I don’t usually do a lot of research for short stories, but occasionally I need a piece of information that I don’t already have stored in my brain or bookmarked. That’s when I do a little bit of fast and dirty searching.
For instance, for a piece of flash fiction I just wrote, I needed a name for Death. Because it isn’t necessarily obvious right off that he is death I wanted a name that basically said he was death, but at the same time wasn’t so obvious that the reader rolled their eyes. So Hades, Anubis, Osiris, Mors, Pluto, Odin, etc. were all out. I also didn’t want it to be such an unusual-sounding name – I wanted one the reader could easily believe this odd guy might have.
So I went to Google (yes, that is currently my preferred search engine – plus I love the changing logo. Anyway.) and searched for *name of death deities*. On the first page of search results I got a few worthwhile pages, but nothing that really helped. So back to Google, this time searching for *name of death gods*. This time I got a page titled “Dead Names, Death Names,” and on that page I found Thanatos, also Than for short, a Greek God of Death. I then Wikied it, and found the description matched closely enough with my Death’s personality that it would work well. It is easily searchable, but not so obvious that every reader will get it right off. Perfect.
So my Death is named Thanatos, but you can call him Than for short.
That is, if you ever meet him. Which you should hope you don’t.
on my latest cruising through the newstand writing magazines.
I’m actually thinking about subscribing to Writers’ Journal, as I have been finding useful articles in it each time I check it out. In this issue there were again several I marked, although I think I will paper clip this issue unlike the last one. This time there were major articles including a short clip on ideas to keep marketing your book after the glow has faded, a great article on proactive promotion and press kits, and tips for reducing word counts. There were also secondary articles on photographing flowers, self-publishing and formatting your work for Lulu, a screen writing article about starting your story in the right place, another article in the series of designing a writer’s webpage. Again, the marketing articles caught my eye, but the backup articles made it worth while.
The other magazine that I felt had enough articles to make it worth buying was this month’s The Writer. “The do’s and don’t of Agent Queries” was really good, as was “14 mistakes to avoid as your next writers Conference.” The conference article was something that I hadn’t really thought about before, but the tips were soooo good. The two secondary articles were on money and taxes, and an article from Ray Bradbury.
Some of these are things I probably could have found online, but with topics like these, sometimes knowing what to look for is the hardest part, and that’s why I find checking out these magazines worth-while.
There’s been a lot of controversy over whether or not Wikipedia is a reliable research tool. The biggest problem that many of its critics have is the fact that pretty much anyone can edit it, so therefore they say it is unreliable, sometimes inaccurate, and sometimes unable to be substantiated. While this is true, I find that Wikipedia is a great tool to start off and expand research. Some of the articles are really really well done, and it is possible to find a lot of facts gathered into one article that otherwise could take a while to research.
The trick is to use Wikipedia as a first line of research, rather than the last, much how you’d use a search engine to start your reseach. I use Wikipedia to learn more about a subject, check out overviews, and find out things to satisfy my own curiosity. Then, if I want to check facts, verify what I learned, or cite sources I use what I gathered there and do my own research so that I have credible sources that readers won’t question. As a research tool, it is a great resources, and I think a lot of writers tend to dismiss it without realizing just how useful it can be.
In the beginning of Moving on Nightfall, the protagonist, Jenny, is revealed to be a homeless, transgendered, late-teens prostitute. While I didn’t need to do a lot of research to develop her character or her living situation, I did do some research to make sure that I could give the readers a firm grasp on the small details of her character, her current living situation on the street, as well as the factors that led her there. It was the little details that I wanted to make sure I knew well, so the reader wouldn’t have to stop and question whether something was accurate.
Jenny lives in a big city, so I did some research on queer youth in cities. One of the biggest cities with a very high percentage of GLBTQ homeless youth is New York City, and so several of my links led there.
75 Beds for 1,254 Kids: One third of NYC’s 3,800 homeless youths are LGBT
State of the City’s Homeless Youth Report 2003
Editorial Observer; Helping Them Make It Through the Night
A Life and Death on NYC Streets
There also are some articles on how these kids get to be on the street.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth: An epidemic of homelessness
Throwaway Teens – a 20/20 report on how some of these kids end up on the street.
And I also bookmarked some trans articles on homelessness and its side effects -
Making Change: The Cost of Being Transgender
It’s a trans world
Crossing to Safety: Transgender Health & Homelessness
Engaging Transgender Substance Users in Substance Use Treatment
And also, the book Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers by Cris Beam.
None of these will actually go into or give me my story. Rather, it’s like visiting a place to get the feel for it – it will help me to add that air of authenticity of something I already know, but want to make very clear.
Generally I don’t do a lot of research before I write a story or novel. I prefer to write with the flow and see how things go, and then research and clarify as needed. If there is something I question, or need to know to make the story work, of course I’ll look it up right then, but for me the story comes first, and then I background information as needed. (And I do check – I hate being called out as wrong on something that I write as a “fact” 
)
With Moving on Nightfall I am going to be experimenting with writing a series of flash fiction pieces that take place outside of the main narrative. One of my goals is to of course make my readers curious about the novel itself, but also to explore for myself a little more of my world and characters, push them in directions I might not have thought of, and in general mess around with them (always good).
So right now, I am working on crystallizing what Jenny’s “home” in the abandoned subway station looked like. I’m ignoring any “mole people” references, as the main book that talked about them has been greatly discredited. I have a lot of my own experiences and knowledge to draw on, but I want to explore the makeup of her shelter fully, so I’ve done some research to broaden my ideas. Granted, this is a very small part of the story, but it is the first important setting, it tells a lot about Jenny, and it sets up a lot of the story for the reader. Below are some of the best sites I found in my hunt.
Abandoned subway stations:
Three pages of beautiful shots from the (sadly no longer updated) NYC photolog Satan’s Laundry
The Ltvsquad has a lot of great pictures from years of subway exploring, but one of the best pages I found there for my research is the Sperm Whale / Snipers Alley story.
An extensive description with pictures of the abandoned parts of the NYC subway station.
Closed stations in the Paris subway system
Cincinnati’s Abandoned Subway
Closed Boston Stations
A couple of articles on homeless people and subways:
One about a group who lived under Manhattan in the early 1990′s
Another about how some homeless ride the lines all day
And a documentary that Will told me about last week – Dark Days. (there’s stills from the film here as well.)
Good stuff, and great background research.
