| 7 9 2010
Ridiculous research
Sometimes, I find the number of things
I feel I need to be conversant in to be able to write a book
such as I am/want to write, is so large as to be almost
ridiculous. Anything I talk about likely needs at least
some research.
If I’m talking about a normal house,
its probably fine, but if I’m talking about a massive
ancient temple, I need to answer all sorts of questions to
be able to talk about and describe it properly. Is the
place falling apart? Why or why not? If it is, what parts
are most likely to fail? Doors? Walls? Ceilings? Floors?
Support structures (such as pillars)? Does any of this
change when its built free standing? Into a mountain?
Underground? Is it more likely to suffer degradation from
water damage or from the sheer passage of time? If it’s not
failing, is it because of materials or design? If
materials, what type of materials last forever, what
condition would they be in, and why? If its design, what
does the design look like? Do gothic temples last better?
Or pueblo adobe cliff villages?
And that’s about a topic which most
people know very little about, and which we are more likely
to be familiar than with some others. We live, work, shop,
and travel in and around buildings most days of our life.
We’ve seen lots of them, see how they get destroyed, and
what damage looks like on a building.
So, lets say I’m dealing with combat.
I have never seen combat. The closest I’ve come would be
being in a fight with someone, or else in wrestling.
Needless to say, neither of these two really give me
background on the details of combat such as I’d want.
(Fortunately I do have some idea of feelings in and around
dangerous situations because of these, and feelings are
often harder to research than facts.) But now, dealing with
militaries and warfare, I need to have well defined military
structures, weapon systems, tactics and more. Military
structures are a bit easier, partly because we hear about
generals, captains, and sergeants in movies more often than
we get much information about cavalry charges and phalanx
formations. I’ve talked to officers and enlisted soldiers.
I’ve never met someone who worked in a phalanx. Weird
that. So I have to know, how fast can a phalanx move? What
sort of equipment would they be carrying for a short or
extended deployment? What does their equipment weigh? What
does it look like? How does a formation like that move?
When it moves, what are the problems with moving, and how
might they be exploited? What weapons were traditionally
used in a phalanx? Were weapons developed later on which
might have been more effective than the normal pike/spear
used? Would a Halberd work better than a pike? And really,
what IS a halberd or a pike? Why would one or the other
have been used? What were their strengths and weaknesses?
The entire line of questions quickly
spirals out of control at that point. I look up all sorts
of things about tanks, artillery, what generals want when
making one compared to what designers want. I look up why
the Panzer was better than the Sherman. Why is the M1A1 a
good tank? Is it just speed? Armor? Range? Electronics
systems? What have they considered for possibly making it
better? What would they like to do with it but haven’t?
How would doing something like putting a missile package on
it change its function?
The really NICE thing about writing
fantasy is I can look up large amounts of this stuff in
Wikipedia. Yes, it’s possible the stuff is made up on
there, but generally nerds who go around making up things on
wikis probably aren’t screwing around with what the
difference between a glaive and a bill is. (Both are pole
weapons. A bill is a long hook for dismounting knights
while a glaive has a pike-like spike on the end. It should
probably be noted all the questions I’ve asked in this
document were not things I want to know, but things which I
have already looked up in the past.) Besides, it’s not like
I’m citing my sources. If I use some thought or idea off a
wiki which isn’t entirely correct, I can always call it
artistic license. Still, this adds up to a large amount of
time spent reading historical and semi-historical
descriptions of old battles which typify certain
situations.
It goes on and on and on. I read
things by some authors and I wonder to myself “Hmm, why
would they do X instead of Y? Did the author even check?”
Any time I find myself wondering about something in my own
writing, I go look it up. Generally this takes between 4
and 16 hours a week. Many times I will hunt through 30-40
websites looking for references to my topic. From time to
time I find the name of a book discussing what I’m dealing
with and then see if it’s at a nearby library for me to go
read.
That’s really all I have to say. It’s
ridiculous how much time I spending looking things up, and
sometimes I have to wonder how much of it will get used.
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