What Does My Research Say About My Novel?

By Lisa Alber

I'm about 15,000 words (~60 pages) into my work in progress (WIP), and it occurred to me that you might be curious about what novel research looks like for one author.

My novels take place in Ireland, so I have an extra level of research. For example, I can't just research, say, coma patients in hospitals. I'd need to know the particularities about coma patients in Irish hospitals.

I start with research here in the States -- this gives me a baseline -- but then I need to do the groundwork in Ireland. (Lucky me!) As I'm writing my first draft I keep notes about everything that I'll need to check into in Ireland.

It may seem odd, but I prefer to do my Ireland research after I've written the first draft. I can get away with this because I already have a feel for the country from previous research trips, and I have a world that I've already created. And there's so much I can find out online to get me started anyhow.

And frankly, at this stage in my progress, when the story is a tender thing with shallow roots, I'd prefer not to let reality get in the way of the storytelling. I know, I know -- that may sound bass-ackwards, but I truly believe that knowing too much reality could limit my creativity.

I can just hear my big old editor brain bossing me around like it alway does: Oh no, character X couldn't possibly do that because that's not realistic.

So, yeah, I like to steer clear of reality as much as possible while writing the first draft. Here's my equation:

ignorance = writing bliss

I'm exaggerating somewhat, but you get my drift. And, just to contradict myself, in my initial  research forays I often stumble onto quirky, odd, and interesting factoids that rock my novelist's world, things I could never have thought of on my own.

So maybe research is a balance, after all. Enough research to get me started but not so much that I get bogged down trying to cram my story into what the research tells me reality it supposed to look like.

So here I am, 15,000 words into my first draft, and here are some of the topics I've looked into thus far:

• Psychiatric nursing as a career
• Sociopathy
• Night terrors
• PTSD
• Bible quotes related to resurrection
• Butterflies as symbols
• Easter/Spring rites
• Private nursing homes
• Lung cancer misdiagnoses
• Raku pottery
• Objectivity

You can probably tell a few things about the story from this list. Or may not. Give the same list of prompts to 100 writers and you'll end up with 100 vastly different stories.

So what do you think of when you read my list of research topics? What's the last thing you researched online, related to anything?

Lisa Alber is the author of KILMOON, A COUNTY CLARE MYSTERY, which has been called "utterly poetic" and "a stirring debut." The second novel in the series will be published by Midnight Ink in 2016 (more information to come!). Ever distractible, you may find her staring out windows, fooling around online, or drinking red wine with her friends. Ireland, books, animals, photography, and blogging round out her distractions. Visit her on Facebook and Twitter.

Just the facts, ma’am!

by Lois Winston

Years ago I made a huge geographical error in Talk Gertie to Me, my first published novel. Even though the manuscript had been read by members of my critique group, my agent, my acquiring editor, and the line and copy editors at the publishing house, no one caught the fact that I’d set the Mississippi River on the wrong side of Iowa. It took a reader to point the error out to me within weeks of the book’s release.

His comment came as a shock because I really do remember pulling the Atlas off my bookshelf and checking the location of the river. This was before Google Maps, and unfortunately, the Atlas was small, and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, thanks to so many hours each day staring at a computer screen. The font was way too small to read. I saw a line bisecting the map of the United States and running down into the Gulf of Mexico. I assumed it was the Mississippi. It wasn’t. I should have noticed that what I thought was the river didn’t come anywhere near the state of Mississippi. I was mortified that I’d made such a dumb mistake and upset that no one had caught it before the book went to press.

Ever since then, I’ve checked and double-checked all the facts and every piece of research I do for my books, especially when it comes to geography. Since that first published book (which has since been corrected for the e-book release,) I’ve also had the good fortune to work with editors who took their responsibilities more seriously and always double-check my research. Readers notice when you make mistakes, and they let you know about them. Few things are more disheartening than receiving an email from a reader who points out you need a remedial course in geography!

However, I’ve come to realize that novel authors are held to a much higher standard than scriptwriters, who apparently have even less of a grasp on geography than I do. Over the past few years I’ve come across countless geographical errors in television shows.

The first time I became aware of this was watching House. That show was set in the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Medical Center in New Jersey. I live in New Jersey. I know the Princeton and Plainsboro areas. And I know that no one would ever hop a plane to get from there to Baltimore for a conference, as House and Stacy did in one episode. It’s only a 2-1/2 hour drive. When you consider the distance to either the Philadelphia or Newark airport and the time needed to get through security, you could be in Baltimore before the plane took off. Why didn’t the writers know this? Unlike me, they certainly had Google Maps available to them at the time.

If you’re going to set a story in a location you don’t know well or even at all, you need to learn about the area. Yet time and again I see television shows where the writers don’t even bother to check out the basics. I recently watched an episode of a show set in Philadelphia. The series, now cancelled, was actually filmed in Rhode Island, and maybe that’s the problem because except for some of the establishing shots in the opening credits and some scenes that take place in the suburbs, there’s nothing remotely similar to Philadelphia in the show’s exterior scenes.

In the last episode of the show, they gave a location where a witness could be found. The two streets they mentioned don’t intersect; they’re actually the same street, the name changing after the street crosses over into another county. On top of that, the area is quite urban, and the show portrayed the home as a quaint cape cod on a bucolic street. I went to college a block from that supposed location. Trust me, there’s nothing bucolic about it!

In that same episode, the camera zooms in on a piece of paper with the protagonist’s address. The writers have her living on 14th Street. The problem, though, is that there is no 14th Street in Philadelphia. What should be 14th Street is called Broad Street. It’s the main intersection that runs the length of the city. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the City of Brotherly Love would be aware of this. Apparently, the show’s writers never took a field trip to the city where they were setting their show.

Someone pointed out to me that perhaps the writers did this deliberately so as not to show an actual address. If that were the case, they could have simply given the building a number that didn’t exist. Few people would be aware of that, but many people know there’s no 14th Street in Philadelphia.

Little things like this bother me. They pull me from the story. So I completely understand why that reader years ago was annoyed that I’d placed the Mississippi on the wrong end of his state. I learned my lesson and work hard not to make mistakes in my books. Maybe scriptwriters don’t have the luxury of time to research carefully, or maybe they figure viewers won’t notice or care. Probably most TV viewers don’t unless they happen to live in the city or state where the story takes place.

Do errors like this in books, movies, and television shows bother you, or am I being too picky? Do they pull you from the story? Do you continue to read authors or watch shows that make mistakes because the story or characters are so intriguing, or do you give up and move on to other authors and shows?

***

Award-winning author Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series featuring magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. Lois is also published in women’s fiction, romance, romantic suspense, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. In addition, she’s an award-winning crafts and needlework designer and an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com, visit Emma at http://www.emmacarlyle.com, and visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers character blog, www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.

We Find the Defendant …

Cricket McRae

In high school I once skipped classes to go to a trial. I didn’t know anyone involved in the case. It wasn’t scandalous or even all that interesting. Fraud, if memory serves.

I went because I found out most trials are open to the public. I loved Perry Mason, thought it would be cool to see a real case being tried, and had a friend who as much of a geek as I was who was also willing to skip school that day.

Since then I’ve gone to three other trials just to observe. All were civil cases, and all did involve someone I knew peripherally at least. I sat in the back and took lots of notes in case I’d ever need them for a story. Twice lawyers approached me and asked why I was there.

Because I could be.

Then a couple months back I got my very first jury summons. I could have postponed, but this was as good a time as any to do it. Plus, they’d never actually select me, right? After all, I make up stories about crime. So I entered the courthouse with mixed feelings last week. I wanted to be selected, and at the same time I didn’t.

Arguments! Objections! Witnesses! Experts! What fun!

An actual crime, perhaps someone hurt or worse, and it’s partially up to me to decide what happens to the accused? Not so much fun.

There were thirty people in the jury room. We watched a film designed to deflect resentment about being there at all. I could tell it didn’t really work for most people. Twelve people were selected from that pool. I was one. Six were eliminated after a ton of questioning from the assistant district attorney and the defense attorney. I was one of the six who remained, mostly because I don’t have children, have never been through a nasty divorce, and was not abused as a child.

See, this was a case of negligent child abuse. It was hard to watch the two young girls who tearfully and unwillingly testified against their mother. Photo exhibits, maps, and reports from the police and social services were all introduced. What had looked like a one-day trial spilled into the next day.

I didn’t sleep very well that night.

After closing statements, we were given our instructions and sent off to deliberate. The six of us began earnestly going through the details of what we had to determine in order to find the defendant guilty. After some general discussion one brilliant soul pointed out we would save some time if we went at it from the other direction: Was there or was there not reasonable doubt?

We voted on slips of paper. Not guilty six times over. And not a single one of us liked it. Something had happened that day a year ago. It didn’t appear that an injury had occurred, but it was a volatile household going through a very ugly divorce, with each of the parents and the children playing off each other. Toxic. Unhealthy.

But details were murky at best and contradictory at worst. Reasonable doubt did exist, and just because we didn’t like it didn’t mean we could ignore that.

Have you ever served on a jury? What was the case about? Do you consider jury duty an honor in a free society, a duty, a pain in the patootie, or none of the above?