Research for Writers Level Five: Experts

I used to be a member of the IATSE in Seattle, which is a labor union for stage employees and film crews. Certain jobs in the trade still carry the age old tradition of categorizing the experience level of the worker.

A new worker has no title. They might be referred to as a skilled laborer, but otherwise they would have no title. Once they gain some experience they can become an Apprentice. Historically an Apprentice would have to be tied to a particular Master, but currently that is not necessarily true. Once an Apprentice has learned enough to become proficient at a craft he can become a Journeyman. One can spend years as a Journeyman before ever being considered a Master.

When I would work for the Seattle Opera, I would often work for the Master Carpenter. At the Paramount Theater, I often worked for the Master Electrician. These titles are a bit misleading because in the theater a carpenter actually just builds the sets and does scene changes, while an electrician deals with lighting. The point is, you cannot be considered a Master until you have years or even decades of experience in your craft.

You can read more about the Apprentice-Journeyman-Master model at the Wikipedia article.

The point as it relates to research for writers is that if you really want to dig deeply into a topic, there is no better research than seeking out a Master of the craft. A person who has spent their entire life perfecting their skill will posses such a depth of knowledge regarding the subject that it will boggle the mind.

That kind of first person source cannot be matched through reading, or even experiencing, something yourself. Jumping out of an airplane once, or even five times, does not make you an Airborne Ranger. There are nuances to such things that can only be understood through living them for a lifetime.

This is not the kind of thing many writers can manage to accomplish. I for one have never interviewed a Master regarding a topic that I wanted to write about, but I know the option exists. Potentially it could be extremely difficult and expensive to do, depending on what you need to know.

If you need to travel to Quantico to speak to the FBI behavioral science experts about profiling serial killers, and you live in California, you'll probably have to be a very successful writer to be able to afford it. However, if I really wanted to, I could probably find Master Blacksmith somewhere in the state of Georgia who I could meet and interview for no more than the price of gas and lunch. And probably beer. A lot of smiths seem to like dark beer.

It all depends on what you're looking for and how much detail you need. For WARRIOR-MONKS I don't think it's necessary. I've learned enough from books about forging a sword that I think I've created the scene in an authentically believable way (assuming you're willing to believe in a little magic). I don't really think there is anything so specific in my novel that it would require speaking to a Master to do it right.

Yet, I would love to one day write a story that did require the knowledge of a Master. If I did, there would be no better source than a person who had spent their life gaining a mastery of their skill, craft, trade or art.

Yes, that is the Osensei Morihei Ueshiba up there. Have a great weekend!

Research for Writers Level Four: Experience

They say write what you know, and I suppose writing about things you have already done wouldn't really be research, but you could always go out and do something, have some new experience in order to be able to write about it better.

Writing a crime novel? Ride along with the cops. Writing about skydiving? Go jump out of a plane. Writing about Aikido? Go study the martial art at the local dojo.

Personally I would love to take Aikido lessons as a way to research for my book, but I'm way too fat and out of shape, and between the soul-sucking day job and fatherhood, there really isn't time.

So this will probably be the shortest post in the research for writers series. There isn't a whole lot to say about experience except to go out an live. Travel. See exotic places that will inspire exciting settings. Do things you have never done before that will give you plot ideas. Meet people you would have never otherwise met so that they may inspire unique and original characters.

Be sure to take notes. Dig deep in to your experiences so that you may glean the most from having had them. Nothing familiarizes you with the details of a craft or art more than doing it yourself. Want to know how truly difficult it is to do battle with a sword? Do it. Want to know how nearly impossible it is to escape the Polizei on a motorcycle in Frankfurt? Okay, don't do that, but you could rent a motorcycle if you've never ridden one.

So technically for WARRIOR-MONKS I did not go out and do anything new to research for the story, but I did base it off of some things I had already done, which is sort of like the past participle of research.

When I was 16 I was sent to reform school in Idaho for being a knucklehead. They didn't have magic, and they didn't have martial arts, but it did provide the setting for most of my novel.

While I was there at school I spent 6 weeks living out of a tent and a backpack in the Cabinet Mountains in Montana. It was one of the most wonderful experiences I have ever had, and yes, it inspires a few scenes in the novel.

As I have written about before, we took part in Sweat Lodge ceremonies, and went on an informal Vision Quest. Both those things made it into the book.

Have you ever had an interesting experience that you adapted into a story? How far would you be willing to go to experience new things in the name of research?

Research for Writers Level Three: Books

Okay, so for level three, we're going to cover books. That post title should really say: Books, Librarians, and Libraries, but that's too damn long.

Like yesterday's post about websites and the internet, using books to do research for writing novels is an incredibly broad subject, one that is almost impossible to cover without getting incredibly specific.

Before I go into my own specific example I just want to cover, for a moment, how to find books on the topic you need. Obviously you can use Wikipedia, as we covered on Monday. The References listed at the bottom of most articles usually point to some excellent books about the subject. You can also search Amazon.com or B&N, or even Google, just looking for a specific title. Google used to even have a great tool for shopping, called Froogle, but it looks like they've changed it to just a tab across the top called shopping now. Anyway, there are countless ways to find books on a specific topic, but far and away the very best is to go to your local library, and talk to your librarian.

Librarians are Masters of Books. They've spent their whole career gaining and maintaining knowledge about books, research, reading, and even sometimes, writing. If you have never talked to a Librarian about research for writing I highly suggest you do so as soon as possible. There is no better method, no better technique, no better experience in existence. You absolutely cannot compare the value of human ingenuity, especially when someone has spent most of their life mastering a craft, even when compared to the power of something like Google.

If, like me, you live in a small town, still go to your local library. The Librarian there will usually happily point you to a bigger library if necessary, and even if they don't stock the books you need, they can still help you find out that the books exist. Which is a start.

If, like I used to, you live near a big city, I highly suggest that you visit the main downtown library. There is nothing quite like the main library in a large city. You may not be able to track down the head librarian, but almost every librarian in places like those is a genius.

So, now that my library rant is over, let's cover my specific example.

WARRIOR-MONKS contains a scene in which the characters take part in the forging of a steel sword. To be more precise it's a traditional Japanese Katana, but when researching how to write this scene I wanted to cover the art of blacksmithing in general as much as I could.

Hands down the very best book I found on the topic was The Craft of the Japanese Sword, by Leon Kapp, Hiroko Kapp and Yoshindo Yoshihara. I actually heard of this book in the acknowledgements of a novel I read, so that goes against my points above, I suppose, but it doesn't really matter.

It was the only research book I bought to keep, but I checked out several other books on smithing, sword-crafting, metallurgy, and other topics that seems related, like polishing steel, scabbard making, hilt making, armor, and so on.

Here is a list of several other books I looked at. I did not necessarily check all these out, and it was a while ago now, so I don't remember for sure which ones I used the most, but each of these books deserves a look, especially if you are interested in swords or blacksmithing:

• The Backyard Blacksmith: Traditional Techniques for the Modern Smith by Lorelei Sims
• The Complete Bladesmith: Forging Your Way To Perfection by Jim Hrisoulas
• The Art of Japanese Sword Polishing by Setsuo Takaiwa, Yoshindo Yoshihara, Leon Kapp, and Hiroko Kapp
• Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868 by Morihiro Ogawa
• New Edge of the Anvil: A Resource Book for the Blacksmith by Jack Andrews
• The Complete Modern Blacksmith by Andrew Weygers
• The Pattern-Welded Blade: Artistry In Iron by Jim Hrisoulas
• Knives and Scabbards (Medieval Finds from Excavations in London) by J. Cowgill, M. de Neergaard, and N. Griffiths
• Facts and Fundamentals of Japanese Swords: A Collector's Guide by Nobuo Nakahara
• The Japanese Sword: A Comprehensive Guide (Japanese Arts Library) by Kanzan Sato

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point. The blacksmithing scene was by far the one that required the most research, but there were several other things I had to learn more about to write my novel. About half of the books listed above were suggested to me by my librarian, the other half were found by plugging the names of the books she showed me into Amazon, and letting it suggest similar titles.

I didn't necessarily have to read every single one of these books. Many weren't available, but by getting a look at the first few pages, the cover art, and the title, I was able to tell with decent accuracy how much help a particular book would be.

Questions? Thoughts? Have you ever rocked your nerd card this hard and went so deep with research on a topic that you had fun with it? Lost your mind? Gave up on the scene?

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for level four.

Research for Writers Level Two: Websites

Today we have the second entry in our series on research for writing fiction. We'll be covering the internet.

The internet is a big place. There is no way we could cover it all. Instead we'll go through some specific examples of how to find what you're looking for, and cover some great resources that have worked for me, in very specific situations.

Yesterday we discussed Wikipedia, and it's a great starting point, but I strongly encourage you to dig deeper into the web to find the detailed information you are looking for. One way to get there, as we covered, is through the References and External links at the bottom of a Wikipedia article.

Another is a Google search. Or I suppose you could use Bing, but no matter how many annoying funny commercials they put out, Microsoft will never convince me that they're as cool as Google. Google is the best general search engine on the web, and is very good at narrowing results by searching for images, or news. You can also narrow you searches even further, but that's a whole separate post. You can see Google's basic search tips, here, or read some more advanced ones, at dumblittleman.com.

There are also some other basic alternative search engines, like Yahoo, Dogpile, Yippy, and one of my favorites, because it's so old: Metacrawler. I also like that it sounds like a Lovecraftian horror, but that's another post as well.

Then you have search engines that are intended for a specific use, and will only return specific results. IMDB is essentially an engine that searches only information in it's own database, which relates to the entertainment industry, and is an incredible wealth of knowledge regarding, films, television shows, actors, production crews, video games and fictional characters. Technorati is similar, but only searches blogs. USA.gov is for publicly searchable government records. There are several other examples, but I'm sure you're all familiar with them.

At this point is is difficult to get much more specific. After the basics everything is going to depend on what it is you're looking for, and how much information you need about it. Let's use some examples from my own novel, WARRIOR-MONKS.

The story is set, mostly, in the panhandle of Northern Idaho. For specific reasons that we won't get into here, nature plays an important role. I've been to the place I'm describing, so of course that helps (and is part of level four) but it's been years, and there is no way I could remember everything I saw there anyway. So I had to research the land, focusing on the flora and fauna. After extensive perusing of the internet, I found this website, the Idaho Native Plant Society. The wealth of information and depth of detail they have regarding the local flora is ... well, it's out of control. I'm sure there are many other great resources for this topic out there as well. For animals it's a bit tougher, but the University of Idaho Extension site has some good resources.

For one more quick specific example, something that features heavily in my book is the Japanese martial art Aikido. I have never studied it myself, except for reading about it extensively, so I had to research it. I won't go into every resource I looked at here today, but one thing that was of great use during fight scenes was the website Expert Village. As of the writing of this post Expert Village has apparently been acquired by ehow.com. There is also an Expert Village Youtube channel. Both of these sources can be used to find videos related to very specific topics. For example this basic wrist grab technique instructional video is very useful:

You can go much deeper and get far more specific than this simple example, trust me.

So that's it for today. One more real world example I want to give you about using the internet for research is just to point you to my friend Lydia Kang's post from yesterday. Her Medical Monday posts are always awesome, but yesterday's featured an excellent set of examples of the websites she used to find her information. You can read it here. Scroll to the bottom for her sources. Lydia is also a doctor, but it still helps to find more sources than your own knowledge.

Research for Writers Level One: Wikipedia

There are those, like my buddy Steve, who would tell you that Wikipedia is not really research.

They're right.

That's why it's only level one.

Wikipedia, although it is a great resource for certain things, cannot be trusted to the point where you should use it as your exclusive source for information. The nature of a wiki means that it can be edited by almost anyone, and therefore the reliability of the information is low. You'll find, if you read and use Wikipedia often, that certain types of articles are more reliable than others.

Articles on a place, like the main Kyoto, Japan article, or articles on a historical event, like the main American Civil War article, tend to be based on facts that cannot be disputed, and therefore are usually relatively reliable. Articles on a person, especially one who is still living, and even more especially one who is politically or religiously active, tend to be incredibly unreliable. For example, the Jeremiah Wright Controversy article, being both political and religious, is one of the most highly edited pages on Wikipedia.

All that being said, Wikipedia does have its uses, even when it comes to research for writing fiction. My favorite use of Wikipedia is as a way to check my memory. I'm the type of guy whose head is filled with useless facts that I have no idea why I remember. Some of them are accurate, others are not. I often use Wikipedia as a very basic reference to check whether I remember something correctly.

Another great use is to discover some of the articles and websites that we will cover tomorrow, in Research for Writers Level Two. Wikipedia has two sections at the bottom of almost every article that will lead you to better, more detailed information. References will lead you to books, using their title and ISBN, that were either referenced in the writing of the article, or are heavily related to the topic covered. External links will take you to websites that are outside of Wikipedia, and are related to the topic in the article. The quality of these external websites and the information they provide can vary widely.

So that's it for today. Be sure to come back all week for the series on research for writers. We're not done with tropes yet either, I just have to do some more, well ... research.