Living the Research

[FifthView]

This is the reverse of what I would recommend experiential research for. Daily routine etc is easier and faster to look up, or perhaps not even reference in your story. I don't think fiction readers read fiction to vicariously experience the correct use of a trowel or are dying to see how the use of the three field system over the two field system drives the plot. They look for things more exciting or thrilling, and that is what they are concerned with. You also have to make a resource allocation decision, is the routine of the farm important enough to the story to invest a couple of years in? Probably not. But if that is what is going to drive your series...go for it!

As I wrote above to Malik, I think there are two approaches to thinking about "experiential research." The subconscious/unconscious "research" we gain while living our lives, and the sort that is more directed, i.e., a conscious decision to experience something while doing research for a project.

I agree, allocation of time while considering what is necessary for a story seems to be key.

As for daily routine on a farm, etc....I actually think it's all those tiny details that a) add texture, depth, or the feeling of texture and depth for a reader, and b) are often the most difficult or troublesome part of writing. I can write dialogue and action easily enough; but avoiding the proverbial "white room" approach becomes more difficult when I don't have a clear idea of those tiny details of the environment and activities that are basic to the milieu. What else are people doing as they are conversing? For example, for an important one-on-one on a farm while waiting for word on their next plot-significant action: What's the owner of that farm doing while the MC speaks with him; what's the environment?

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Wow.

Thus far, my life has been painfully normal. I've lived mostly in uninteresting suburban environments. Additionally, I must be the timidest person this side of the Mississippi River. I was that kid who was scared to go in the water in swimming lessons. (I'm still scared of fairground rides.)

I've always thought that writing could make up for the mundaneness of my reality (and being generally terrified to try new things, especially those that could get me seriously hurt); apparently not...

To me, "how your writing will be much richer and better if you use your personal experience as research" inevitably sounds like "how your writing probably sucks right now in comparison to that of others, who have an inherent advantage over you" in the dark recesses of my mind, where the Inner Editor dwells. (It's a nasty creature.) Personally researching everything (or even most things, or the most important things) seems pretty daunting. I have to write about tropical rainforests, savannas and deserts, but it's unlikely I will ever actually set foot in one. I have to write about dragon riding, but I'm frickin terrified of heights (and too much motion makes me sick.) Then there's the stuff I'm not sure how to research: riding a large cat? Is it anything like a horse? (Seriously, I'm trying to get riding lessons; they're too expensive and now that I'm doing Krav Maga which is also expensive they're a pipe dream.) I've already been over a lot of the stuff I don't have the qualifications to write in my other thread. It's a looooooong list. And that's only the stuff that I actually have to write in my WIP.

Am I just being whiny and complainy without adding anything to the conversation? ...Sort of? It is kinda just venting, but...hear me out, because I have a point. It seems to me that everyone has an inherent advantage over me because they had a more interesting childhood, they're more reckless and daring, they have more money, they have more time, they've lived longer. It is really discouraging and frustrating. Especially since lack of experience is not something I can remedy through working harder to improve my writing. Pure diligence and study isn't going to get me out of that fix and that is not encouraging since diligence and study is what I *can* do.

So, what do I think? Do I *believe* that I need all these experiences to be able to write sufficiently well? Well...maybe? Knowing what you're talking about is somewhat of an inherent advantage, isn't it? And I don't know what I'm talking about in most cases, so... But, I don't think that experience translates directly to better writing, and vice versa. I'm thinking that the most important thing here isn't having the experiences, but knowing how to use them. I think there's a skill to extrapolating from your own experience, to using your experiences to the utmost,to being as observant and receptive as possible, and those can all be honed. I don't think it ends with "have you done X thing or not; if so, you can write better about it." There's a lot more to it.

In my other thread I talked about what I call the four levels of research:

Level 1: do a thing yourself
Level 2: talk to someone who has done it (interviews, conversations with experts)
Level 3: read and research about it (Internet, books and YouTube videos fall here)
Level 4: use related knowledge and experience to cobble together an idea of what something *might* be like

We're on level 4 most of the time, aren't we? Aren't we? Or drawing from a combination...

 

[FifthView]

I'm thinking that the most important thing here isn't having the experiences, but knowing how to use them. I think there's a skill to extrapolating from your own experience, to using your experiences to the utmost,to being as observant and receptive as possible, and those can all be honed. I don't think it ends with "have you done X thing or not; if so, you can write better about it." There's a lot more to it.

Yes, this.

Way back when (at least a decade ago) I realized that my definition of "adult" did not synch up with the idea many others had.

It's not so much about age. I've met plenty of people in their 30's, 40's, even 50+, who seemed to me to be as childish as children and who acted and reacted to things in ways that were probably not much different than the way they did when they were in their teens or younger. I've also met people who were young but far surpassed many of those much older folks in maturity.

It's not so much about the number of life experiences. See above.

It's not so much about responsibility level, i.e., living on one's own, having a job and starting a family. See above.

For me, it's about circumspection and what it entails. It's the ability to look back over one's life, to look around at one's current life, and to put it all in perspective. Circum- "around" + specere "to look." Those who have those other features already mentioned above but who can't and/or won't do this are not really "adult" as far as I'm concerned. At least, this is how I think of adulthood.

I think that a combination of writing experience/skill and powers of extrapolation are so important, they at least equal if not surpass the importance of having a broad life experience. This isn't to say that these are distinct, however, since a broad life experience may increase one's ability to extrapolate or at least make extrapolation easier. But we experience far more than we consciously realize, I think, and I'd wager that an ability to plumb those depths would reveal a much broader experience than we normally recognize otherwise. You are fully alive each minute you are alive, taking it all in. 16-20 years' worth of minutes is a lot of minutes.

 

[La Volpe]

Easily available statistics about hobbies and internet usage prove this to be factually wrong. People spend waaaaaaay more time puttering around the internet than they do in spending the time and effort it takes to do experiential research. If you choose to develop it into a hobby than it becomes your choice to spend time on that instead of writing. Once again I think better of the people I talk with than to assume I need to protect them from their own weaknesses.

I'd wager there's a difference between normal internet usage which will make up these easily available statistics and internet usage to research for a book. I.e. if I had to guess, I'd say most of the internet usage in those statistics would refer to social media et al.

So that's not really comparable to researching a topic via the internet versus going to physically do something.

You can fool some of the people some of the time...

Seriously I think better of my readers than that. It amazes me that people will go through such mental gymnastics to avoid a fairly obvious conclusion, that someone who has done something has a better knowledge of that experience than someone who has just read about it. Do you want a dentist who has never pulled a tooth to do yours?

Take DOA for instance. Let's say we both wanted to write a story in which the experience of home schooling was an important element. I went to public schools my whole life and don't have any friends who were home schooled. Do you think that by spending even many hours on the internet researching that I would be able to write about that experience better than someone who has lived it? That position seems ludicrous to me.

I'm still missing something here, apparently.

How would someone who has not experienced X be able to differentiate between guessed details and real details? Even if he could see the two side by side (unlabeled, of course), how would he be able to tell which one is real, if he has no knowledge on the subject?

Which is both true and has nothing to do with the topic. "Try experiencing something to understand it better" does not equate to "Put too many details into your work."

Perhaps I was a bit vague with this. What I'm trying to say is that you don't need every single detail of a subject/situation into your text, so you don't need to physically go and do the said thing in order to get enough details to make it work. I.e. "Try experiencing something to understand it better" gives you more details; but having more details does not equate "better story/writing/whatever".

It is possible to get those details from research. Once again, no one is saying experiencial research is necessary for good writing. All that is being suggested is that it is something you can do that can make your writing better.

So you're saying that it is possible to get the needed details from research? I.e. the details that is needed to make your passage seem more real.

If you can get the same details from normal research as you get from actually experiencing it, then how is actually experiencing it going to make your writing better (as opposed to researching it)?

Or did I misunderstand what you're saying?

 

[Chessie]

I'd like to further explore Thinker's powerful post.

You know how they say we should write what we know? I wonder if living the research is a similar concept. It's good to encourage one another to study craft, never stop writing, etc...but the reason this thread is important is because writing draws upon life experience. If we don't go out there and live...well...what do we have to write about? So that's how writing from personal memory serves us.

This morning, the northern lights were out. They were moving quick, bright, beautifully dancing across the valley. I stood on my deck, freezing in my pjs at 6:30 a.m., watching them in wonder. Imagine: what would it be like if they existed in the same way the Native Alaskans portray in their mythology? What if they were really spirits? What if the land received magic from them?

I haven't lived in Alaska all of my life, but about 90% of it...and although I have memory of living in deserts and tropical places, Alaska is my home. It's the source of inspiration for my stories and world Mirovinia. Russian influence is big in some parts here. I've been to villages where it's apparent. The history is widely available here of how the Russians came in and slayed thousands. These are things I use in my stories because history fascinates me.

My husband jokes that the setting of all my stories are the same: forests and mountains. He laughs because he knows it's what I love and understand. I know what it's like to hike up mountains with a heavy pack on, to know what you see up there, experienced the intensity of it. I've seen bears, moose, lynx, wolverines, great horned owls, worked with bald eagles....all of these animals are in my stories in gigantic form. I've been on canoes, boats in the sea. I have studied Russian and Native Alaskan mythology for years. As a kid/teenager, I played Dungeons and Dragons with my dad, which is why my stories have elves.

In short, I ****ing love the wilderness and mountains and everything that comes in between. I have learned as much as I possibly can about things I cannot experience, like mythology. My fantasy stories all take place in isolated places because I can describe that to the fullest. So....writing what we know is, in essence, the same as living your research. At least that's the way I'm connecting it in my head.

If we can't directly experience something, then that's where our imagination has the greatest ability to fuel our stories. We just imagine it and connect it to what we know. For example, and some may laugh at this because it's truly nerdy, but the NaNo story I'm planning takes place in an isolated town, set upon cliffs above the sea. It's inspired by the COW from Skyrim> of which I have played like thousands of hours no freaking joke. But it's in my world Mirovinia, and I understand isolation, falling in love, losing love to death, losing love because people suck, having your parents not like your boyfriends, etc. It is impossible for me to experience a fantasy world in the flesh BUT I can imagine it from my life experiences.

You see, stories aren't just about explosions and battles and large armies with knights. They're about people, emotional journeys, things we as humans can ALL understand. The more I write, the older I get, the more I understand that tension in my stories comes from within the characters. It comes from their feelings, from not getting what they want, from getting what they want and not wanting it anymore because they really wanted something else! Humans are all the same inside. You don't need to travel to caves and the Wild West in order to understand how to write something.

What you need is emotion and a basic understanding of what the readers in YOUR genre want...because we all write different types of fantasy and have different audiences. My audience is different than Helio's Middle Grade audience. My audience wants the thrill of falling in love, gothic settings, a feeling of love in isolation, sensuality, sexuality, etc. Helio's audience wants the excitement of heists, the thrill of getting away with it, the feeling of dread of getting caught, adventure, etc.

But BOTH audiences want entertainment, and they both want emotion. If we can all gift our audiences that, then that's a basic starting point that a lot of stories miss.

 

[Chessie]

It seems to me that everyone has an inherent advantage over me because they had a more interesting childhood, they're more reckless and daring, they have more money, they have more time, they've lived longer.

Sorry, but yes. You're in a group of adult writers. But I somehow get the feeling that the reason this frustrates you is because you believe that we're--in a roundabout way--saying you're not good enough to write like us because you're 15. That's absolutely ludicrous, since we've all been teenagers and some of us have children. Give us a bit more credit, please?

Especially since lack of experience is not something I can remedy through working harder to improve my writing. Pure diligence and study isn't going to get me out of that fix and that is not encouraging since diligence and study is what I *can* do.

This isn't what you want to hear but I'm going to say it anyway: don't take yourself too seriously right now! Enjoy your youth! We've all given you advice on what you can do right now that doesn't include physically living out your research. That comes with time as you develop into an adult, and for crying out loud, you can totally write fiction with teenagers and rock it.

To me, "how your writing will be much richer and better if you use your personal experience as research" inevitably sounds like "how your writing probably sucks right now in comparison to that of others, who have an inherent advantage over you" in the dark recesses of my mind, where the Inner Editor dwells.

Perhaps this advice isn't meant for you right now. It's meant for when you're older and have independence over your life, which is in like 3 years. No one here is saying your writing sucks but the reality is that your writing will be vastly improved in like 15 years. Don't want to wait that long? Then you may want to consider doing something else with your life. Many of us started writing as kids/teens. As adults we have a perspective on it: wow, my writing has improved because I'm older. I'm not necessarily talking about craft because your writing is better than some adults that I've read. BUT...teen writing lacks depth due to lack of life experience. Why do you keep hitting us over the heads with it like we're all out to get you? It's frustrating because we're all trying to help each other here, and the whining doesn't so much bother me as the insinuation that we're all telling you that your writing sucks. Stop it. Please.

 

[Russ]

I'd wager there's a difference between normal internet usage which will make up these easily available statistics and internet usage to research for a book. I.e. if I had to guess, I'd say most of the internet usage in those statistics would refer to social media et al.

Actually I think that is the point both of us are making. I am suggesting that focussed research on the internet can drag you away to all sorts of unnecessary crap, and I thought you were suggesting that beating someone with a sword can become a hobby that eats up too much time instead of research. But I stand by my point, that I bet the internet has sucked orders of magnitude more useful time away from writers than experiential research run amok.

Now let me add some anecdotal evidence on the point. I have not sat down and counted, but I know at least 50 people, probably more who make their living writing genre fiction, between friends and acquaintances. Many of them complain about time lost on the internet, and several of them have installed software to prevent themselves from going on the internet when they should be writing. None of them have ever remotely suggested that the experiential research that they have done has interfered with their productivity as writers. And these are all people who make their primary income from writing.

How would someone who has not experienced X be able to differentiate between guessed details and real details? Even if he could see the two side by side (unlabeled, of course), how would he be able to tell which one is real, if he has no knowledge on the subject?

A combination of common sense, reason and potentially research if they are that interested. Many people tend to have good BS detectors and I don't think they stop working when they start reading. Now, I am happy to concede that a good con man can fool a lot of people. But out of respect from my readers, where I can, I prefer to give them as much authentic material as I can rather than develop skills to put one over on them.

Perhaps I was a bit vague with this. What I'm trying to say is that you don't need every single detail of a subject/situation into your text, so you don't need to physically go and do the said thing in order to get enough details to make it work. I.e. "Try experiencing something to understand it better" gives you more details; but having more details does not equate "better story/writing/whatever".

Trying something does not just give you more details. It gives you the experience of having done it (or tried anyways). It is not just about details (although you can pick lots of them us) it is about a deeper understanding of what is taking place. It is like the difference between a qualitative evaluation and a quantitative evaluation.

So you're saying that it is possible to get the needed details from research? I.e. the details that is needed to make your passage seem more real.

If you can get the same details from normal research as you get from actually experiencing it, then how is actually experiencing it going to make your writing better (as opposed to researching it)?

Or did I misunderstand what you're saying?

Your misunderstanding is that is just about getting enough details, when the merits of experience go deeper than that. What I am saying is, you can do a good job writing about something via straight academic style research. You can do a better job with both academic and experiential research. If it comes down to a choice between the two I think it comes down to a case by case analysis, but often the experiential research is better.

For instance, if you and I were going to write a story where the experience of having a South African identity was important, your experience would make you far better positioned to write that story despite the fact that I know that the Proteas just white washed the Aussies in ODI cricket and the fact I ate some Biltong the other day.

I continue to encourage people to do experiential research, and experience life broadly and bring those experiences to their writing if they can.

 

[Malik]

you just gave some details which can now be easily transplanted into a book with a pegasus (or a dragon) or a guy getting hit on the helmet.

True, but those aren't nearly enough details to write a book with. I mean, unless you wanted to use the same five or six details in every scene. There are a thousand other details buried in the experiences that gave me those few details off the top of my head.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Sorry, but yes. You're in a group of adult writers. But I somehow get the feeling that the reason this frustrates you is because you believe that we're--in a roundabout way--saying you're not good enough to write like us because you're 15. That's absolutely ludicrous, since we've all been teenagers and some of us have children. Give us a bit more credit, please?


This isn't what you want to hear but I'm going to say it anyway: don't take yourself too seriously right now! Enjoy your youth! We've all given you advice on what you can do right now that doesn't include physically living out your research. That comes with time as you develop into an adult, and for crying out loud, you can totally write fiction with teenagers and rock it.




Perhaps this advice isn't meant for you right now. It's meant for when you're older and have independence over your life, which is in like 3 years. No one here is saying your writing sucks but the reality is that your writing will be vastly improved in like 15 years. Don't want to wait that long? Then you may want to consider doing something else with your life. Many of us started writing as kids/teens. As adults we have a perspective on it: wow, my writing has improved because I'm older. I'm not necessarily talking about craft because your writing is better than some adults that I've read. BUT...teen writing lacks depth due to lack of life experience. Why do you keep hitting us over the heads with it like we're all out to get you? It's frustrating because we're all trying to help each other here, and the whining doesn't so much bother me as the insinuation that we're all telling you that your writing sucks. Stop it. Please.

I'm not saying that you're saying my writing sucks, nonono. I don't think anyone's said that. It's me who's making me feel that way. Or maybe just being surrounded by adult writers.

Thing is, my writing is really important to me, and I don't know how to shake that. I feel like "I'm going to think this is so stupid when I'm older! I'm not qualified to write this! It won't be any good until I'm older!"...and so on, usual barrage of self-doubt. Except I have a reason to self-doubt, I'm not just a writer, I'm an underqualified writer who doesn't know what she's talking about...and it's kinda discouraging. So the wise thing to do would be to not take it so seriously, not get so attached...but, I have big ideas that I'm already very attached to that have many elements that are far beyond my experience to write from personal experience about and the idea of waiting 15 more years (or 10, or 20, or however long it will take) to be able to write them is honestly a painful idea. I get new ideas for stories and get excited about them but..."I can't write this. I shouldn't write this. I don't have the experience or knowledge to write this. What do I do?!"

I know I'll improve. I want to improve. Im excited about how much I will grow throughout my life and I'm excited about all the stories I will write. I'm glad I started early. Of course, the process of improvement never stops. I'm going to look back on stuff I wrote when I'm 30 at the age of 50 and think the same things 30 year old me will think about now. So...is there an answer?

My thoughts and feelings on this are a painful bloody mess and I vent about it a lot. But it's not your fault. I don't know if it's anyone's fault. I'm just in a bad place right now, feeling constricted and frustrated because I'm not qualified to write my own stories. The ones I truly, deeply care about.

Can I write them anyway, sure! But they'll seem stupid later and they'll be a lot worse than anything by adult writers and yeah, I'm embarrassed just thinking about it.

What if I got my large project publishable by the time I was 22? But, what if I waited 10 years? It would be better to wait, right?

 

[skip.knox]

There are any number of excellent writers who were invalids and directly experienced very little. Maybe the reason why the experiential folks feel it's important is because it is important *to them*. Fine. No problem with that. But I agree with DragonOfTheAerie that the subtext, which is barely beneath the surface, is that folks who don't go down that path are hamstringing their own writing. I not only disagree with the premise, I'd say its expression is pernicious, especially to young or inexperienced writers. Why not simply say it's your opinion, which you've found valuable in your own writing, and leave it at that. Why be prescriptive?

While not disagreeing with the experiential school, I'll offer some counter-evidence. I have dealt more than once with SCA folks (or larpers and other re-creationist groups), mainly because I'm a professor of medieval history. While they know the most extraordinary things about some areas of medieval life, some of them retain the most mundane misapprehensions about other aspects of medieval life. Spending an enormous number of hours learning about medieval cloths or brewing means you don't spend those hours learning about medieval monks or theology or guilds. In the end, experiential learning is extremely narrow. Especially for the writer, the best part of what's learned is the extrapolation or interpolation from the experience. But one of the dangers, which I've seen with *some* of these folks, is falling into the trap of thinking that just because you have experienced X, you now know more about X than anyone else could possibly know. Not saying that's the case around here, only that the experiential route is not without its own drawbacks and pitfalls.

 

[FifthView]

It seems to me the thread has gone from a) the idea of seeking out and living new experiences as a form of research to b) using the experiences we already possess and being able to extrapolate from those.

So I'm returned to Thinker's observation:

Then I grew up, went to college for a while, worked at this or that job, and I was left with memories. I try some of the things I did in my youth, and I'd probably be either dead or crippled.

But I use those memories in my writing. They are a basis for extrapolation.

It's all well and good if you've grown up in Alaska (or Missouri or London or....) and you can draw on those experiences. Quite right, anyone who has grown up in X situation/environment experiencing those things can draw on those memories when extrapolating scenes and events and activities being describe in a novel.

It's quite another thing to say, "If you want to write the things Thinker has written," now, then you must immediately take a break from your life and go live 18 years (or so) in Alaska, in approximately the same conditions, and after those 18 years, write whatever it is you want to write.

The interesting question for me is the "usefulness gap" (I'll call it this) between new experiential research and other forms of research when starting from a position in the here-and-now.

 

[skip.knox]

>How would someone who has not experienced X be able to differentiate between guessed details and real details?

Absolutely. I'll go further. A good many people believe they know things. They know, for example, that kings wield absolute power and can do whatever they want. If I show a king limited by his barons, bound by custom, taking the oath to introduce no new laws, calling up his army only to find half of his so-called vassals don't show up and half of those leave early, and so on, I'm going to have a certain number of reviews say my story was not realistic.

This can, however, be handled. To take a famous example, one of the themes in War and Peace is that Napoleon was not a great field general. In particular, Tolstoy argued that *no one* could be a great field general because during the battle no one could know what the devil was going on. He was at great pains to make this case. He took those pains because he knew not only that many of his readers thought Napoleon was a military genius, but also that they believed that generals ran battles. Given how the book has sold, I'd say he succeeded. So, it can be done, but the author needs to know which aspects of his story contain "realism" and of those, which may violate his readers' presuppositions.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I suppose the idea that drives me bonkers is that now is "just practice" and the serious stuff won't come until much later.

I guess it's all my inner whiny teenager coming out, "but I want to do it NOOOOOWWWWW...." Childish? Yeah. Immature? Yeah. Should I just suck it up? Probably...

My ideas are very important to me, though. Having to put them off for 10-20 years is a hopefully understandably frustrating idea. Of course I want to feel like what I'm writing now is worth something and important. Classic motivation of youth but for me, powerful. My current WIP is a side project to distract from the one I was working on, but ten years of side projects will get annoying. I get too attached to my favorite ideas, I know. The whole golden idea thing. Should I...? I just don't know.

I should stop complaining by now, I'm probably driving y'all crazy. Nonetheless I'm having a crippling emotional crisis.

 

[Russ]

It seems to me the thread has gone from a) the idea of seeking out and living new experiences as a form of research to b) using the experiences we already possess and being able to extrapolate from those.

The thread discusses the value of experiential research or experience in writing. It can be obtained many ways. I see it as a positive no matter which way you obtain it.

It's quite another thing to say, "If you want to write the things Thinker has written," now, then you must immediately take a break from your life and go live 18 years (or so) in Alaska, in approximately the same conditions, and after those 18 years, write whatever it is you want to write.

Has anyone here (other than you) suggested that? Or that one should live for a year or more on a farm in order to write farm scenes? Or are you arguing with yourself?

 

[Russ]

>How would someone who has not experienced X be able to differentiate between guessed details and real details?

Absolutely. I'll go further. A good many people believe they know things. They know, for example, that kings wield absolute power and can do whatever they want. If I show a king limited by his barons, bound by custom, taking the oath to introduce no new laws, calling up his army only to find half of his so-called vassals don't show up and half of those leave early, and so on, I'm going to have a certain number of reviews say my story was not realistic.

This can, however, be handled. To take a famous example, one of the themes in War and Peace is that Napoleon was not a great field general. In particular, Tolstoy argued that *no one* could be a great field general because during the battle no one could know what the devil was going on. He was at great pains to make this case. He took those pains because he knew not only that many of his readers thought Napoleon was a military genius, but also that they believed that generals ran battles. Given how the book has sold, I'd say he succeeded. So, it can be done, but the author needs to know which aspects of his story contain "realism" and of those, which may violate his readers' presuppositions.

Which begs the question, if readers have unrealistic assumptions should that discourage one from relying on experience or experiential research? I think that question is answered on a case by case basis depending on what the author is trying to achieve.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Which begs the question, if readers have unrealistic assumptions should that discourage one from relying on experience or experiential research? I think that question is answered on a case by case basis depending on what the author is trying to achieve.

There's a page on TVTropes about "truths" in fiction that are completely unrealistic, but are generally accepted by audiences as realistic because they're so commonly used. In these cases, if X was actually depicted realistically, the audience would be bewildered.

 

[Chessie]

I suppose the idea that drives me bonkers is that now is "just practice" and the serious stuff won't come until much later.

I guess it's all my inner whiny teenager coming out, "but I want to do it NOOOOOWWWWW...." Childish? Yeah. Immature? Yeah. Should I just suck it up? Probably...

My ideas are very important to me, though. Having to put them off for 10-20 years is a hopefully understandably frustrating idea. Of course I want to feel like what I'm writing now is worth something and important. Classic motivation of youth but for me, powerful. My current WIP is a side project to distract from the one I was working on, but ten years of side projects will get annoying. I get too attached to my favorite ideas, I know. The whole golden idea thing. Should I...? I just don't know.

I should stop complaining by now, I'm probably driving y'all crazy. Nonetheless I'm having a crippling emotional crisis.

Just write. Who cares about anything else? A lot of writers have this romantic idea that publication is easier to come by because "my stuff is good". Do you want to know the truth? Being a published author doesn't mean squat. Diddly squat. Depending on which road an author ends up choosing to publish (trade or Indie nowadays), the reality is more like this:

-write
-1/4 of the way in WOW this fxxx sucks, let me start over
-my characters are crap, my story is crap
-I have a deadline in 30 days and my ms is only halfway complete
-my beta readers say these parts don't make sense, let me rewrite that
-my editor has red marks all over my ms, I'm doomed
-readers are asking when the next book comes out...IDK!
-marketing, social networks, anthologies with other writers
-I promised that writer friend I'd read his ms
-I'm partway into my ms but have to redo my outline because problems...

And on it goes. It's not easy. So don't be in a rush to get there. And oh, well, at 22 you might not be able to get publication. Traditional publishing takes a long time! And then what if your book doesn't sell? If you don't make back your advance? That's a reality many writers face and then their publisher drops them. Or Amazon drops you in the charts because you didn't sell well, or you get bad reviews and one stars, or Goodreads hates you.

So just write. Because the life of an author isn't anything as amazing as a lot of people think that it is.

 

[FifthView]

The thread discusses the value of experiential research or experience in writing. It can be obtained many ways. I see it as a positive no matter which way you obtain it.



Has anyone here (other than you) suggested that? Or that one should live for a year or more on a farm in order to write farm scenes? Or are you arguing with yourself?

Let's try not to insinuate something devious or turn the discussion in an ad hominem direction, okay?

I gave it as an example, and that's it, between the two diverging approaches to the idea of "experiential research."

Thinker gave one, which was basically an idea of drawing upon what we've already experienced, perhaps years in the past.

The thread started out, as far as I can tell, considering "experiential research" as a method for seeking out new experiences now.

I split those hairs because there seems to be a confusion in the discussion, and I'm not sure everyone's on the same page about what we are discussing.

If we are discussing "seeking out new experiences" as a form of experiential research, we can say something about what we can do, now and into the future, and weigh the usefulness of that approach against non-experiential forms of research.

But if we are discussing being able to tap into and extrapolate from a lifetime's worth of experience gained prior to the here and now, then there's little use, in my opinion, suggesting that we engage in experiential research–because we already did, years in the past. What's left is tapping into it.

 

[La Volpe]

Now let me add some anecdotal evidence on the point. I have not sat down and counted, but I know at least 50 people, probably more who make their living writing genre fiction, between friends and acquaintances. Many of them complain about time lost on the internet, and several of them have installed software to prevent themselves from going on the internet when they should be writing. None of them have ever remotely suggested that the experiential research that they have done has interfered with their productivity as writers. And these are all people who make their primary income from writing.

But we still need to differentiate "the internet" and "researching on the internet". I know lots of people that have problems with productivity because of the internet. But looking something up is not the same as social media or watching too many Youtube videos about bears.

And besides, research does not need to be tied to the internet. It's just a convenient way of getting the information. What I'm trying to say is that if you want to know what it's like to be hit on the head while wearing a helmet, you can spend a couple of days trying to find a group of people who do that kind of thing, buy/borrow a helmet from someone, get together with said people and get yourself hit on the head while wearing a helmet. Or, you could just ask Malik what it's like, and he'll tell you.

I.e. you get the same result, but one took a lot longer.

A combination of common sense, reason and potentially research if they are that interested. Many people tend to have good BS detectors and I don't think they stop working when they start reading. Now, I am happy to concede that a good con man can fool a lot of people. But out of respect from my readers, where I can, I prefer to give them as much authentic material as I can rather than develop skills to put one over on them.

But the writer and the reader have the same access to common sense, reason, and research. Ergo, if the reader can reason that this or that bit doesn't sound right, so can the writer. Ergo, he'll write things (with the help of common sense, reason, and research) that sound right.

Given that the reader has exactly the same amount of resources (or less) as the writer, why would the reader be the superior regarding the identification of 'true sounding' details?

Trying something does not just give you more details. It gives you the experience of having done it (or tried anyways). It is not just about details (although you can pick lots of them us) it is about a deeper understanding of what is taking place. It is like the difference between a qualitative evaluation and a quantitative evaluation.

Okay, I can accept that having an experience will give you an understanding of how the parts work. Just like you can't learn how to swim by reading a textbook.

However, how does that translate in writing? I.e. what tangible things are you getting from experience that you can't also get from research?

Your misunderstanding is that is just about getting enough details, when the merits of experience go deeper than that. What I am saying is, you can do a good job writing about something via straight academic style research. You can do a better job with both academic and experiential research. If it comes down to a choice between the two I think it comes down to a case by case analysis, but often the experiential research is better.

For instance, if you and I were going to write a story where the experience of having a South African identity was important, your experience would make you far better positioned to write that story despite the fact that I know that the Proteas just white washed the Aussies in ODI cricket and the fact I ate some Biltong the other day.

Similar to my question above, why? You say that experiential research in combination with academic is better. But why is it better? What exactly is it that you get from experience (that can be used in writing a scene) that you can't also be gotten from researching?

What we're essentially doing is translating experiences into text, correct? Experiences being translated into text will lose some nuances, I'm sure. But you still get an idea of how the experience is.

So, whether you're taking the experience and translating it into text, or taking the translated text from somewhere else, you get the same result, I'd think.

(Also, it's been way too long since I've last had biltong. That stuff is expensive. And as we've previously established, there is too much month at the end of my money at the moment.)

True, but those aren't nearly enough details to write a book with. I mean, unless you wanted to use the same five or six details in every scene. There are a thousand other details buried in the experiences that gave me those few details off the top of my head.

Agreed. But my point here is that I can get the details by experiencing it, or by asking you, or reading stuff on your site. Ergo, if I need more details, you can hypothetically give me more of them, because you have access to them from your experience.

 

[Malik]

There's a page on TVTropes about "truths" in fiction that are completely unrealistic, but are generally accepted by audiences as realistic because they're so commonly used. In these cases, if X was actually depicted realistically, the audience would be bewildered.

I fired an editor over this. He said my book would "confuse everybody" unless I rewrote it with expected inaccuracies. He wanted a total rewrite anyway; he wanted me to turn it into a YA Coming of Age thing with a boy who finds a magic sword that makes him a master swordsman in another world. But I needed to take out the confusing stuff, too.

He marked up the whole manuscript with NO, REMOVE, and TAKE THIS OUT all over it in the sidebar, stuff highlighted on damned near every page. Mostly the stuff that I'd spent my life researching. I'm not talking about taking out info-dumps; I'm talking about rewriting it with magic swords slicing through plate steel and horses that apparently never founder or have to eat.

My wife says that when I opened the Track Changes bar I dropped more F-bombs than Tony Montana falling down the stairs.

The research stays.