Baby Evil Writers 101: About Research

Baby Evil Writers 101: Research

Julie Butcher

I’m sure that all of you baby evil geniuses have heard the importance of doing your research. You’ve heard horror stories about how published authors have been lambasted in public because of some little detail they had gotten wrong in their story. They get emails and people leave reviews trying to publically embarrass and humiliate the writer.

I have met writers who have gotten so deep into research that they have still been writing the same book twenty years later. Research is a deep pit that turns into an escape from what you really need to do—write. You can trick yourself into feeling productive by finding out what herb they used on lamb in Scotland in 1354. In reality, this tidbit isn’t important to the story. What the characters are doing and talking about during the meal is important.

Just write the story. Mark in red the things that you are not sure of and MOVE ALONG. You can google anytime. When in doubt, absolutely do not spend hours and hours and days trying to verify a fact. That is the time for a vague description.

Instead of saying:

He held a Sig Sauer P227 Carry Nitron. Its matte black handle fit perfectly in his hand. The 14 Round extended magazine had enough ammunition to take me down before I’d run a block. That was too much death for a seven inch weapon.

Say:

He had a gun—matte black and lethal. Adrenaline made the skin on my face feel tight, and my legs twitched with the need to run. I wasn’t ready to die.

Because no matter how much research you do, someone out there actually has a Sig Sauer P227. If you describe it perfectly, they’ll catch you on having the shell casing flying out the wrong way. Granted, that took me maybe ten minutes of research but the thing is it does not matter. There is a gun. Guns kill people. Your character thought he/she was going to die. It really is not important what kind of gun he had. The emotions generated by the sight of any gun will send adrenaline to limbs and cause a heart to beat faster.

Don’t get stuck in the details. Get deeper into the emotions. Every ten or twenty or thirty minutes of research are words that are never put onto a page.

Also it is a lame excuse to not write.

Pet Peeves

There's nothing I love more than a book with animals in it. Sidekicks, pets, familiars, you name it, I'm in. But there's nothing worse, nothing, than when animals are done wrong. If you're a pet person, you'll know what I mean. If you're a horse person, you're probably already groaning.

I spent five years working in the pet industry. I've shared my home with every kind of pet you can pretty much get. I've had horses, rodents, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, arachnids, cavies (you know what a cavy is right?...read on!) marsupials, and various ordinary and not so ordinary mammals. I'm not a veterinarian, but I put her kids through college back in the horse years. Trust me.

I'm going to start with horses, because I think not only are they a source of massive literary inaccuracy, they're also an untapped gold mine of plot twists. If you plan to put horses in, I suggest either owing one, borrowing one or, even better, signing up for riding lessons. Make sure you pick one of those sagging barns with the muddy pastures that likes to give the "full horse experience" though.
That usually means you'll be mucking stalls, dragging feed buckets around, picking hooves and doing a good deal o the work required to really get to know horses.

So aside from glaring technical inaccuracies like putting a "martingale" on the horse's head. (No. Nonono) the biggest problem I see with horses in fiction is that they are often metamorphosed into big, somewhat useful, dogs. So very not right. 

A horse is not a cuddly puppy. Even a very well trained horse. Even Tonto's horse. (Dont. Even.) If a horse decides it wants to cuddle you, and yes, sometimes they do, you will most likely end up on your ass. Or hanging like a sloth from the horse's neck, the stall door, tack rack or whatever you managed to snatch before Scout there tried to knock you over. Horses are BIG, really big, heavy and strong. They do what we tell them only through the subtle manipulation of cues, treats, threats, cussing and sometimes tears.

This is good! This is plot fodder. If your hero is riding or living around a horse for any length of time, the odds are it will try to kill him at least once. Even nice horses spend their idle hours dreaming up ways to kill their favorite person...or themselves. They do that, too. If there is something deadly poisonous within reach your horse WILL eat it. A lot. 

They will also: bite you, step on you (and refuse to get off, and act shocked when you push on them) kick you, spit on you, roll on you (Sometimes while you're in the saddle--how about during that big getaway scene?) poop at the worst possible moments, stop for a five minute pee (again, during that getaway?) stumble, trip (on purpose, I swear to god) swerve at random moments, and jump off cliffs willingly if a bush looks at them wrong. 

A horse is an unpredictable element. And that is how it should be. Right? This is not a well trained circus gazelle. Horses fart, and waddle, and go into heat, and run away! Oh how they love to run away. If your hero doesn't tie that knot, just right....horse gone. Or better, horse tangled into a three point yoga pose with leadline twisted around each leg and its throat (even though its not long enough to do that) and choking itself while thrashing to be free. 

Horses. Done right, a plot goldmine. 

Licensed to Obsess

My current work in progress is what I call a "research heavy" book. That means, basically, that it's about shit I don't know enough about to just jump in and wing it. It means I get to study a bit, and if I do it right, have some fun learning new and previously unknown things.

 One of the pitfalls of research heavy book; however, is the temptation to insert everything you learn about a topic straight into your manuscript. Most will advise against the unrelated information injection. It makes a book clunky, and it can bore the blue bejeezus out of your readers. Particularly if they aren't studying for a doctorate in herbalism, the history of writing devices in western civilization, monkey genetics, or whatever it is that you have discovered and become suddenly, inexplicably obsessed with during your research.

 As an author, when the time comes to put words on paper, most of that wicked shit you've discovered has to stay where you found it. Rather, it has to stay out of the story...and out of the story's way.

 That being said, I'd like to point out that during the pre-writing phase, all bets are off. In fact, so long as you promise to restrain yourself mightily once you actually start writing, I suggest going absolutely fantastically crazy with the depths of your research.

I have a theory that the more obsessed you get over a topic, the more you really dig in and try to absorb it, the easier it is NOT to cram it down your readers' throats.

 Because if you know it well enough, you won't have to. When you first learn something, it's new and shiny. It's also on the surface of your little pool of knowledge, floating there where you can accidentally step in it. Once you have integrated the information, though, it goes deeper. It becomes fused with the big ocean labeled "all the shit I know." After that happens, it's a lot less conscious. It's not an effort to retrieve it, and so, it flows way more naturally.

 That's my theory anyway. More significantly, I enjoy going a little crazy over a topic. I like the research stage and I've been known to get a little obsessive from time to time. If I'm writing about the 1950's (and I am) it seems logical to spend a few weeks listening to the music, watching the newsreels, wearing the clothes. I'm not suggesting we take up method acting for every book, but it seems like actually wearing a girdle would make an author more likely to write about how and where they tend to pinch than about how they're constructed.

 And as far as story goes, I think the the pinching wins.

 I'm also interested in how other folks research. I'm even more curious about any crazy, possibly over done, things other authors have tried when channeling their inner method actor. Because I know I can't be the only one who tried on the girdle.