Know about as many things as you can!

The classic advice to writers is to write what we know, or the more accurate alternative: “Write what you know, or can research.”

There’s an inference in the quote above, that information you research is inherently different from information you know. Which, I suppose, may be true, depending on your definition of knowing.

There are different types of information which feed into a book. The original advice to write what you know was never about all of that information. It was about themes. Write about ideas that you understand and identify with. That you know, intimately. The details: the characters, locations, events, back story, that’s what needs to be underpinned with a mixture of inherent and/or researched knowledge.

There are also different kinds of research. Some can bring you closer to knowing than others.

There’s a risk sometimes as a writer of experiencing everything from behind a computer screen, looking up facts, figures, descriptions and photographs. Where it’s just about factual accuracy, that’s exactly the kind of research we need. Last week I spent a few hours collating astronomical data and moon phases, and let me tell you, that is exactly the kind of task where the internet is invaluable. If you want to know when Jupiter aligned with Venus in the 18th century and what day of the week it was… no problem.

But a lot of what goes into a book isn’t about factual accuracy, it’s about perception, capturing the essence of something. Consider location for instance.

Christ Church College – Oxford – Image © 2015 Christine Harrison

There’s really no substitute for first had experience of places. I took a trip to Oxford recently, to research locations for my current novel. None of the pictures I’d seen prior conveyed the shear volume of tourists and the constant frustration over parking and vehicle access. The Oxford in my book wasn’t going to believable unless my characters were constantly shoving through crowds of people aimlessly looking up at the architecture.

If you need to describe a particular building from the outside, you might just about get away with streetview. But if you want to know what it looks like inside… well there things start to get difficult. Sometimes you get lucky. I found a conservation policy document for one of the buildings I was researching, which included pictures of all the restricted internal spaces, but even with the accompanying floor plans, it was still hard to work out how it fit together.

On my trip I visited the building and went on a guided tour, and that gave me an understanding of it that far surpassed what I could get from pictures. The pictures helped me research it, but the visit helped me know it.

Visiting the locations also created ideas. Once you can stand in a place, and visualise the scene, exciting new options suddenly begin to pop out. Previously invisible details present themselves for consideration.

The School of Natural Philosphy – Old School’s Quad, The Bodlian Library, Oxford – Image © 2015 Christine Harrison

Actually going there might sound like a “well, duh” suggestion for location research, but many writers skip it, if only because their location is a fictional place that doesn’t exist. But, in a way, it’s almost more important to visit your fictional places. Your imagination remixes and recycles experience and blends it with abstract ideas. If you have no experience to draw on you’ve limited your potential already.

Imagine your setting is a fictional forest on an alien world. You can’t visit it, but you can visit other forests here on Earth. Perhaps your location is a fictional factory; visit some other factories that do exist. You can find your location hidden a bit here and a bit there within the places you go. You can find it in the differences between what you imagine and what you see.

What goes for locations goes for everything else: pictures and descriptions = good, field trips = better.

That might sound daunting, but really it’s the best thing about being a writer! We get to try everything. We get to dip in, give things a go, observe, and then try to fake being an expert when we write. How renaissance.

So my philosophy is “write what you know, and get as close as you can to knowing about as many things as you can.” Not only will it make you a better writer, but it’ll be crazy good fun.

Story Cards – Microfiction on a Postcard!

Over on The Great Escape we tried an experiment on National Flash Fiction Day. We happened to be at Cardiff Comic Expo on the day, so I asked the guests there to challenge me to write them a story. I got several different prompts which inspired some weird and wacky micro-tales.

The experiment went so well we decided to share the results on the website, and start developing new and improved story cards ready for our next convention. Rather than plain white cards, we’re going to print a selection of designs for people to choose from.

You can see all the “Prototype” Story Cards over on The Great Escape.

Microfiction Monday – Discovering Elvis

Image courtesy of Simon Howden

Mr Aberforth pulled the potato from the ground and brushed off the dirt. He threw it into the bucket with the others, but, as it flew through the air, something about it caught his eye.

A strange surge of excitement set his stomach fluttering. He wiped his palms on his jeans and carefully recovered the spud. He turned it over, gingerly.

The way it tapered to a point, like a chin. Eyes which suggested, well, eyes. And, that darker blemish, there, like a mouth. But, most distinctive, the way that top bit stuck up, with a suggestion of a curl.

The face of Elvis Presley stared out at Mr Aberforth from the potato.

He cradled it to him and glanced furtively around the allotment to see if anyone had noticed. Everyone was busy with their own veg. He quickly bundled his tools into his tiny shed and wrapped the celebrity vegetable in a plastic bag.

There wasn’t a moment to lose. He had to show the world!

Mr Aberforth’s Elvis potato makes a guest appearance in the novel I am currently working on, called “Mime”. I felt the moment of discovery deserved it’s own story.

Have you ever found a vegetable that looked like something else?

Microfiction Monday – House Mouse

The food was at the back of a small, white box. Mushkin put her foot on the smooth surface and tested it. Nothing bad happened. She sniffed and felt with her whiskers. Strange smells mixed with the tempting aroma of wheat but none that she recognised as dangerous.

She stretched her little body forward and stuck her head and paws into the box. Then she crawled in completely.

The floor rocked and something clicked. She turned around quickly but the way she had come was now blocked. For a moment, she panicked and threw her tiny form against her close prison but succeeded only in moving it across the floor and not herself out of it.

Then she calmed down and ate the morsel of cracker she’d been after in the first place. She understood that she was trapped and that was bad but no part of her could think her way out. When it started to get light, she slept.

© Copyright Zorba the Geek and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0

We caught a mouse in our kitchen last night. We’ve named it Mushkin. I don’t know if it is male or female but we’ll call her she for the time being. She’s actually not a house mouse but a field mouse like the one above.

We think she found her way in through the walls and came in to escape the bad weather we had last week. There might be more of them so we will leave some food out tonight and see if it goes. If there are more I’d rather catch them all and release them all together.

Muskin is currently in a plastic box with some bedding, water and food. She seems pretty chilled out about it all.

Camp NaNoWriMo – Stationery and Field Trips!

Tomorrow I start the mammoth task of turning my 70,000 word manuscript into a finished novel. I may not finish in the month of April, but I plan to put a shed load of work in. 60hrs or more.

I had a little personal celebration moment today and indulged my stationery addiction. Look, new binders! One of which I actually needed! The other two I bought because there was a 3 for 2 offer… not sure what I’ll do with them yet.

Part of the reason I wanted to celebrate was because today I decided to build a field trip into my Camp NaNoWriMo month. I’m going to Oxford, one of the main settings for my novel, Mime. While I’m there I’m going to visit the Bodleian Library on the Oxford University campus for a guided tour.

A lot of what I write is set in fictional universes; either fantasy realms, other planets or futuristic versions of our world which only bear a passing resemblance to where we live now. It’s a lot easier to write when you can create your locations from scratch. With Mime I have had to take a different approach. Set in present day, real world cities and areas of the UK, it needs a fine balance between accurately described real world places and imaginary places that would fit into the wider real world locations.

Place is something that has to be experienced in my opinion. Even with such powerful tools as Google Earth and Streetview it’s hard to get a feel for somewhere you have never been. It’s hard to get a sense of the scale, weather, people or vibe of the place.

I want my readers to believe the story I tell takes place in a place they know, and to do that I need to go there and, if possible, write the scene in the location.

Other places on my “To Visit” list include:

• Oakhampton and Dartmoor
• Castle Park and Victoria Square in Bristol
• Debenhams in Bristol
• John Radcliffe and Churchill hospitals in Oxford

How do you research real world locations? Do you take field trips to places that will feature in your books?