Following the rule regarding research that you only present the tip of the iceberg in your story, you should still feel comfortable and fully grasp the research subject. A romance story is about your characters but their environment plays a role. So your hero is sitting on an iceberg and you need to know how long he can survive before help arrives (a female helicopter pilot, perhaps will come to the rescue).
There are many research techniques you can avail yourself of.
1.
Contact specialists.
2.
Go to the library and don’t forget the help
desk.
3.
Attend classes.
4.
Use the internet carefully. There is much b.s.
on it these days.
5.
Check out the library of Congress and the Smithsonian.
6.
Check out groups or societies. For instance,
your character has cancer. A group dedicated to that type of cancer would be
useful to contact.
7.
Go to shows or symposiums.
8.
Check in with other authors who have similar
struggles.
9.
Review the artwork and poetry of the time and
place you are writing about.
10.
Use the Jeopardy! technique as created by James
Holzhauer, a huge winner on the show. He studied children’s books on subjects
he felt were too difficult to wade through otherwise. He said to the Washington
Post, “They are chock full of infographics, pictures and all kinds of stuff to
keep the reader engaged… I couldn’t make it through a chapter of an actual Dickens
novel without falling asleep.”
There’s a hidden point to 10. Try
to not write so densely with all that research you have gathered will allow
your reader to fall asleep. Hey, not that Dickens is dense. James wanted to
learn in the quickest way. He didn’t want to struggle. Your reader should not
struggle to figure out what is going on. Hint: try to construct a sentence with
one subject, predicate, and object as often as you can. If you must do
otherwise, make doubly sure the sentence is 100% clear. Drop all double (or
more) meanings in the words you use or modify the word to clarify it.
No comments:
Post a Comment