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[grav_ity]

Today on the blog, I talk about research and details. And a minor point in Canadian history. And somehow manage to write an entire post without mentioning SANCTUARY, even though the alternate title of this is really "How Stargate and Sanctuary Made Me Better at Researching Than My Undergraduate and Masters Degrees Did".

The Devil's In The Details

Comments

[shadadukal]

I love how you say you can help with body disposal. :P

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

It happens to be true! :)

[shadadukal]

I know, but the phrasing is amusing. ;)

I suppose I can be a beta reader for French things. Also phonology things, and to a lesser extent linguistics. And foreign language learning.

[emmaorgana.livejournal.com]

I am good at enthusiasm and enabling?

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

And someday hockey.

(OMG, THIS BOOOOOOOOOOOOK.)

[lanna-kitty.livejournal.com]

(you hit a nerve, so don't take it as an attack or anything. It's a thing I'm trying to resolve in my head personally because my OCD is fighting with my sense of adventure and my desire to do worldbuilding.)

I agree to a point.

I will not let you (or meta_fandom) scare me out of writing again - which is totally what I came away from this post with - a renewed sense of fear and that if I don't have every single detail completely 100% right, justified and change expounded upon at length, I will be judged and found wanting.

What you say is true, but only so far as you're working in the exact world we live in. Once you start adding in other stuff (be it supernatural or whatever), your mileage may vary in how accurate a Thing is anymore.

cases in point: Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The Girl Genius setting. Gail Carriager's novels. The Bartemeus trilogy. The Society of Steam novels.

Obsessive worrying over how nameless people on the internet will judge you, for not getting their Thing right is both paralyzing and dumb, especially when you are writing anything with fantasy in the name.

If you've changed things, it's logical to have some form of research on how Things Are before you go changing them. I'm not saying research isn't important, or that it shouldn't be done - it should. I'm just saying that when you get into some areas YMMMV.

Now, there are extreme cases of it, some more offensive that others - rebuilding the world so there are mammoths and no Native Americans, on the outside sounds like an interesting idea for your explorer story set in alternate reality north america - except for the part where folks who are, you know, Native American, could find it really racist.

in any case, what I got from this was "know all the minute details about everything from the outset" which is impossible, frustrating, and flat out wrong. Critical details, research beforehand yes so you know if your story can, well, work. But obsession over minor things like the color of paint on a historical building in a town in the 1950s will just stop you and prevent good progress. That's something I'd say "fix it in post" as it's not germane to the plot and 99.9% of people will not know the house was white between 1900 and 1952 and green thereafter.


tldr: research is good beforehand for your critical details. Afterwards you can fix anything in post. Don't let fear of people on the internet stop you from writing because you didn't know that for a single fall season in 1887, ladies in victorian london didn't wear blue at all. If authors can't take liberties at all, then all we'd have are non-fiction histories - and we all know those aren't entirely without bias, hyperbole or inaccuracy.

edit for improper punctuation.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I don't mean that you have to write it perfectly. What I am encouraging is networking. If you were to write a book set in Maine, for example, without having been there, I would hope you get it read by one person in Maine before you call it "finished". If you are rebuilding the world to include dragons, talk to someone about how that might change Chinese culture (my decision there, btw, was to leave it out entirely and hope that no one notices).

Most of the things I was posting about can be "fixed in post". If it's a major plot point (and science based), I do run it past my expert while I'm drafting, though, because it saves time later.