My Love Affair (With Research)

Like many of the Pens, I'm a reformed academic. I've always been into research. REALLY into research.

I don't mean the kind of research you can do at the computer (not romantic enough). Or the kind that requires studying volumes of data (not engaging enough). Or the kind that needs rigorous analysis of original research (not tangible enough for me to wrap my head around in the humanities and social sciences).

I'm talking about hanging out under the gothic arches of the reading rooms in old libraries; venturing off the beaten path when visiting a foreign city; reading the inscriptions on weathered, ivy-covered gravestones.

Notice a pattern there? None of my favorite kinds of research were especially helpful for a real life PhD.

But my kind of research is much more fun.

Around the time I spent a semester of graduate school at the University of Bath in England (studying comparative social policy, thank you very much), I realized that although I loved research, I didn't love what I was supposed to do with it.

I gave up research for my day job, but it didn't make its way out of my life.

I wonder about all sorts of things I come across:

What if a painting scholars had always assumed represented a fictional event turned out to be a true depiction of a long-lost treasure? That's one of the threads that comes together in my first mystery.

And those famous Roman Baths in Bath? I've got a great scene set in that place--now I just need to write a book to go with it...

When I received a writers' grant to be put to use finishing my first mystery novel, I bought a plane ticket to London and got myself a readers pass to do research in the British Library reading rooms.

(Those rooms are more secure than the flight to get you to London: multiple forms of ID, no bags, no pens, no food or drink, and no cameras--thus my sketch of the reading room where the British East India Company's India Office Records are kept, at left).

Once I got in, my fictional characters had a field day with the ideas I thought up in that reading room.

After I came up with what I wanted to happen, I consulted with historians to make sure the plot was plausible. Luckily, with only a couple tweaks, it was.

--Gigi

Martha Says There's No Substitute for Experience

I have no imagination.

Really.

So when a manuscript calls for something to happen that I'm ignorant of, like, oh, let's say, lock-picking, I have four options.

1. Check out the local library
Awesome for deep, detailed research but not appropriate for a non-professional character. Onto:

2. Scour the internet
Wikipedia, Wikihow and Youtube include terminology, methods, and video demonstrations but they lack sensory detail. May as well try to:

3. Find an expert
They can demonstrate technique, answer questions, and provide fun-filled anecdotes! But bottom line is, nothing beats an attempt to:

4. Try it myself
Especially if the materials aren't too hard to come by because the husband is already in possession of a set of wrenches and picks.











I started with a simple padlock by inserting the wrench in the bottom (applying pressure to turn the cylinder once successfully "unlocked") and then inserting the picks along the top and raking the pins.


First thing I learned?

It's hard. My fingers cramped almost immediately. One of the torsion wrenches wasn't just a single L but a double L on both ends. That one allowed me to offset the pressure off my thumb easier, easing the cramp.

Second thing?

Raking the pins all at once did nothing for me. I had to ease in the front-most pin before pushing deeper into the lock for the second pin to make any progress.

Maybe those details won't make it into the manuscript, but I feel hella cool for knowing them. Cool enough to move onto a real door lock.

Last thing I learned? A real lock is harder, takes forever, and requires more patience. Not something a first-time lock picker could realistically master in under twenty minutes. In fact, even the husband who is pretty decent at lock-picking can take up to ten minutes on a new lock. An expert or someone with the fancy materials can go under 60 seconds easy.

This leaves me with choices - let the character sit there ten minutes, make her an expert or have her own/steal/borrow the fancy materials.

Either way, my scene :

1. is grounded in realistic expectations
2. has sensory detail
3. includes specific materials and techniques which I know are effective instead of just me selecting from a list on the website

Having an extra dose of awesome in my resume doesn't hurt, either.

What if?

by Lisa Hughey



I love research. I usually begin with an idea, a really, really rough premise. It might even only be that the NSA has a secret branch of field agents and my heroine is the ultimate extreme loner....



Then the fun starts. First, I research the research books, looking at online reviews, going to the bookstore and reading back cover copy. From there I choose three or four books about my subject.




And then I start reading. Using sticky arrows, post-its large and small, and colored pens, I notate any informational tidbit that I find fascinating and compile little facts in my head. And the seeds of the plot begin to take shape.

I like to find historical facts in my research and use them for the foundation of backstory. But then I twist and turn those facts, constantly asking...what if? From there the idea grows. And with every bit of knowledge I absorb, I think...what if?

What if?

From my ‘what ifs?’ the idea grows until I need to start doing research on the internet. Which I love. I double check everything. Even things I’m fairly sure I know, I re-confirm through the internet. (Which is why I will never write a historical romance. The research worry would kill me!)


When the World Wide Web was new, there wasn’t a lot of material uploaded but I distinctly remember looking at a list of contents of a library at Oxford, in England. I remember that moment of awe, as I realized I was sitting in my little suburban California living room, one son watching Barney and the other napping, and I was accessing a library at Oxford. The idea was so heady. Of course, at that time, the text wasn’t on the internet, but I knew one day it would be.

Sometimes I go off on tangents, bizarre little side trips that might not be related to my original search. And frequently within those tangents, a new ‘What if?’ occurs to me, spinning my story in another direction.

What if? One of the most thought provoking phrases I know. :)

Place Names Rock

L.G.C. Smith


Place names are my research passion. When I've been to a place that moves me, a place that begs me to write a book set there, I go to maps. I trace rivers and hills, valleys and plains. I learn their names. Over and over I hear them in my head. I chant them under my breath, and soon a story takes shape, a tale born of a particular landscape in a particular time.

Then I dive into history and archeology to see if what I'm dreaming up makes sense. One such saga I've spent a lot of words and years developing came out of the landscapes of western Cornwall where one line of my mother's family originally came from.


Oh, the research orgy that ensued. I became fixed on the end of Roman Britain, even though all I knew about it was that it had existed. I'd have been hard-pressed to give more than the most general dates. I didn't know much about Cornwall, either, but the place names sang in my head. Crowan, Crenver, Perranuthnoe and Drym. Helston, Germoe, Marazion and Hayle. Gwinear, Godolphin, St. Ives and St. Erth. Gwithian, Goldsithney, and Gweek. More. Many, many more.

I started with the language, working my way up from the little Shire Books sold in every tourist haunt, the ones filled with Cornish place name elements, to whatever I could find on the structures and sounds of Cornish as it had been before it died out in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. Then I branched into Breton and Welsh, and, eventually, into proto-Welsh, or the p-Celtic British dialects spoken in much of Britain before the Anglo-Saxons came. Even with a pretty hard-core background in linguistics, I found it rough going.

The history, archeology, and folk lore angles were easier, but Cornwall didn't appear in many Roman-era records so the history was thin. The Roman road network that reached into so many corners of Britain didn't seen to have made it out to Land's End. They probably used boats. Archeology was more promising, but again, there were very few Roman finds. Iron Age villages were better represented, like the one at Chysauster, so at least there was something. It appears that Cornwall was, at the end of Roman Britain, well removed from the hustle and bustle of Roman administrative, civic, and commercial activity.



This was all perfect for the historical fantasy books I was writing. I needed a backwater, the butt-end of the Empire, where passionate men and women were free to indulge ambitions and emotions unchecked, though not unaffected by civilization.

Yet for all the study I've done in this area, there is one tidbit that tickles me all out of proportion to its relevance to my novels -- which is zero. But it came out of my fascination with place names.


Somewhere in the midst of all this research, a friend told me that one of her ancestral Cornish names was Trecembo, which sounded a lot like Tregembo, a place I knew of in western Cornwall. I remembered Tregembo Hill because my sister, my parents and I were nearly flattened by a speeding semi in the middle of the road there, which was far too narrow for a large truck to be taking at sixty. Anyway, I deduced that my friend's family must have originated at a place called Trecembo in eastern Cornwall. Based on all my research, I knew that people continued speaking Cornish in the west much later than in the east; as a result, sound changes continued to take place in the west, leaving older forms of the language fossilized in eastern Cornish place names.


The [g] in the middle of Tregembo must have originally been the [c] found in Trecembo (pronounced like /k/). The prefix, tre- is quintessentially Cornish, meaning 'home place' or 'farm,' frequently followed by a personal name or a descriptive term.


I recall thinking about all this while brushing my teeth one night. I ran the words over and over in my head. Tregembo Hill lies in the sharp, almost ninety-degree turn in the River Hayle. When I finished brushing, I put my hands on my hips and repeated the two names over a few more times. They sounded awfully similar to something else that I couldn't quite put my finger on.


All of a sudden, I found myself imagining the map of Tregembo Hill just east of Relubbus. I saw the same angle in my elbows in the mirror, and I got it: Akimbo. A bent elbow. Tregembo. Trecembo. The place where the river bends like an elbow. Different prefxes, same root. I checked my Welsh and proto-celtic dictionaries just to be sure. Yup. -cambo comes from a root meaning bent or crooked.


The word 'akimbo' seems to have baffled etymologists. I'm convinced it's not derived from Swahili or Dutch or whatever else the official Word Wizards posit it might be. It's an old British word that came from either Cornish or Welsh, or whatever came before them.


How fun is that?! Research. Ahhh. I love it.

Susan Gibberman Knows How To Research

I’ve been asked to muse on the term “research” – the diligent and systematic inquiry into a subject in order to discover or revise facts, theories, etc. Why am I giving you the dictionary definition? Because that’s what I do. I’m a research librarian and I take my research very seriously, no matter what the question.

The best part of research, to me, is that it’s one giant, living version of Trivia Pursuit. Every day, I research topics – some interesting, many not. But I love it when I can find out some bit of trivia about a topic I never knew before, or even an area in which I think I’m pretty well informed, e.g., movies. Are you aware that Marni Nixon (who was the dubbed singing voice for Deborah Kerr in The King and I and An Affair to Remember, for Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady) had only one on-screen singing part in which she sang as herself? (I’m going to make you wait for the answer.) Granted, such details don’t come up in everyday conversation, but some day it may come in handy.

Working in a large public library and we’re trained to say there aren’t any stupid questions. But, yes, there are (we’re just too polite to say it to the patron’s face, but we do talk about them in our staff areas).

I love regaling my family with stories of the kinds of questions we get at our Reference Desk and their response is always, “You are kidding, right? People don’t call the library for that, do they?” Yes, they do. Constantly. When telephone companies began charging for ‘411’ information, patrons decided they could call the library and have us look up the numbers for them for free. Patrons have called us to look up word spellings, settle grammar questions, help their kids with math homework – the list goes on and on.

Our “regulars” and their research requests always amaze me. One patron calls daily with a list of telephone numbers that came up on her caller ID and she wants us to look up the numbers to find out who called her. A resident hypochondriac wants us (not her we-assume-licensed-physician) to diagnose her current maladies and other health concerns – “Why are my lips chapped?” (asked in the middle of winter) or “Why doesn’t caffeine affect me?” One of my personal favorites was the patron who wanted to know exactly how far over the bed her bedspread should hang.

Do these questions constitute “research”? Yes – there is the need to know and they ask us to provide the answer. Answering these mundane questions is not my favorite part of the job, but it is definitely a part of everyday life in a library.

Because of my work as a librarian, I’m often drawn to books that involve research – historical novels, or just books on a topic about which I am unfamiliar. Imagine my frustration when a piece of information is so blatantly wrong that I’m pulled out of the story. One book had the characters meeting at the corner of State and Dearborn in my hometown of Chicago. That might prove a little difficult because those streets run parallel to each other. All I want to do is yell at the author – “Look at a map!” Call your local library and ask!

I will freely admit that I’m not an expert in all areas (after all, as a librarian, I’m trained to research, not know a topic – although people expect us to spout off information on command. I blame Katharine Hepburn’s character in Desk Set). Therefore, there are many instances where I completely skip over some major faux pas if I’m involved in the story. If I’m dying to find out what happens on the next page, I’m sometimes willing to forgive the zipper on the Regency heroine’s dress.

Oh, and Marni Nixon? She’s one of the nuns – Sister Sophia – in The Sound of Music. Amaze your friends next time at the water cooler.

Susan Gibberman is the Head of Reader Services at the Schaumburg Township District Library – a job she believes she got as cosmic karma for never having read her high school English assignments. Despite coming late to the world of fiction, she is honored to be a two-time recipient of the Windy City RWA Northern Illinois Librarian of the Year award, and was named RWA’s 2008 Librarian of the Year. A television aficionado, she’s published a bibliography on Star Trek and is a contributing author to the Museum of Broadcast Communication’s four-volume Encyclopedia of Television. Her first fiction short story was published in the anthology Missing earlier this year by Echelon Press.

Google Panic

-- Adrienne Miller

Did you know that chloroform wasn’t discovered until 1831? 

I didn’t. And when I found out I nearly panicked. Because, you see, I really needed a certain young woman to be drugged and rendered insensible for at least a couple of hours in 1805. 

Sure, if it had only been a year or two discrepancy I would have fudged it. But 26 years? Not even I can rationalize that gap away.

I needed a substitute and I needed it fast. This was the last sweep through my manuscript before I sent it out. I had promised everyone I knew that I would have that puppy out in 24 hours. I’d dawdled long enough. My husband was sick of my excuses for not sending it last month...or last week...or yesterday. I was actually fearing physical violence from my critique groups if I had to confess to missing another self-imposed deadline.

So after a couple of deep breaths into a paper lunch sack, I came to my senses and did what every modern writer does when faced with these terrible dilemmas--I googled.

I googled the hell out of it. My first choice for a substitute was bust. Ether didn’t come into use until 1818, so I went deeper.  I searched “Drugs to make someone unconscious” and “homemade chloroform substitute”. You know the kinds of searches that land you on a FBI watch list somewhere.

---On a side note, can someone tell me if these lists exist or are they just the made up boogeymen of writers minds when we have to google something like “how to dissolve a body in lye”. I’m always certain there’s going to be a knock on my door the day after I type something like that in.

Ten minutes later I hit the jackpot.  A sponge soaked in a solution of opium and mandrake root had been used by doctors starting in the 13th century to render patients unconsciousness. Was it perfect? Close enough. And, anyway, who’s to say my villain wasn’t a fan of medieval Italian medical texts?

See, that’s the sort of plot point I can rationalize away. 

Juliet says: Let Fly Your Inner Anthropologist

This morning I’m off to meet an SFPD Homicide Inspector for coffee and a chat about crime scenes. A friend of mine, who just happens to be an Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco, set it up for me. Yep. That’s me. Hanging out with ADAs and Homicide Inspectors like it’s No Big Deal. Just me and the City’s movers and shakers.

Dontcha just love research?

Maybe it’s because I was trained as an anthropologist, and then worked as a social worker. I adore listening to people, watching them, studying them, interviewing them. Even in my latest occupation–painting murals and faux finishes in people’s homes—I love listening in while I paint. When you work in someone’s house for a while, you become a piece of the furniture. Rich people, especially, seem to easily forget you’re there. Not that I'm a gossip, but it fascinates me to see how differently people view the world. Give me a glass of wine and a few hours, and I could tell you stories…

Which is precisely my point. When we writers talk about research, most of us think of Google –and indeed, it’s a fabulous, irreplaceable resource. (Seriously, what did we ever do without it?) But to me, the biggest part of being a writer is listening, watching, observing. In anthropology, "hanging around and noticing things" is a legitimate form of qualitative research, called "fieldwork."

For my latest series featuring a witch with a vintage clothing store, I've gone to coven meetings and spent afternoons wandering aimlessly around Haight Street scouting secondhand clothing. I've interviewed witches and store owners. I've mixed up herbal balms and observed a clothing conservationist doing the laundry (much more interesting than it might sound).

If I sit around waiting for my imagination to come up with random ideas, I’m in for a long wait. Life, on the other hand, is chock-full-o' stories for the borrowing. The other day I noticed a torn note under a windshield wiper: “Amber: call this number. Trust me. 555-8769” ... my imagination was stoked. Was it from an old boyfriend? Could Amber owe money to someone? Was it a job opportunity? Has a child has been kidnapped and only Amber will be able to save it?

How about a ratty leather satchel left on BART, covered in French stickers? A frail old woman being helped from the bus by a punk in a thug outfit? A stripper with a chatty streak? Life is fascinating, and everyone has a story. I mean everyone. The kid on the way to school with a backpack half her body size. The fiftyish neighbor who lives alone with cats. The mail carrier who keeps misdelivering mail. They’ve all got something to say…and even if they don’t, I’ll bet I can make something up for them based on clues in their dress, bearing, and mode of speech.
Overheard the other day while standing in line for coffee: “So the stripper says to me, this guy is obsessed with the Lord of the Rings. He wants to be Frodo and her to be a Faery Queen. 'Cept, of course, naked."

Hmm, I feel a story coming on.

I love research.

Write Now, Research Later

During the first draft, research means asterisks.

First drafts are for moving fast. If I were to spend the five minutes it might take to click over to Google to look up how, exactly, one would go about cutting a brake line, it wouldn't end up taking five minutes. It would be an hour, at least, because once I'm online, I'm almost powerless. I need to check email, just in case someone needs me to do something. Then if I find out something really funny about cutting brake lines (because nothing says humor like coasting brakeless down a hill at seventy), I need to Twitter it. Then I need to click over to my Google Reader and see if any friends have updated their blogs, and then I wonder if I should update mine.

Of course, I was actually just supposed to be doing a bit of research. While I was writing.

Wait, writing?

Oh, yeah. That's what I was doing.

So instead, I write, "Nadine reached under the * and cut the *, using the * to * the *." (It's a breathlessly gorgeous piece of prose, isn't it?) Then I get to the meat of scene, the dialogue, the action, the heart of it. Later, when I'm revising, that's when I can take the time to go to the auto shop and find out how to really do it, and I'll use those details where I need them.

When I wrote How To Knit A Love Song, I had a passing acquaintance with a sheep ranch, having come from a family of New Zealand sheep farmers, but it had been a few years since I'd been to one. So every time my rancher needed something to do, I just had him go check a fence line. He leaned on lots of fence poles and I threw in a lot of asterisks.

When I was deep in revisions, I went out to a local sheep ranch and talked to the owner. Charlie Foscalina scratched his chin when I asked about chores, and he said, "Well, you kinda got that right. Always a lot of fence needs fixin'."

So I don't worry about the research, not at first. That comes later. I'm not writing historicals, and I don't have to worry about intricate timelines. An asterisk will do in the first draft, and it keeps me writing. And later, I'll learn how to cut that brake line.