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May Writing Meme: Day 12
12. Where do you turn when your research is coming up with nothing of value to the story?
{I don't know how to answer this question}
I don't write a lot of stories that require copious amounts of research to get the details right, much less stories that require specific, obscure, hard-to-find details. I'm sure that say, a practitioner of kendo or an expert on cryptozoology or a neurobiology student would be horrified at some of the misused references I've slipped in (since I am none of these things), but at the same time, most of those are references not entire plots to my story.
The majority of my research goes into what might be considered experiential research. That is, if my stories require that a subject have gone through or experience a scenario that I haven't experienced, then I look for (preferably multiple) publicly-available first-hand accounts from people who have and use those as a basis for creating a narrative that's authentic to the character. And the thing is, that research is never useless.
But in a simplistic sense, say that I need a particular fact (canon or general triva) but can't find it anywhere, there's three courses of action:
1. Fake it.
2. Write around it.
3. Give up.
1. Why do you write?
2. What piece of writing are you most proud of?
3. How often do you write? Do you have any writing rituals? Say, certain locations, beverages, background music, times of day, target word counts, etc.?
4. How much of the story do you know before you start writing it? Do you use outlines?
5. What tools do you use to write? Audio recordings, pen and paper, computer software, other methods, some mixture thereof?
6. How do you come up with names and story titles?
7. Do you use beta reader(s)? If so, what do you look for in a beta reader? What specialties would your ideal beta have?
8. What kind of support, if any, do you get for your writing?
9. Do you share your writing publicly or keep it private? Have you or would you like to be published?
10. What's your biggest source of writer's envy?
11. How much detail do you usually leave out of a story?
12. Where do you turn when your research is coming up with nothing of value to the story?
13. Optimally, how many times does your work go through the revising process?
14. Do you make literary or cultural references in your work? If so, what sources do you usually draw on? How do you decide whether to make (or keep, when editing) a particular reference?
15. What repeated themes do you see running through your work?
16. How do you support your themes? How do you make sure your language reflects them, and how do you decide whether something belongs in the plot or the theme category?
17. What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
18. What genres have you written in?
19. Do you write long stories, short stories, or both? What's challenging about writing a particular story length?
20. Is your writing generally plot- or character-driven? Why?
21. Do you ever participate in writing challenges? Which ones?
22. Out of all the characters you've ever written, which one is your favorite? Which one has surprised you the most?
23. Do you use unreliable narrators? Why or why not?
24. What do you like most about writing? What do you dislike?
25. Give some examples of how various story ideas have come to you. What forms did they come in?
26. What stories haven't you written that you would like to write?
27. Do you have any works in progress?
28. Do you visualize scenes when/before you write them? Or do you go by how the words sound in your head? Both? Something else entirely?
29. What do you do when the words just aren't coming?
30. Do you like to tell stories orally as well as writing them down?
31. What's your policy on remixes, podfic, and other transformative work?
{I don't know how to answer this question}
I don't write a lot of stories that require copious amounts of research to get the details right, much less stories that require specific, obscure, hard-to-find details. I'm sure that say, a practitioner of kendo or an expert on cryptozoology or a neurobiology student would be horrified at some of the misused references I've slipped in (since I am none of these things), but at the same time, most of those are references not entire plots to my story.
The majority of my research goes into what might be considered experiential research. That is, if my stories require that a subject have gone through or experience a scenario that I haven't experienced, then I look for (preferably multiple) publicly-available first-hand accounts from people who have and use those as a basis for creating a narrative that's authentic to the character. And the thing is, that research is never useless.
But in a simplistic sense, say that I need a particular fact (canon or general triva) but can't find it anywhere, there's three courses of action:
1. Fake it.
2. Write around it.
3. Give up.
1. Why do you write?
2. What piece of writing are you most proud of?
3. How often do you write? Do you have any writing rituals? Say, certain locations, beverages, background music, times of day, target word counts, etc.?
4. How much of the story do you know before you start writing it? Do you use outlines?
5. What tools do you use to write? Audio recordings, pen and paper, computer software, other methods, some mixture thereof?
6. How do you come up with names and story titles?
7. Do you use beta reader(s)? If so, what do you look for in a beta reader? What specialties would your ideal beta have?
8. What kind of support, if any, do you get for your writing?
9. Do you share your writing publicly or keep it private? Have you or would you like to be published?
10. What's your biggest source of writer's envy?
11. How much detail do you usually leave out of a story?
12. Where do you turn when your research is coming up with nothing of value to the story?
13. Optimally, how many times does your work go through the revising process?
14. Do you make literary or cultural references in your work? If so, what sources do you usually draw on? How do you decide whether to make (or keep, when editing) a particular reference?
15. What repeated themes do you see running through your work?
16. How do you support your themes? How do you make sure your language reflects them, and how do you decide whether something belongs in the plot or the theme category?
17. What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
18. What genres have you written in?
19. Do you write long stories, short stories, or both? What's challenging about writing a particular story length?
20. Is your writing generally plot- or character-driven? Why?
21. Do you ever participate in writing challenges? Which ones?
22. Out of all the characters you've ever written, which one is your favorite? Which one has surprised you the most?
23. Do you use unreliable narrators? Why or why not?
24. What do you like most about writing? What do you dislike?
25. Give some examples of how various story ideas have come to you. What forms did they come in?
26. What stories haven't you written that you would like to write?
27. Do you have any works in progress?
28. Do you visualize scenes when/before you write them? Or do you go by how the words sound in your head? Both? Something else entirely?
29. What do you do when the words just aren't coming?
30. Do you like to tell stories orally as well as writing them down?
31. What's your policy on remixes, podfic, and other transformative work?