm going to pull from my own experience this semester. Currently, I'm taking a history class called: The Holocaust. If the title doesn't give you enough information, we're studying Europe from 1919 (the end of World War I) through 1945 (the end of World War II) with a focus on how this time period affected the Jewish people of Europe and the many causes that led to the effect of concentration camps, ghettos, and the eventual death-camps (fact: concentration camps and death camps are two immensely different things).

While it's one of those "black marks" on world history, this is also a time period that's extremely interesting to study. And, apparently, it's one of those time periods that's helpful in exploring war.

Fun Fact: much of The Hollow Men currently has bases in World War II. Basically, Nazi Germany is the inspiration for the world that Moe and Ronnie live and fight in.

History is extremely helpful in that it makes your fiction more believable. Planning a war? Study World War I, World War II, the Civil War, the American Revolution, the Vietnam War. Study wars that took place within your own country (sorry, guys, I'm in America so I have a lot more easy access and knowledge to our own history; delve into your own country's history and see what you find!).

Here's an example or two of how WWII is helping me to plan the war that takes place within the realms of The Hollow Men (warning, some might be a bit graphic or difficult to read):

-The T-4 euthanasia program was created in around 1939. It included rounding up sick and disabled children (later the scope was widened to include adults) and killing them. In The Hollow Men, the secret laboratories within Theta stole a program that would aid physically disabled children by creating advanced prosthesis. They bastardized the program; the result is that the sick and disabled children they kidnapped were transformed into bionic super-soldiers with no will of their own.

-Ghettos were sections of the cities that were walled off and literally stuffed with people (mostly Jewish). There was no room and extremely poor conditions; whatever food the inhabitants could get was extremely lacking in the nutrition department. Concentration camps were facilities that originally housed political enemies. Conditions here weren't great, either, and forced slave labor was a large part of their lives, as well as an attempt at "reeducation" for the inmates. Both of these aspects are going to be combined to create the setting for a large portion of The Living Wastelands.

Futuristic fiction is a great place to pull on aspects from our own history, in order to make some details more believable. Motives and methods, and even battle strategies can all be pulled out of events that exist within textbooks and online articles; you've probable heard that research is a critical part of writing? Put it to the test.

Rae

Thoughts or Questions? Let me know what you think!