Researching your settings and backgrounds?
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- moderntimes
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Researching your settings and backgrounds?
Now if your story is a very plain "everyday" tale, such as a comic interlude or maybe a little romance, and it's set in modern times, there isn't a lot of extra background info you might need to prep for.
But if your tale is set in an exotic locale, or if it involves perhaps a person's job in some way, you may need to research the subject. For example, if one character is a lawyer, physician, cop, or electrician, then if you put that person into the job you have to depict the daily activities in a fairly accurate way, so as to create a believable texture and background for the story. Same if there is a specific city, London or New Orleans or wherever, you have to get the locale correct.
Now in my 3rd novel -- I write modern American private detective novels -- I set them into a very realistic city locale, sometimes with real streets and other places. But I wanted a little extra flavor so when my private eye begins a relationship with this surgeon, I wanted to give her a different setting. So I made her a recreational sailing enthusiast. And therefore I had to research the dickens out of modern sailboats, about which I know zero, to establish verisimilitude. I dug around on the internet, went to a couple of sailing forums, and eventually settled her into a spiffy new Beneteau First Twenty sailboat. I studied the boat's layout, deckside and below deck, and was able to put the couple into a nice romantic afternoon with some decent accuracy.
Naturally, since my mysteries involve police and crime and so on, I study criminal procedures, modern police work, and firearms carefully.
And so on.
So what research have you done for your stories and how has it paid off -- or not?
- Loverockers
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I also wanted her to walk through rain and bad weather, that image would be completed if the setting was England. So I combined both things, England and a town where the transport was good.
Another time, I wanted the setting to be near a river, and wanted the weather to be cold. So I researched places and decided on Mississippi. I found the weather charts for the entire year.
So voila, that's how I do my research.
- moderntimes
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I've been able to visit most of the places where my stories have taken place thus far, which I consider fortunate. As I've mentioned elsewhere, one of my favorite moments since I started writing was drafting a chapter in my book about the great battle of Corinth - while sitting amidst the ruins of ancient Corinth.
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