Without doubt, imagination plays the most important role in creating the
world where your story takes place. But unless it takes place in your house and
in your locale, you’ll find yourself needing to do some research - even if it’s
from your living room via Google. Research doesn’t mean you stop using your
imagination. Irrespective of whether you write thrillers, detective novels or
chick lit you need facts, as detail is what adds
authenticity, making a fictional world filled with fictional characters believable.
Science-fiction and fantasy, where you would think imagination has the
greater input, are not exempt. If you want a world with two moons or a denser
gravity, without research someone will pick up the fact that the orbit you’ve
given your moons would create such gravitational stress that the planet would
be torn apart in no time. (Mmm, there’s a dramatic scenario...evacuating a
world with the clock counting down; and how many films have been made where our
planet is about to be hit by an apocalyptic meteor - which is always destroyed with seconds
left?). Many fantasy novelists use a medieval type setting. Again, historical
research plus imagination.
Writers vary in their choice of gender for protagonists. Some writers
feel they can only write honestly about their own gender; others have no
difficulty in exploring both men and women as they find both equally
fascinating, and feel neither exists in a vacuum. In theory, women writers
inhabiting male characters, and vice versa, should present no problem to the
imagination, but here is where research has a role as it’s the accurate detail
you provide which creates a genuine reality.
People you know can be a great resource. If they’ve lived through a
period in modern history before you were born, or if they’ve taken holidays at
a location where you’ve set your story that you’ve never visited, they can give
you personal insights. Biographies are another resource for an era or place you
need to research. And don’t forget libraries - I found a wonderful librarian at
my local library who photocopied nineteenth century maps for me.
The internet gives you access via Google, Wikipedia, etc., to any
other number of online resources. I heard an interview where a writer said he’d done all his
research for a novel set in south-east Asia without leaving his house. Now some
may say that for the writer’s experience to be real you need to physically go
there, but I would disagree. Memory, or
research, when combined with imagination create fictional reality...and when
you have all three (not forgetting memorable characters and a killer storyline)
you stand a fair chance of writing a decent book!
Every detail of our experiences in life acts to create who we are – and
we bring all of this to our writing. We inevitably mine our memories when we
write. Our starting point is what we know, in the same way that the basis of every
character comes from somewhere within ourselves. I once read that although our stories may not
be autobiographies in the literal sense, they do tell the story of our inner
journey. An interesting thought!
Writing
Update
The Pro Writing editing experience has been intense.
I’m currently working on chapter twenty, and I’ve twenty-one chapters. At
first, I think I was so overwhelmed by the endless lists, my brain didn’t properly register what the task would entail. It didn't help that I felt a compulsion to check everything on the list - which must be left over from my early school days when the teacher
said it had to be done, and there was no question of not doing it. I soon realized I needed to work faster.
So I put
my head down and got on with it.
This impulse lasted, with a dip in mood at the
beginning of each new chapter and a high at the end, until around chapter ten.
From here on the task seemed to be more daunting, but I kept going. Again, for some unexplained reason at the end of
chapter seventeen, even though I wasn’t finished, I was euphoric.
At the end of chapter twenty one, I’ll have to go back and check over my
repeated sentence starts because for some reason, I didn’t think I needed to do
this (duh?), until one day the cursor hovered over those three words and informed
me that repeated sentence starts can bore the reader. Boring? That caught my
attention. Although I don’t envision the task as a long one, it will have to be
done.
The journey
is not what I expected when I began writing this novel. Blogging, tweeting, social
media were activities I read about, not ones I did. Almost three months of intense
editing, after I don’t know how many drafts, was something else I hadn't envisioned. The
interesting thing is though, I wouldn’t change any of it. I’ve learnt so much –
about writing, about myself, about what I want to do in life – that I’m simply
grateful to be a position to do what
I’m doing.
Today’s Haiku
blonde brown stubbly stalks
summer’s bounty harvested –
crows gather and feast
Useful
Links:
I will add these bloggers to the ‘I follow’ button on
my website when I can pause long enough to take a breath: they’re all great people who
provide great reads – each one for different reasons.
(Apologies to anyone I’ve left out...you’ll be on that
follow list one of these days...)
http://kcrosswriting.com
Reading Recommendations:
http://amzn.to/18SbSaG Gold Dragon Haiku - my first attempt at publishing poetry!
Join me on Twitter at: teagankearney@modhaiku
To all story lovers out there, good reading, and to
those of you who write, good writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment