Annie Burrows's Blog - Posts Tagged "research"
I is for internet
I is for...internet
(because I'm rambling through the discoveries I've made since becoming an author in alphabetical order)
When I first started writing, I used a small word processor which I got second hand. I used floppy discs (which regularly got corrupted) to save my work. And when I wanted to do any research I went to my local library.
I used to spend hours browsing around the stacks, desperately searching for that one nugget of information I needed, and getting pretty frustrated in the process. I never did find a book that could tell me where troops used to embark during the Peninsular War, or how often injured officers got sent home - though there were half a dozen biographies of Lord Wellington.
Eventually I realized I was going to have to cut back on the time I spent doing this sort of research, and concentrate on writing the story, or I was never going to get anywhere. So - I couldn't find out where the troops disembarked from - did I really need to put it in my story? Couldn't my heroine just receive a letter saying that her brother/uncle/sweetheart had sailed?
I still spent a lot of time going through second-hand bookshops, hoping to find that one book which would have the specific bit of information I wanted, and in the process learning all sorts of things that might come in useful one day (and subsequently have).
The next computer I bought (again, second hand so it was practically on its last legs) had a button I could press which would connect me to the internet. Which opened up a whole new world of research possibilities. Whatever I wanted to know about, you could bet someone had written an article (or blog, as online articles are known - mad, eh?) about it.
And now came a whole new form of time-wasting. Instead of getting on a bus and going into town, where I would spend hours finding out virtually nothing useful, I could now waste an entire morning finding out a whole lot more than I ever actually needed to know. Because every article (sorry, blog) seemed to have a link to another blog about something connected to the topic, which looked absolutely fascinating. So I may have started out wanting to find what kind of rifle a soldier would have carried in 1815, and instead found a page which told me all about the parlour games people would have played during Christmas of 1814,
and then stumbled upon all the information I'd wanted to find out about troop movements in the Peninsula three books ago!
I now regularly use one site to find colourful phrases for my characters to use,another to make sure that the language I put into my character's mouths was actually in use at the time they were alive, and another whenever I want to describe a Regency dance.
So - internet - good for research? Yes, in that it's easier to find out exactly what I want to know.
However, I now have to be careful that I don't just end up wandering through the stacks of knowledge available to me from my own armchair, instead of getting on with the story.
And don't get me started on facebook. Yes, it's a great way to keep in touch with readers and friends. But do I really need to watch that video of a dog going berserk in obedience school? Again?
Or post a picture of myself in the style of a French impressionist?
Or take another quiz?
(because I'm rambling through the discoveries I've made since becoming an author in alphabetical order)
When I first started writing, I used a small word processor which I got second hand. I used floppy discs (which regularly got corrupted) to save my work. And when I wanted to do any research I went to my local library.
I used to spend hours browsing around the stacks, desperately searching for that one nugget of information I needed, and getting pretty frustrated in the process. I never did find a book that could tell me where troops used to embark during the Peninsular War, or how often injured officers got sent home - though there were half a dozen biographies of Lord Wellington.
Eventually I realized I was going to have to cut back on the time I spent doing this sort of research, and concentrate on writing the story, or I was never going to get anywhere. So - I couldn't find out where the troops disembarked from - did I really need to put it in my story? Couldn't my heroine just receive a letter saying that her brother/uncle/sweetheart had sailed?
I still spent a lot of time going through second-hand bookshops, hoping to find that one book which would have the specific bit of information I wanted, and in the process learning all sorts of things that might come in useful one day (and subsequently have).
The next computer I bought (again, second hand so it was practically on its last legs) had a button I could press which would connect me to the internet. Which opened up a whole new world of research possibilities. Whatever I wanted to know about, you could bet someone had written an article (or blog, as online articles are known - mad, eh?) about it.
And now came a whole new form of time-wasting. Instead of getting on a bus and going into town, where I would spend hours finding out virtually nothing useful, I could now waste an entire morning finding out a whole lot more than I ever actually needed to know. Because every article (sorry, blog) seemed to have a link to another blog about something connected to the topic, which looked absolutely fascinating. So I may have started out wanting to find what kind of rifle a soldier would have carried in 1815, and instead found a page which told me all about the parlour games people would have played during Christmas of 1814,
and then stumbled upon all the information I'd wanted to find out about troop movements in the Peninsula three books ago!
I now regularly use one site to find colourful phrases for my characters to use,another to make sure that the language I put into my character's mouths was actually in use at the time they were alive, and another whenever I want to describe a Regency dance.
So - internet - good for research? Yes, in that it's easier to find out exactly what I want to know.
However, I now have to be careful that I don't just end up wandering through the stacks of knowledge available to me from my own armchair, instead of getting on with the story.
And don't get me started on facebook. Yes, it's a great way to keep in touch with readers and friends. But do I really need to watch that video of a dog going berserk in obedience school? Again?
Or post a picture of myself in the style of a French impressionist?
Or take another quiz?
J is for...journey
The kind of stories I enjoy the most are ones in which the main character changes and grows, emotionally, during the course of whatever adventure the author has sent them on. There are various ways of describing this aspect of story-telling. Often writers refer to it as "the character arc". I prefer to think of it as the "emotional journey", (probably because the word "arc" conjures up an image in my head of an object which curves right up, then ends up on the same level as where it started.) I like to think I'm sending my characters on a journey, in which they not only have an adventure, but also learn to abandon their prejudices and hang-ups along the way, and end up better people.
Perhaps the most obvious example of a story like this is "A Christmas Carol", by Charles Dickens. At the start, Scrooge is a miserable skinflint - a man who makes everyone around him almost equally as miserable. By the end, he's giving away turkeys, raising his clerk's wages, and generally spreading Christmas cheer. The story is so powerful, and spreads such a touching message of hope for even the most hardened cynic, that it has been adapted over and over again, for retelling to a modern audience. Last Christmas season, I noticed at least four different adaptations aired on TV (including my family's favourite - A Muppet Christmas Carol). The story of this one man's emotional transformation never seems to grow stale.
It is particularly suited to telling at Christmas time. Don't we all make New Year's resolutions? Isn't the turn of the year the time when we examine ourselves, take stock, and vow that this is the year when we'll do better? Stories such as A Christmas Carol, that show a character overcoming his own flaws and weaknesses, give us hope that we can do something similar. Though I have to confess, I'd broken every one of my resolutions before the end of January 1st this year. (And yes, they did all involve eating habits, and exercise.)
Scrooge changed (literally overnight!) because of intervention by supernatural beings - the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. But there are many other classic stories where the central character is transformed by the (often healing) power of love. As a writer of romance, these are the ones that have always particularly inspired me. As a child I couldn't get enough of fairy stories, such as Rapunzel - where the hero's blindness is cured by the tears of his beloved falling onto his eyes, and The Snow Queen, where Gerda's tears wash the splinters of the troll mirror from his heart. (Oh, dear, it's always tears, isn't it?), or Beauty and the Beast, where the heroine learns not to judge by outward appearances, and breaks the curse to find the Prince inside the Beast.
Then, as I grew older, it was stories that contained a more romantic love, that I enjoyed the most. The ones where the hero's character and actions helped to unfreeze the heroine's heart in some way. Or vice versa. I think that is one reason why I love reading Harlequin romances - fairly often the heroine's integrity is what persuades the cynical hero to soften and open his own heart to love. She "rescues" him from a life of cynical isolation.
On reflection that's probably what I love about Rapunzel, and Beauty and the Beast, and The Snow Queen. Although the hero starts out with all the notional power, it is the woman who comes to the rescue in the end. Rapunzel cures the Prince's blindness, Beauty breaks the curse holding the Beast in thrall, and Gerda travels through the Arctic to rescue Kai from the Queen's ice palace.
Gerda is the one fairy tale heroine who goes on an actual journey. My own characters rarely do. It is their inner journey, often from a dark place, that I love to describe. I was half way through writing A Mistress for Major Bartlett (release date June 2015) before I realized my heroine was very like Rapunzel. Although she isn't under a real curse, she has shut herself up in a psychological tower, into which nobody has access, apart from her beloved twin brother. It takes a real shock to jolt her out of her self-imposed isolation, set out on a path to self-awareness, and open her heart and mind to the possibility of love.
Her hero, the Major Bartlett of the title, also has his own emotional journey to undertake. Like the prince in Rapunzel, he has been wandering in darkness for a very long time. And it (sort of) takes the heroine's tears to open his eyes to not only what he is, but what he could become.
A Mistress for Major Bartlett
Perhaps the most obvious example of a story like this is "A Christmas Carol", by Charles Dickens. At the start, Scrooge is a miserable skinflint - a man who makes everyone around him almost equally as miserable. By the end, he's giving away turkeys, raising his clerk's wages, and generally spreading Christmas cheer. The story is so powerful, and spreads such a touching message of hope for even the most hardened cynic, that it has been adapted over and over again, for retelling to a modern audience. Last Christmas season, I noticed at least four different adaptations aired on TV (including my family's favourite - A Muppet Christmas Carol). The story of this one man's emotional transformation never seems to grow stale.
It is particularly suited to telling at Christmas time. Don't we all make New Year's resolutions? Isn't the turn of the year the time when we examine ourselves, take stock, and vow that this is the year when we'll do better? Stories such as A Christmas Carol, that show a character overcoming his own flaws and weaknesses, give us hope that we can do something similar. Though I have to confess, I'd broken every one of my resolutions before the end of January 1st this year. (And yes, they did all involve eating habits, and exercise.)
Scrooge changed (literally overnight!) because of intervention by supernatural beings - the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. But there are many other classic stories where the central character is transformed by the (often healing) power of love. As a writer of romance, these are the ones that have always particularly inspired me. As a child I couldn't get enough of fairy stories, such as Rapunzel - where the hero's blindness is cured by the tears of his beloved falling onto his eyes, and The Snow Queen, where Gerda's tears wash the splinters of the troll mirror from his heart. (Oh, dear, it's always tears, isn't it?), or Beauty and the Beast, where the heroine learns not to judge by outward appearances, and breaks the curse to find the Prince inside the Beast.
Then, as I grew older, it was stories that contained a more romantic love, that I enjoyed the most. The ones where the hero's character and actions helped to unfreeze the heroine's heart in some way. Or vice versa. I think that is one reason why I love reading Harlequin romances - fairly often the heroine's integrity is what persuades the cynical hero to soften and open his own heart to love. She "rescues" him from a life of cynical isolation.
On reflection that's probably what I love about Rapunzel, and Beauty and the Beast, and The Snow Queen. Although the hero starts out with all the notional power, it is the woman who comes to the rescue in the end. Rapunzel cures the Prince's blindness, Beauty breaks the curse holding the Beast in thrall, and Gerda travels through the Arctic to rescue Kai from the Queen's ice palace.
Gerda is the one fairy tale heroine who goes on an actual journey. My own characters rarely do. It is their inner journey, often from a dark place, that I love to describe. I was half way through writing A Mistress for Major Bartlett (release date June 2015) before I realized my heroine was very like Rapunzel. Although she isn't under a real curse, she has shut herself up in a psychological tower, into which nobody has access, apart from her beloved twin brother. It takes a real shock to jolt her out of her self-imposed isolation, set out on a path to self-awareness, and open her heart and mind to the possibility of love.
Her hero, the Major Bartlett of the title, also has his own emotional journey to undertake. Like the prince in Rapunzel, he has been wandering in darkness for a very long time. And it (sort of) takes the heroine's tears to open his eyes to not only what he is, but what he could become.
A Mistress for Major Bartlett
O is for...osmosis (yes, honestly!)
Each month I've been sharing a very personal view of what it is like to be a writer. Dealing with themes in alphabetical order. This month, I've reached O...
I have to admit I was a bit stumped for an "O". I have to thank Johanna Grassick for coming up with the fabulous word "osmosis".
The dictionary definition is: "Tendency of solvent to diffuse through porous partition into more concentrated solution."
Or, "The process of gradual or unconscious assimilation of ideas, knowledge, etc."
In other words, "soaking stuff up".
I have to admit, when I first started writing, I did a lot of "soaking stuff up." I'd studied literature at university, but not creative writing. So that although I could write essays about style, metaphor, and subtext, I didn't have a clue about how to achieve any of those things in a work of fiction I'd written myself.
I've already mentioned in an earlier blog (M is for...my career) about how I discovered that any writer who wants to submit to a publisher of genre fiction had better read a lot of them to get a "feel" for what they are looking for. In other words, I needed to soak up the atmosphere of romance that Mills & Boon publish. I've read, since then, all sorts of books which go into clinical detail about how to become a better writer, specifically of romance, but I still think the best way to get a real feel for the genre is to read lots and lots in the same line, and soak up the atmosphere.
I have shelves full of Georgette Heyer, and other Regency romances, so it's not surprising that the stories I've had published are also light-hearted Regency romances.
I'm not trying to write like Georgette Heyer, though. I'm trying to be as original as I can be. Which brings me to the slight drawback to learning to write by a process of osmosis. And that is the danger that I might unconsciously soak up someone else's style. That is why I steer clear of reading any kind of Regency romance at certain stages of writing my own books. I don't want to accidentally reproduce someone else's turns of phrase.
It isn't just the art of writing that I needed to "soak up", though. In order to make a historical background convincing, I have needed to positively wallow in research books. The only way I can confidently mention a mode of travel, a political undercurrent, or the cut of a gown is by reading as much as I can about the period. The only way to get into the mindset of my characters, and make them come to life, is to understand the way people in that era would have thought and acted, which means reading biographies of eminent figures of the day. And period newspapers. Soaking up as much knowledge as I can makes it possible to bring the era to life on the page for my readers. (hopefully!)
Going to museums and stately homes is also another way of soaking up atmosphere. I can imagine myself as an aristocrat, strolling through the grounds in a full-length dress, or going for a ride in a carriage. The view from a window, or the pattern of wear on a carpet can spark ideas, so that I often come home from trips to a stately home with inspiration for a new story.
A lot of writers will say that their mind is like a kind of compost heap. All sorts of things go in, get absorbed, transformed, and produce a rich crop.
That's me. A veritable compost heap!
The next book to emerge will be The Captain's Christmas Bride - out in December
I have to admit I was a bit stumped for an "O". I have to thank Johanna Grassick for coming up with the fabulous word "osmosis".
The dictionary definition is: "Tendency of solvent to diffuse through porous partition into more concentrated solution."
Or, "The process of gradual or unconscious assimilation of ideas, knowledge, etc."
In other words, "soaking stuff up".
I have to admit, when I first started writing, I did a lot of "soaking stuff up." I'd studied literature at university, but not creative writing. So that although I could write essays about style, metaphor, and subtext, I didn't have a clue about how to achieve any of those things in a work of fiction I'd written myself.
I've already mentioned in an earlier blog (M is for...my career) about how I discovered that any writer who wants to submit to a publisher of genre fiction had better read a lot of them to get a "feel" for what they are looking for. In other words, I needed to soak up the atmosphere of romance that Mills & Boon publish. I've read, since then, all sorts of books which go into clinical detail about how to become a better writer, specifically of romance, but I still think the best way to get a real feel for the genre is to read lots and lots in the same line, and soak up the atmosphere.
I have shelves full of Georgette Heyer, and other Regency romances, so it's not surprising that the stories I've had published are also light-hearted Regency romances.
I'm not trying to write like Georgette Heyer, though. I'm trying to be as original as I can be. Which brings me to the slight drawback to learning to write by a process of osmosis. And that is the danger that I might unconsciously soak up someone else's style. That is why I steer clear of reading any kind of Regency romance at certain stages of writing my own books. I don't want to accidentally reproduce someone else's turns of phrase.
It isn't just the art of writing that I needed to "soak up", though. In order to make a historical background convincing, I have needed to positively wallow in research books. The only way I can confidently mention a mode of travel, a political undercurrent, or the cut of a gown is by reading as much as I can about the period. The only way to get into the mindset of my characters, and make them come to life, is to understand the way people in that era would have thought and acted, which means reading biographies of eminent figures of the day. And period newspapers. Soaking up as much knowledge as I can makes it possible to bring the era to life on the page for my readers. (hopefully!)
Going to museums and stately homes is also another way of soaking up atmosphere. I can imagine myself as an aristocrat, strolling through the grounds in a full-length dress, or going for a ride in a carriage. The view from a window, or the pattern of wear on a carpet can spark ideas, so that I often come home from trips to a stately home with inspiration for a new story.
A lot of writers will say that their mind is like a kind of compost heap. All sorts of things go in, get absorbed, transformed, and produce a rich crop.
That's me. A veritable compost heap!
The next book to emerge will be The Captain's Christmas Bride - out in December
