Tip O'Day #462 - No More Lazy Research

Guest blogger Cynthia Echterling on “The Facts, Nothing but the Facts.”

My pet peeves in novels or films include unbelievable incidents, bad technology, and cultural inaccuracies from not doing adequate research. Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters have become famous by debunking this sort of thing for our education and amusement.

When writing my science fiction novel, Torqed: The Search for Earth, a group of characters were planning to defraud an insurance company. They discussed how to switch on Torq's ability to hibernate and trick an adjuster into believing he was dead. All they needed to do was chill him, but in an environmentally controlled spaceport, that wasn't possible. Their first thought was to slip him outside temporarily. Would it work? Would he instantly freeze or would he explode? In many of the SciFi movies I'd seen, that's what happens. Is it accurate? I did the research and the answer is, no. You can survive about 90 seconds. Your lungs would collapse, or rupture if you try to hold your breath. Nitrogen bubbles would form in your blood stream. Your bodily excretions would freeze. You might puff up some, but you don't explode and you don't freeze rock hard instantaneously. Fortunately, you'd be unconscious from lack of oxygen before any of that happened. My characters decide it is not an option.

Crime or espionage stories have people surreptitiously offing someone with a gun using a silencer, and nobody hears anything except a gentle thoop. Not happening. A silencer can only reduce the sound of a gunshot by 20 or 30 decibels. You want to kill someone quietly? Try poisoned blow darts. Keep in mind that, in many countries, blow darts are illegal. If you're planning to kill someone, that probably isn't an issue for you. Just don't plan on buying one over-the-counter from Wal-Mart. As for the poison? Curare is used in South America, but that just paralyzes monkeys. It is rarely lethal and you'd need a large dose to paralyze a human.

Historical fiction is another breeding ground for inaccuracies. Don't rely on what you thought you learned in school, because it may be incomplete, out of date, or completely wrong. For my novel in progress, I needed to research Native American cultures. There are vast differences in social roles, customs and technologies. Did you know that Native Americans drank beer? It was made from corn, potatoes, birch and other substances and often reserved for ceremonial purposes, but not always. Though drunkenness was frowned upon by the Aztecs and could earn you severe punishment, Aztec elites indulged, not by drinking, but by taking their beer through another body orifice (hint: not their noses or ears). While they enjoyed their beer, they were also smoking cigars, eating popcorn and watching ball games. They just didn't have big screen TVs.

My point is, we all make mistakes, but unless you want some factoid-obsessed geek ripping your work to shreds, do your research!

Cynthia (or CD) Echterling is a SciFi and Fantasy author. The link to her SciFi novel Torqed: The Search for Earth can be found here. She is also the author of post-Apocalyptic Scavengers and fantasy Beer Wars.

Tip O'Day #412 - Diversity in the Wild West

Guest blogger Diana Harrison has a shocker for you.

People are rather surprised by the fact that a British woman writes Westerns, which is probably why I write as D M Harrison. After that comes their amazement that the Wild West genre is still alive and well.

I consider Westerns to be a combination of adventure, mystery and thriller with a sprinkle of romance or sauciness. The West attracted pioneering men and women, encouraged by a government that wanted to open up the continent. The books in the Western genre are set in the few years between 1849-1900. This short era has given us more characters than many other periods in history.

My knowledge of the Wild West came initially from films and TV series, followed by books I’ve read, Internet searches, and visits to the American West. Although used to films stars like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, I wasn't ready for the small buildings in the (now preserved) ghost towns.

As I researched the era further, I found the West was made up of a melting pot of races, colors and creeds. I have attempted to reflect its diverse make-up in my books. I depict the Native Americans as courageous Nomads who unfortunately did not survive the different culture of the Frontiersmen and women. The Native Americans thought there was enough land for everyone to share but the new people fenced it off. Sharing was not in their nature.

My books develop with an idea - a robbery, a kidnapping, a railroad coming through - and then I put it in a time and place. I see the main character and how he/she is involved in the situation. Then I build on that. I write the story from beginning to end, and then I write it over and over again until I've checked all my facts and I'm satisfied with it. After that I send it to a publisher and hope they like it.

My stories are as diverse as the Wild West itself. Robbery in Savage Page, published by Robert Hale Ltd, has a Chinese-American as its main protagonist. In The Buffalo Soldier, published by Solstice Publishing, the main character is an African-American. The Comanche's Revenge, published by Robert Hale, describes what life is like for a young boy kidnapped by the Comanche. Kato's Army, published by Robert Hale Ltd, tries to depict the strong role women played in the West, fighting alongside their men. Blood Brothers, published on Kindle, describes the paths chosen by three brothers, and asks whether blood is truly a strong bond.

Look out for Diana’s next book with Solstice Publishing, Going to see the Elephant, describing the hardships and the wonders of a 3,000 mile overland trip to Oregon and California from a female POV. Her website is dmharrison.com and her Amazon.UK page is amazon.co.uk/D.-M.-Harrison

Tip O'Day #392 - Time Travel

Guest blogger Sheila Bali on “How History Leads to Historical Fiction.”

I write historical fiction, and I’m quick to admit that I’m not a historian. I just love to write about the past. Flip open the pages of a historical novel and you are thrown into another time. A woman in Ireland during the potato famine digs for bits of food. A child of the Industrial Revolution in England toils in a textile mill. A man trapped in a coal mine in Wales dares to cuss as he prays. In historical fiction, these characters live on the page as they once lived in time. They tell us their story, and in this way they tell us about history.

Since the beginning of language, storytellers have created tales steeped in history. History is the greatest source of both information and story. As listeners and readers of historical fiction, we too revel in history—we are entertained, enlightened, horrified, engaged.

My forthcoming novel, Shattered Tears for My Homeland, takes place during the turbulent years of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. I have spent over a year on research alone, reading archived newspapers and magazines, interviewing people, viewing documentaries and black-and-white films, and thumbing through the dog-eared volumes of history. A daunting task? Of course. But I need correct information, lots of it, and I need to understand it so well that it almost becomes part of me. My handwritten notes are voluminous—even in this technological age, huge quantities of paper go into research. With all the files and folders, and folders within folders, I sometimes think I’m obsessed. I’m sure you can picture this, and perhaps you are chuckling. I’m chuckling too, but it has all paid off.

During all of this, I have begun to learn the difference between the history that historians write and the historical fiction that novelists write. Reading history is like going on a journey of ifs, maybes, could bes and can’t bes. Novelists take those ifs, maybes, could bes and can’t bes and do wonderfully creative things with them. But I understand now why historians cringe at the release of a historical novel: sometimes historical fiction produces historical distortion.

If you gathered all the historians in the world and put them together in a hall, they would disagree on almost everything. History is generally scripted by the victors. Where go the spoils, so goes history. But some history is written by the vanquished, and their perspective is entirely different. They tell another tale. It is for this reason that the accuracy of history is always in dispute. Just as there are two sides to every coin, there are two sides, at least, to every piece of history. What is a novelist to do?

As a writer of historical fiction, I investigate all points of view. Readers, I believe, should be able to identify with more than one side. They should know how the vanquished feel crawling out of the ashes, overcoming the obstacles. This makes writing historical fiction challenging, but it is worth it. It takes a long time to write a novel, longer than I had imagined. Sometimes my patience wears thin and I find myself wanting to plow through to the end. I must dedicate the time it takes, however long that turns out to be. I cannot afford errors or falsehoods.

History scholars excavate facts from the past. They unearth precise dates, capture victories and losses in battles and wars, cite lives lost, and redraw maps. They name rulers, despots, tyrants and heroes. They analyze the results of treaties.

When those treaties fail, like the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, the historical novelist might illuminate a broader truth, a universal truth, as it was lived at a certain time in the past. The novelist writes the bigger scene, the scene of ordinary people, how they survived with everything stacked against them, and in that way the novelist takes the reader to the doorstep of history.

How does the novelist do this? Through convincing, well-developed characters that transport the reader into another time. The characters of historical fiction relive the past by experiencing it in the present. They wake to the sound of tanks rolling through the town and flee the shaking house. If I have researched my history properly, I will know what happens to that town, and that will determine what my characters do next. Do they run to the streets, to the forest, to bomb shelters? What are the names of the streets? Is there even a forest? Did bomb shelters exist? Are my characters engulfed by bullets or by flames? Do sirens scream? Do radios blare? What are the messages? Who lives? Who dies?

The historical novelist gleans the rubble of the past, tasting the grit, extracting the jewels. History becomes an eye-witness account, and we, the readers, live the scene. As we do, we learn, we appreciate, and we vow never to forget the past.

Learn more about Sheila at her website (www.sheilabali.com) or her blog (http://sheilabali.com/wordpress/).

Tip O'Day #370 - Succeed by Helping Others

Guest blogger Terri Marie on almost living the dream.

Giving up a profession to write full-time as an Indie author was a scary step. Even so, I refused to let the dream inside me slip away. I had to climb so many mountains, make plenty of mistakes, shed lots of tears, and threaten my computer many times. Luckily, I never threw it! My mountains have decreased in size, but I still continue to climb them, just not by myself.

Doing everything on my own was my biggest mistake. I'm not talking about self-publishing. Writing was the easy part. I realized I had no idea what was involved in marketing, which is extremely important. I searched the Internet daily and found great information, but that wasn't the complete answer either. My sales barely crawled. Doing everything on my own wasn't getting me anywhere. It wasn't until I reached out to, and celebrated with, other authors, that things began to change.

Promoting the work of other writers is one of the most rewarding things I do. I have a core group of very successful author friends that give me insight, their experience, and tons of courage. Watching my friends rise in the ranks is so much fun! If you don't help other writers, you're really hurting yourself. Eventually, I found my work being cross promoted. My success began to grow, and my enjoyment in this venture skyrocketed.

Never give up on your dream. Connect with an author if you loved their work. Be a writer, but don't forget to be a fan. I love to communicate with and get to know my readers, and they love it when I bring great books to their attention. I started out with one reader and one author friend. Now I have many. What a wonderful and talented group of people. If you want success, carry other authors with you on your journey and never hesitate to go on theirs with them!

You can find Marie’s books at her Amazon author’s page.

One Sentence Writing Tips: #5 of 5

This has been a fun week, sharing “one sentence writing tips” from a wide range of FB friends – from literary agent Michael Snell, to newbies, to Amazon bestseller Kathy Dunnehoff, everybody had interesting, sometimes hilarious suggestions. Here’s the final five:

Michael Snell - “Good writers need editors more than bad writers; the best writers need the best editors.”

Linda Swink - “Never trust speel check.”

Peggy Zabicki - “Before you even pick up a pen, sit down and day dream.”

Kathy Rowe - ‎"If you don't know anything about it: RESEARCH!"

Dixon Rice – “If you could use improvement at writing dialogue, challenge yourself by drafting a screenplay.”

Tip O'Day #273 - The Freedom of Fantasy

Guest blogger Rosalie Skinner, author of the 8-book Chronicles of Caleath series, on resources and tasks of a fantasy author.

For a fantasy writer, every sunset inspires. Even a cup of tea, a taste, a smell, a chance encounter adds fuel to the colour of Caleath’s world. A science article read, a whale watching trip experienced, a near death moment survived, a broken relationship shared, grief, life, love – not a moment of life escapes as trivial. Every experience becomes a resource for my novels.

That’s the freedom Fantasy allows. The fantasy writer must incorporate endless research and her version of reality, while keeping things believable. Doing this with skill and finesse is the writer’s task. Getting readers to empathize with the world you create is the benchmark of successful fantasy writing.

Learn more about this author at her website or her blog.

Tip O'Day #201 - Research (and Be Nice)

Guest blogger Daisy Dunn on the reason for her success.

I decided last November to follow my passion and try to have a novel published this year. I researched the industry tirelessly for two months. I studied publishing houses, submission guidelines, what's hot in the market, how to write a query letter and the dreaded synopsis, etc. On January 1st of this year, I started writing. I finished it at the beginning of April and submitted it. A week later I received my first acceptance letter. I continued to write novels, novellas and short stories and I now have six books in total coming out this year from two different publishing houses.

My advice from this amazing experience is to research the market before submitting. Another suggestion is be nice at all times. It's amazing how much help and advice I've been given from people in the industry (editors, publishers, established authors) because I've been nice. My editor, for instance, has taken me under her wing and not only are we now friends, but I consider her my mentor. That’s my experience in the publishing world so far - very positive (and very lucky!!)

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Check out Daisy’s (adult) blog at www.daisydunn.blogspot.com

Tip O'Day #200 - Just the Right Facts, Ma'am

Guest blogger Leslie Budewitz – local attorney, research pro, published author, and a friend of mine - on getting the facts right.

As writers, we build our fictional worlds one detail at a time. If we get too many of those details wrong–whether in the foundation or the frosting–our readers’ ability to live in that world for a few hours crumbles. Still, you can kill yourself–and your story– trying to get everything right. What should you check and what can you let go?

- Check out facts related to major plot elements. If your villain intends to kill his wife with an overdose of insulin, make sure you know it can be done–and how.

- Focus on the dog, not the fleas. Don’t worry about whether a captain or a lieutenant would take charge of the investigation. But make sure you get the basic procedures right.

- Verify widely known facts outside your experience. If you’ve never been on a jury, talk with your neighbor who has. What surprised or upset her about the process? Was she intrigued–or bored? What were courthouse security measures? Where did she park? Did the bailiff bring donuts?

- Don’t risk a mistake in things easily confirmed. If you’ve never seen a purple Subaru, chances are they weren’t made.

- We often make mistakes in the things we think we know. If it matters to the story, check it out–or leave it out.

- Historicals attract readers who love history. And some readers love to tell writers where they goofed. Does that mean you can’t write about 14th century England because you weren’t born until 1970, or that you need an MA in the period? No. You need reliable references and a passion for the details that set the scene and bring the characters to life.

- Read your manuscript with your reader’s hat on. What might the typical reader question? Ask your critique partners to note anything that creases their brow.

- Accept that you’ll make mistakes. Don’t let that fear paralyze you.

Getting it right matters. But getting it written comes first.

Leslie Budewitz is the author of Books, Crooks and Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure (Quill Driver Books, October 2011). To learn more, visit www.lawandfiction.com

Tip O'Day for Authors #168

Guest blogger Amy D. Shojai on research.

Take time to research your topic but create a deadline so you don't lose yourself in that process. Authors need to know a LOT more about a particular subject but readers only need the tip of the iceberg for the story/plot to work for them. Probably the single most important thing an author can do to improve the chance for success is to hire an editor. No matter how experienced you are, or how wonderful your beta-readers might be (thanks Mom!), fresh eyes with savvy "writer-icity" will catch errors or highlight weaknesses and strengths in the work.

Amy is a certified animal behavior consultant with 23 books on pet care and behavior. The website at http://www.shojai.com/ has links to Twitter and her blog.

Tip O'Day #28

This guest post is from author Mark Sadler.

Do the research needed for accuracy.

Although I write fiction, I like to be factually accurate in both historical and physical facts. A lot of that research has perhaps already been accomplished, without your realizing it. When I write I draw on a lot of information from personal experience. I had spent the best part of a month hiking on the Appalachian Trail and used old diary notes for details of the trail so it could be used as a location my characters experienced. The two main characters both have lots of me in them as far as traits and characteristics; I drew on knowledge of attending school as a foreign student and playing goalkeeper on a college soccer team. I drew upon my son's work experience on oil rigs, my own love of the movies, and my intimate knowledge of Oklahoma, having resided in Oklahoma City for eighteen years.

For the things I did not know, for instance details on guns, dead bodies and the Episcopalian Church, I went to experts and asked questions. I sat down with a Catholic priest and asked for his reaction to the confession that would be given. Readers are intelligent and have questions and will catch you out if you are inaccurate.

I am currently engrossed in writing what I hope is the first in a five book series. The plot is well scripted in my mind and vaguely outlined. I have my spiral bound notebook with cardboard dividers and pockets to hold documents and have character and plot notes accumulating. It is interesting to see how I am again writing of the familiar, the child of a preacher and using lots of poetic license, but I am in a lot more unfamiliar territory too. Having never been in a law enforcement job and writing about a police detective I am doing a lot more field research. I sat in a nine week course with the Oro Valley Citizens Academy, taking copious notes as officers described their duties. I drove with local officers around the areas of town I am writing about to get their knowledge of the areas - I was told no crime occurred here that didn't involve "meth or incest," what a great line to use in context with my story - and I drove with the Border Patrol down to the Mexican border town of Sasabe, AZ. I have witnessed a car burning in the desert and helped chase down illegal immigrants. Just as much hands-on experience as prior books called for, but more planning and less life experience. I listened to first-hand knowledge from people who attended parties thrown in a drug lord's homes in Sonora, Mexico, and sat down with the town historian at the museum in Prague, OK, to discover what life was like in their small burg thirty years ago.

You want to create life-like scenarios, correct diction for your characters, and describe the places your character might journey. This can be done by reading books or looking online but will not stand in for hands-on experience as you describe what they encounter. It helps describe what and how they feel if you have had a slight taste of it yourself. Then you can create the characters that are running around in your mind in order, letting them out to move and breathe and talk on the pages of your book.

Mark Sadler is the author of BLOOD ON HIS HANDS and blogs at http://damnedinsatiablethirsteternallanguor.blogspot.com/