Also like we learned yesterday, the problem with this well-meaning advice is that it is incomplete. Its usefulness boils down mostly to where you happen to put your emphasis. Writing what YOU know, as opposed to, write what you KNOW. You can and should bring your unique perspective and experiences into everything you write. If you’re a writer, I believe that is what you were put on this earth to do.
But if you only write from your own personal experience, it will limit you on what kinds of tales you tell. Frankly, that kind of thing pisses your Muse off. She’ll storm off in a hissy and she’ll disappear (or worse, taunt you with a fleeting presence once and a while,) until you get a clue.
If you write fiction, you need to be open to writing those things you don’t know.
If you write nonfiction, you need to be open to writing those things you don’t know.
When I started freelancing, there were jobs I took based on interest alone, just so that I could delve even deeper to learn about a topic. Some jobs I took even when I didn’t have much interest at all. I just had the pressing need for another paid article. When you have bills to pay, you can’t wait around for inspiration to strike. You have to actively pursue it. That often begins with research, whether conscious or subconscious.
I’ve always felt that intelligence isn’t having all the answers but knowing how to find them. As a result of my freelance years, I became what my family affectionately calls “The Research Queen.” If anyone in my house has a question, they will come to me to find the answers. Not because I’m exceptionally wise, but because I know how to seek out and pinpoint correct answers to their questions.
Part of this I learned with my brief stint in college in the 2000s, when I took a pretty standard critical thinking class right from the beginning. Critical thinking is key to your research, especially when you have to dig for it on the Internet. Research doesn’t look like it did when I was a teenager, when I had to mosey down to my local library and scour through books and magazines and yes, microfilm, to get the information I sought. You don’t know research until you’ve had to physically navigate the Dewey Decimal System to find your little needles in a haystack to complete an assignment on a deadline.
(Those of us who know what the DDS is will pause briefly to allow those who have never heard the term before to take the 10 seconds or so it takes for them to search for that information on their browser. Note: We may or may not be bitter as we do so.)
The Internet is another beast entirely. You can literally find any information you want, even when you don’t want it. Show of hands of anyone who started to Google* a question or a topic, only to have the pull-down selection of options shock you with strange combinations that you never would have put together in a million years. And God forbid you actually open those links.
I can’t have been the only writer lost in a Research Hole.
Through practice, you become rather adept at knowing which information to keep and which to discard. If you’ve only got five days to deliver an authoritative article, presenting your information in a very concise, accurate way, you become rather adept at finding this information quickly. Hence why people in my house come to me when they can't find this information quickly on their own.
In 2005, when I was challenged to write a film set in Romania, I had never stepped foot in Romania. But I knew that in order to get the job, I had to “fake it” well enough to make it look as though I had. Since the director I was working with was actually from Romania, and the studio seeking to purchase the project was in Romania, there was no half-assing the research. I had to nail it. I researched it online. I watched documentaries, particularly those that dealt with the history of vampire lore in Romania, and how it related back to Vlad the Impaler, whom modern Romanians revere for how he led the country and protected them, and their religion, against oppressive invaders. I researched before I wrote the first draft. I researched while I wrote the first draft. By the end of it, I produced such a convincing tale that it ultimately was ultimately optioned.
That initial success with TASTE OF BLOOD never would have happened if I had been restricted to writing something I knew. Only by getting down and dirty in the research could I craft the rest of the story, which was peppered thoroughly with enough history and substance that I could convince people that I knew about a place I had never been.
Research is such a breeding ground for growth that much of it you’ll start to do it unconsciously, in the background, all the time. You read stories about those things that you’ve never done or experienced. You scour news reports. You eavesdrop on casual conversations that you hear from other people you pass on the street, to see how they use dialog, inflection or detail to communicate.
Whether you’re aware of it or not, there’s this little gremlin in your brain furiously taking notes of all of it. Neither of you know when inspiration is going to spark and catch with your Muse, so you have to wade through it all to find what you didn’t even know she was looking for. This will broaden your scope as a storyteller in ways you never saw coming.
Be prepared, though. Because we writers are beat over the head with the “Write what you know” mantra, whenever you convincingly write anything that is outside your general scope of knowledge, people start to wonder about you.
Steven’s grandmother is probably one of my biggest fans. She is a storyteller herself, so she loves, loves, loves to read, and it tickles her silly that she has a writer, and another storyteller, in her family to support.
Support me she does. She has read practically every single book I’ve ever written, even the sexy-sexy stuff.
Granted, she skips those parts, and when we talk about it later I get that reproachful side-eye as she shakes her head. No matter how much she loves me or my books, she’s still grandma.
When she read CHASING THUNDER, where my heroine is a badass biker chick who must pinpoint a sadistic serial killer before he strikes again, she worried about what kinds of personal experiences I might have had that allowed me to write such a story so convincingly.
Though it was born from my own experiences as a homeless teenager on the streets of Los Angeles, fortunately I didn’t have the kinds of experiences that Baby, my runaway in CHASING THUNDER, did. I didn’t step off a bus in downtown L.A., alone, afraid and abused. I wasn’t approached by a “spotter” to enlist me into the sex trade because I was an easy target. I didn’t run afoul of a powerful crime lord in the Hollywood Hills, who would pursue me so that I couldn’t spill any of his nefarious secrets and ultimately threaten to take down his empire. I didn’t meet a biker that skid to a stop in an alley in the middle of Hollywood, who vaulted off said bike and effortlessly took out three thugs who wanted to do me harm. None of that actually happened in my experience. All of that had to be researched.
I started with what I knew and I turned it up into something a little more exciting than sitting in the back seat of my car on some forgotten side street next to a train track, writing about such things because I didn't have a TV to watch.
That’s not to say that I didn’t have negative experiences throughout my life that shaded these important scenes. I’m a girl. I grew up beating off the beasties just out of self-defense. When I was four, I was taken from my front yard and sexually assaulted by a grown man. When I was eight, a leering preacher used our time alone to lean in close, his arm along the back of the pew, practically pinning me to the corner, to tell me about Jesus and talk about the state of my sinful, sinful soul. When I was twelve, there were two instances where two different men tried to get me into their cars as I was walking alone, once to school, and once to church. When I was 15, I went to a mechanic shop, where an old man grabbed my boobs just because I happened to stand too close. When I was 18, I was stopped by a sketchy police officer, who isolated me alone in his squad car, where he nervously waited to act upon an impulse I instinctively knew was going to be bad, but fortunately the dispatcher distracted him with something he had to attend to, so he released me before I could see what happened next.
Some things you don't want to know. Ever.
I understand predatory behavior. I took what I knew and put it into a story that was far enough removed from me that I felt safe enough to tell it. When I first wrote CHASING THUNDER a gazillion years ago, I leaned more on what I knew than what I didn’t know. I didn’t do any extensive research per se. I had seen the movies and TV shows, including, I would assume, an afternoon special or two, which described how dangerous it was to be a teen runaway in Hollywood. All of that had been absorbed by my gremlin, who threw it in a blender with my own experience so my Muse and I could figure out how to fit it into a book. A few years later I sent that half-baked book to an agent. When she sent it back, with her generously provided edits included, one tip kept repeating itself.
Research. Research. Research.
Research takes the flat line of what you know and blends it with that plot line you’ve completely made up. If you’ve done your job properly, it will be so seamless that your grandmother will call you to find out exactly which part you created and which part you recounted.
Research gives your story texture. These are the details you can only find if you dig a little deeper.
Consider the following passage:
Julie stepped onto the porch and rang the bell. It rang once. Twice. Finally a third time. There was no answer. She checked her watch. It was just after one-thirty. She glanced both ways down the street, but there wasn’t a car in sight. Was she early? With a sigh, she withdrew the file from her attaché to see if maybe she got the dates wrong. Just as she was about to give up, a tiny hand pulled back the lace curtain, and she could see the blackened eye of four-year-old Bailey Johnson. Julie heaved a relieved sigh. She wasn’t too late. She was right on time.
(Word count: 107)
Now consider where you can beef up that passage, digging just a little deeper below the surface:
Julie’s late model sedan eased down the quiet street in the lower-class neighborhood of rundown houses, which was deceptively hidden under a canopy of [research] beautiful jacaranda trees. The purple blooms floated easily to the ground below, creating a shower of color as Julie parked her car and stepped out in front of [research] the 1928 Craftsman home in mild disrepair.
The concrete steps were cracked and crumbling under her [research] two-toned black and white Oxfords as she stepped onto the porch and rang the bell. Its haunting melody was as lovely as the jacaranda trees lining the street. The tune stretched on, ringing once, twice, and finally a third time. There was no answer.
Julie checked her watch. It was just after one-thirty. She glanced both ways down the street, but there wasn’t a car in sight. Was she early? With a sigh, she withdrew the file from her scuffed attaché to see if maybe she got the dates wrong. Just as she was about to give up, a tiny hand pulled back the curtain made of [research] vintage baroque lace, stained yellow by years of neglect. Through the sliver, she spotted the blackened eye of four-year-old Bailey Johnson staring back up at her. Julie heaved a relieved sigh. She wasn’t too late. She was right on time.
(Word count: 219)
Researching little details allows you to “show” rather than tell your story. With a little research, you can plant a picture in the readers mind as he or she identifies what kind of house it is, or where this neighborhood might be located simply by the presence of a particular tree you might find lining the street. The reader can also see how Julie stands out by the shoes she wears or the car she drives, giving the scene dimension. And by adding those few details to “picture” the scene in my own head, it inspired me to detail a few other things in the scene as well, such as showing her attaché was scuffed, indicating that Julie had been at her job a while.
You’ll also notice that it beefed up the word count by more than 100 words, which gets you 112 words closer to your goal.
If you’re stuck trying to figure out what to write next, a little research can often provide a shortcut around all those perceived writer’s blocks. You may not keep everything that you add. No one needs to be verbose for the sake of verbosity itself, which we’ll cover in another chapter a little later. But as we’ve already learned, nothing is chiseled in stone. The first draft is the best place to throw every single detail you need to tell your story. And I guarantee you that you’ll need to extensively research in order to do that. Someone somewhere is going to have to believe the story you're telling. Might as well start with you.
In my latest series, my MASTERS SAGA, I write about male escorts. I write about hiring them, I write about having sex with them. In this non-Grandma approved series, I get down and dirty with the idea of gigolos and the sizzling hot fantasies only a true professional could provide, no strings attached. (And, of course, because it’s me and I write hyper-reality, I add a lot of other contemporary complications as well. #pleasedontjudgemybrowserhistory)
When I decided I wanted to write this story, I didn’t know dick about male escorts, pun intended. I had never met one (that I knew of, anyway.) I had certainly never hired or dated one. So my first order of business was researching how easy it would be to do this, and how exactly this process would work.
I told Steven that if I had the hundreds of dollars to spare that most of these guys get per hour, I’d probably want to hire one just to talk to him, to get his stories, to get a feel for how the process works for him. Because you can’t “sell” sex, legitimate escort services don’t offer it as part of the package. You are paying for companionship alone, and then it’s up to the escort and his client how exactly that time was spent. I figured that meant I could have a no-sex appointment where we could just chat for an hour or two.
Steven was quick to put the kibosh on that little idea. My husband is not a dominant person. He’s usually very open-minded and easy-going. I’ve chased a male comedian all over creation since 2005, and that was never a problem. He knows he can trust me. He knows I’m not out to score with anyone else. He’s secure in the relationship and generally not jealous or possessive at all. We are, as we have always been, rock solid.
But when it came to this particular research, he had very strong opinions on the matter. Though I’m not a typical “obey your spouse” kind of wife, I respected his wishes and conducted my necessary research through other, less personal ways.
Fortunately Showtime had already done a lot of the research for me. Their show “Gigolos,” which has been renewed for its sixth season, gave me a lot of material to review. It is billed as “reality TV,” so I figured it was a safe way to get to know these guys and their process, and, thanks to it being a cable TV show, I got to see a lot more than I probably wanted about their sexual encounters.
You see them in action, as it were.
Frankly, I didn’t find it all that hot. Here I had this lascivious concept I wanted to explore, about finding a man whose sole focus is bringing your fantasy to life, and the reality proved that getting paid for sex is rather impersonal and cold, even if you have very sexy men at your beck and call. They’re just doing a job, you’re just a client, and it comes off that way.
It's a good thing, I guess, that I didn't pay $400 an hour to figure that out. (Thank you, Showtime.)
This particular series revolves around a handful of guys who worked for the same agency. Some appear nice. Others, not so much. Some approach it as a means to pay the bills. Some approach it as a mission or honor to provide the fantasy for the women they claim to love. They all approach the sex in very guy-like ways, reminding me of what I learned about male sexuality when I was watching “Queer as Folk,” back in the day. How men approach sex and how women approach sex is often very different, and you never realize how different it is until you take the woman out of the equation.
Pretty soon, I felt my enthusiasm for my own project abate, especially when I saw how they had to ‘power through’ having sex with women whom they found undesirable. Since my heroine ended up being a size-14/16, I wasn’t so sure I wanted one of these guys to suck it up and just power through having sex with her, like they sometimes demonstrated on the show. Unfortunately, I do have personal experience with what that’s like, and there’s nothing sexy about it.
Did I really want to center one of my series around a guy like this?
I wasn’t completely sold on my own concept until Chapter Three of Book 1, MASTERS FOR HIRE, when my heroine made me fall in love with her. After that I decided to use minor details only, and craft my hero however the hell I wanted to. She was paying big money for him to bring her fantasy (and, to an extent, mine) to life, and by God I was going to make that happen for her.
If someone “in the business” reads my book and tells me, “Hey, that’s not all that realistic,” I know they’re probably telling the truth. But I don’t care. I didn’t set out to write some expose on what it’s like to be a gigolo. This is fiction, and romance fiction at that. This means I have to keep my toe in reality, not my whole damned foot. (And thank GOD.)
I honestly did way more research on what made Dev a complex human than what made him a gigolo. When Devlin let me know he was a classically trained pianist, I ran to Google* every chance I got to research classical pieces, the pianos themselves, or where he might have gone for an education, because this new tidbit about him demanded I up my game to figure all that out.
The conversation went something like this:
ME: Okay guys. Here is the suite we're going to use, one that I found while I researched Las Vegas hotels to use for our setting this week. It has a view, a bar, antique French furniture and, for some reason, a piano. Don't ask me, it just came with the room.He then sat down and played Pachelbel’s Canon in D, one of the few classical tunes I actually knew, forcing me to run immediately to YouTube* and listen along. I knew in an instant that no novice could play like that, which means he didn’t just play piano. He really was a master.
DEVLIN: I can play the piano, you know.
ME: No, I didn’t know.
DEVLIN: Well, now you do. Make it work.
ME: Wow. You’re really going to force me out of my comfort zone, aren’t you, Devlin?
DEVLIN: You have no idea, darlin.’
He then launched into the Beatles, and I knew in an instant the gigolo I had crafted as a one-dimensional blank slate wasn’t really a blank slate at all.
Devlin Masters was/is completely 3-D.
Not only did that one little detail instantly make him more interesting to me beyond a penis for hire, it opened up an entirely new subplot that would change the trajectory for my final book, like sliding a puzzle piece into place.
And it never would have happened at all had I not gone online the second my characters flew to Vegas for a week, because I needed to research a place to put them.
If I had written just what I knew, this story would have remained sadly unrealized, like my original concept. In Book One, Draft One, I had the freedom to play around a bit, to see how this fledgling concept could live up to its full potential. It’s exploratory, and research guides you down new paths you may not have found on your own.
Without the most trivial research, this story wouldn’t have stretched me out of my comfort zone or taught me anything new. It doesn’t enlighten you as much just to revisit the same source material over and over again, simply rearranged in different situations.
You’re still going to write what YOU know, because how YOU react to these new details is completely from your perspective.
You’re just going to expand what you know by writing about things you don’t. As a result, you’ll teach yourself some things along the way. And that’s a beautiful thing.
If you’ve reached Day 10 and you’re a little stuck where to go from here, I highly recommend that you research things a little deeper to unearth those hidden gems just waiting to be discovered. You never know what your characters and your story have yet to teach you, or where you might go from here.
Queue up your gremlin, open up your browser and just follow where it goes.
*Again, using this place mark because though referencing Google may work in a blog, I may have to do more research in whether or not I can now use this in a published work. For those of you who have been paying attention, most of the time I use (*) is to indicate more research is needed.
Started First Draft: November 10, 2015 2:22pm PST
Completed First draft: November 10, 2015 4:02pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 3,280
Completed revisions: November 10, 2015 5:49pm PST
Updated WC: 3,972/39,699
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