The Pitfalls of Research
It’s probably safe to say that every writer does research. It’s fun! It’s important! It takes a lot of time that could be wasted staring at your (lack of a) plot! This year, for the first time in a while, I’m doing NaNoWriMo. Since I’ve got big gaping holes in my plot that I don’t want to think about, I’ve been doing a lot of research. Alaska. Kayaks. The behavior of moose and orcas. What do rich people do all day? What’s the temperature of Resurrection Bay in June? My NaNovel will be contemporary and not speculative, so there’s a LOT to research, of course. The last time I researched for a contemporary story, in the author notes I left the disclaimer, “KD wishes fervently that she had found more time to research rock-climbing, the Civil War, the Underground Railroad, video production, colleges in Western Pennsylvania, visa requirements, Danbury, Connecticut, Civil War re-enactors, and navy slang, but hopes there are not too many factual errors.” People have interests! Things are done differently in different places! You have to get it as right as you can, or people who are enjoying the story get tossed out of their suspension-of-belief and that sucks. I, personally, hate when it happens to me. I don’t want to do it to anyone else! Of course, then you can run into things like the Tiffany problem. Or how, after reading one story I wrote, people found it impossible to believe that a young man went all…