Strange Things You've Had to Research for Your Writing

Ooo :eyes:.

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These seem like such random searches, but these are the things us writers do :joy:.

Feel free to check it out if you want :blush::grin::sweat_smile:

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Yeah, sometimes those ‘random’ searches look funny. But I just don’t want to be caught by someone pointing out I’m wrong when I say my character is walking through the schadow, when he / she’s sitting on the side where the sun comes from :wink:

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…you have 5 stories and 2 that look like they’re a series… help XD lol. i wanna know which one i’m supposed to be checking out, haha, PM me the title please?

yeah… at times like those i’m just like lemme live XD. enjoy the daggone story lol.

I had a college astronomy class that made me calculate this stuff. I love math, but hate it when it’s mixed with science :face_vomiting:.

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My latest search: are there any ghost stories related to Fort Mason, San Francisco?

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… I need to go read your story bio because your searches always seem so random :joy:.

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I think that happens because…

a. I’m a non-native writer
b. living in the Netherlands
c. have set my story in contemporary USA (pre-Corona, I should add)
d. it’s an fantasy / mystery with an action bend
e. I want it to be as factual as possible (for a fantasy story, that is)
f. all of the above

But, yeah, some of those lookups seem a little weird, even I have to admit. At this moment I’m working on some scenes where my MC travels to San Franscisco… so…

  • I looked into proper ratios for cutting up drugs
  • impact of landmines on armored SUV’s
  • how mobile phones are tracked
  • burner phones (we don’t have them in most places in Europe)
  • I actually looked for Greyhound routes
  • overnight stays at stopovers at unmanned Greyhound transfer stations (happened to me once)
  • bus stations in San Francisco
  • how to pay your bus fare on the local public transport
  • what is the most posh area, and how to get there
  • played half an hour with Google Maps just to get a feel for the place

I’d rather explore San Francisco myself, but for now I’m stuck in the Netherlands…

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This is my favorite because you used posh and it makes San Francisco sound much more fancy :joy:.

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Yeah, ‘posh’ might be too big a word :slight_smile:

I was looking for an expensive area to put a weird bookshop in. So I checked some real estate reviews :slight_smile:

When writing about areas one has never been to it’s a good thing to get a feel of the place. Google Maps helps, but to a certain limit. Having been somewhere certainly helps :slight_smile: I’ve been travelling myself a bit in the past, and in the beginning picked up Lonely Planet travel guides, but with better Internet over the years I stopped doing that, and bought much more touristy DK (Captitool) Eyewitness Travel Guides (like this one https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/0241306310/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A29A659H412CD9&psc=1 ). The exploded views help to get a feel of the place.

Of course, I’ve never been to SF, so in this case it’s internet only, but I ordered the Capitool guide anyway, as I have several scenes planned, so the 10 bucks or so I see as a kind of investment :slight_smile: (Don’t buy them on kindle or Kobo, the format is disappointing when compared with the paper version, they’re easy to bring, but harder to browse, sadly enough.)

Another source is TripSavvy: [san francisco] Results from TripSavvy.com

Again, it isn’t about perfect and accurate detail, but about feeling. It would be a little weird to use some stranger’s house up to every single detail in a fiction story :slight_smile:

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Yesterday I tried to find out what kind of clothing the women in Ancient Egypt wore at funerals. But I can’t find anything about the funerals just that they mummyfied people and buried them with everything they thought they needed in the afterlife.

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I feel like funerals would’ve been more of a celebration that their god (I’m thinking pharaoh funerals because they were seen as gods) is idk transcending? Lol

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You are dedicated! :eyes: if I can’t find the info through a person or the internet I either go :woman_shrugging:t5: and make something up to fit the logic lol or I just axe and change xD.

Oh, I make up enough, but I want to make sure it all sounds believable, and sometimes it is just fun to offer the reader a tidbit of actual real-life information. I mean, would a story set in the US be believable if it would get the schooling system all wrong? So some research is required. Re. the SF stuff…

I just thought it to be a bit of fun to include some real locations, in case a reader just might be from SF :slight_smile:

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Yeah maybe. They did put a lot of effort in things… for now I just used a black dress but I might change it to a more festive attire.

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tons and tons of alien biology, skeletal diagrams, lot of clothing, because apparently i cant draw clothing from nothing unless i have an outfit in mind. tons of youtube video marked “best of…” and the name of whatever show my next episode is spoofing.

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Clothing is so much fun to google and think “would my character wear this?”

mausoleums
its complicated

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