Your story details? You Have To Get Them Right!

In my 1928 California historical, this mansion came to play a big part

All story genres take some research for establishing details in the setting. A few years ago, in 1997, I saw a movie called Inventing the Abbots.  It was set in the 50's and they had the houses, the clothes, the young people--all as things actually were in the 50's.  And then, lo, at the end of the movie a suitcase appeared, and it was 1997 suitcase and the mood was totally broken.  Just like when, in About Schmidt, the house portrayed in Denver was frame.  The city of Denver has brick houses--had them for years.  Probably since the town suffered a horrible fire.  It's always been that way.  Someone didn't do his or her homework. 

If the writer has  done her research, her knowledge will inform the story and make it believable.  Correct setting and details will even help the writer's ficticious leaps become believeable, because everything else will be.  The most difficult research I've had to do was in the novel I just finished, one set in 1928 Southern California.  The nineteen books I used for reference are still stacked on the bookcase. The books and perhaps 120-150 bookmarks on my computer where I found information  I needed.  I also had some original letters and my mother's scrapbook and photo album.  Those were pure gold.
BUT IT WASN'T ENOUGH!
My husband and I spent a week in California doing on site research.  I even found the house my mom had lived in the summer of 1928.  I walked the streets of the town, and we poked around Pasadena.  Historical museums are a goldmine of information.  I read a newspaper clipping and the incident it described went right into my book.   We drove into Arroyo Seco in Pasadena and I found a spot where I set a of couple scenes.  A camera is a writer's best friend when doing research, and plain old note cards (I favor the larger ones)  are a close second. In the photo above, I found a layout of the rooms and photos of most of them.  Did I  use the information I gleaned in my story?  You bet I did.


When I researched my novel, Festival Madness, partially set at Burning Man, the blowing alkalai dust was so fericious even the use of  a camera could be iffy, but the note cards were impervious to dust. And of course I put a duststorm into the book.

 I researched World of Mirrors on an island in former East Germany.  I wanted to hear what a big modern windmill sounded like, and we finally were able to park and walk right up to one.  Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!  Like a big prehistoric bird flapping her wings and preparing to fly.  How else would I have known?

The Internet is great, but it can only take you so far. Get out of the house, find your locale and discover everything.  The little details are what make your writing believable.  And, the best part is:  it's fun!.

The bloggers listed below also have some great ideas on researching your story or novel.  Take a look!  

 Rachael Kosnski http://rachaelkosinki.weebly.com

Margaret Fieland http://www.margaretfieland.com/blog1/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Skye Taylor  http://www.skye-writer.com/
Rachael Kosnski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Heidi M. Thomas http://heidiwriter.wordpress.com/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
Helena Fairfax  http://helenafairfax.com/
Connie Vines http://connievines.blogspot.com/
Kay Sisk http://kaysisk.blogspot.com
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
J  Lynn Crain  http://www.awriterinvienna.blogspot.com
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com/

Writing Down the Nitty Gritty

You've always got to assume everyone in the English speaking world is going to read your novel. Well and good. You must also make the assumption that your readers will have an intimate knowledge of every place you mention, every intersection, every stretch of road, and the geography, flora, fauna, and all the details you have so carefully harvested in the research you do for your writing.

And the readers will all be critics and they'll be outraged in you don't have the most mundane fact correct.

That's why I made my trip to Florida which probably cost at least a dollar a word. Now my characters are leaving Florida in a motor home, heading up I-95 to Boston. Have I driven this road? Mostly. In a motor home? Never.

So I'm researching campgrounds like crazy, and all the little travel details of motor home life. We actually went to an RV show a few years ago when we wanted to rent an RV to go to Burning Man (book was Festival Madness, still looking for agent). I had no idea of ever writing another RV book. Shows what I know.

Now, the RV parks are all on the web, with photos and rates and amenties. The RV in question breaks down and I have to research where you can get these suckers fixed. And the distances, so everything makes sense. Jacksonville to Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach to Fayetteville, NC. Fayetteville to Philly. Philly to Boston and a huge backup on I-95 around New Haven. O.K., been there, done that.

Because, you see, I need to put the screws to my characters, make them late, make them sweat, make the crazy, so a few things can happen. Man, I've said it before, this plotting is hard work, and all the underpinnings, the towns, the campgrounds, life on the road, it's, well, it's work, so when I thought, I have to get the group from Boca Raton to Boston, that seemed easy enough, but plot points are huge and I better not screw up the versimilitude or the story.

Easier said than done. So we're slowly getting to Boston, one word at a time, and I'm surprised at how hard it is.

Because in a genre novel, every little detail is subservient to the plot and the whole story and of course, the characters, and I've just about forgotten about Lotto, by now in Colombia inspecting his fabulous drug sub kits from Russia. Ah, what a tangled web we weave!

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