Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Addicts discussion
Writer's Corner
>
What sort of research have you done before writing your next novel??
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Kiersten, Mod
(new)
Oct 27, 2018 04:43PM
Mod
reply
|
flag
Once I have an idea in my head for something I want to write, I'll do a fair amount of research. Usually I'll already have written a few thousand words just so I can get the tone of voice for the character that I'm working on or their setting, but that's more solidifying that I actually want to write the story than anything else. I've done everything from the standard google search, joining chat rooms, trying to track down a specialist, taking notes on conversations/lectures, and reading history or biography books as needed.
Something fun about writing fantasy is that a lot of things you can just make up, but I always enjoy keeping one foot in realism and "coding" where it can have a stronger impact on the reader. Making sure you're delicate while coding, though, is the most important part so if I go in knowing I'm going to code something then I try to get as much information as possible before hand.
I always do extensive research before and during with a lot of mixture of my own life experiences. I never write a book or a blog post without it. And with this consistent combination my ideas always stay continuous, fruitful and diverse.
Honestly life experiences make up a good deal of research and character choices in general. Even if I've never been in the exact situation that one of my characters is in, most scenes can be broken down to simple emotions: jealousy, betrayal, anxiety etc. Modifying how I would react, or how I wish I had reacted, or how I've seen other people react in that situation is a good core for making characters sound realistic in my opinion.
It definitely depends on what I'm writing. With my first series, I did some research into the fantasy race I was writing my story around (fae), but there were also a lot of character and environment specific things I ended up needing to research independent of the supernatural elements, such as medical terms and local flora. With the current book I'm working on, the premise meant I needed to do a lot of research on mythological creatures from around the world and precious gems from around the world (and superstitions or magical uses for those stones throughout history). I haven't had to do a whole lot research into settings yet, but that's because I've pretty consistently set things in areas that I've lived.
I find most of the ideas in my work come from either my personal life and knowledge, or from years of watching and reading PNR and UF. It all just percolates up through my subconscious. But if the story calls for something I don’t know about I usually write through the scene—it’s hard losing momentum while writing—and then google and YouTube search the hell out of it later, rewriting to insert what I’ve learned. I used to research before I wrote... and would end up spending lots of time doing that, and never get back to the story.
I tend to agree with Alice. I get most of my ideas from the research I do in history books. And I also research ancestry of family. I have even gone back into the 1300 with my husband’s family Bible that was a given to him after the death of his mother. The first entry date in the Bible was 1700 and the ancestor came from Glasgow Scotland so anything to do with this and the years between us gives me the best way to think about writing.
I have shelves and shelves of books on folklore, fairytales and mythology, and I'm a systemic thinker - finding the big picture, the links and common themes between all those things. I depend on those wide brushes a lot, then research on a need-to basis for details that add depth to the story. If you need any research on Old Norse, I highly recommend Jackson Crawford's YouTube channel. He's a professor of Old Norse at University of Colorado, and he's just cool to watch and listen to! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXCx...
I love the old Norse. In fact that is where most of come from.
Author MaryEllen wrote: "I love the old Norse. In fact that is where most of come from."English is a little more of a distant cousin of Old Norse than a direct descendant, but both groups descended from the Indo-European>Germanic language family. It's been a long time since my linguistics class in college. :)
I, umm, had to invent a language for one of my series, and I based it a combination of Old Norse with a little Finnish thrown in for some variety, since Finnish is an outlier language with Uralic tendencies, rather than Scandinavian.
Thank you for the follow. You invented your own Finnish language. I think that’s called pigeon. Where people don’t know the true dialects and try to make sense of talking to someone who really does know the language. I do that with Spanish because being from brasil I know Portuguese a Romance language and they all have words that come from a root adverb or noun. But I don’t necessarily speak Spanish and therefore I use fragments of words that I do know. Pigeon is the dialect that they call it. If anyone knows what I am saying just let me know. Because sometimes I don’t know what I am saying. Lol
This is a great discussion. I do a lot of research on history before and during writing because I want my facts to be accurate. (You wouldn't have a pirate ship in South Carolina in 1780, for example.) I'm a history nut, so I've acquired a lot of history texts and random facts over the years that are fun to put into the novels. As for folklore and mythology, my world includes a number of different factions. I try to keep as close to the myths as I can, but sometimes I need to adapt a species so they can co-exist with another species. I won't put a random demon/mythological creature into my story without knowing the backstory of that myth first. Like the history part, I don't want a reader to get to know my version of a valkyrie and then read a Norse myth that has a totally different version.
With some of the topics I write about, I have enough background information to start. I still do extensive research overall though, and I also research as I write.
