![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Research!!
2022-02-26 19:42Either I've stopped keeping up with the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
journalsandplanners snowflake challenge because a few prompts in a row just didn't apply to me, or this is just how all dreamwidth challenges are going to go for me. All in on the first half, sleeping through the second.
Well, technically the stickers and washi tape prompt absolutely applies to me, but it's been a hard week and I want five naps instead.
Anyway.
I woke up on Tuesday morning at 5am with a solution to some of the problems plaguing my vampire/vigilante novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo. The crimes I was writing were sort of... not grounded in the city in which they were happening, just sort of taking inspiration from other fiction I enjoy, like Burn Notice. It's a romance novel so I hadn't really set out to invent some cool new action angle, but if there's one thing I learned writing TJD, it's that like it or not sometimes you have to invent a cool new action angle to give good depth and realism to your romance, especially if they're both competent combatants. So I kind of took into account the weirdness of the city and reworked the motivations of the criminals to fit the setting.
Wednesday, I drunkenly remembered that there's also some scenes where they kind of hack computers for information because it's set in the future and they can't exactly be rifling through papers all time, but god those bits were so lackluster. I don't know the first thing about how to steal information. But I did use to go to school as a CS major and met some people who went on to have careers in information security, so ding ding! Texted a friend I haven't seen in a while asking if I could pick his brain, and met him for lunch today to do just that. :)
Now I just need to also corner someone about guns too.
This friend also offered to answer some gun questions, but I still haven't really figured out why I'm dissatisfied with the gunplay I have so far.
Every time I read about people doing research for their novels, I shudder a lot and swear I'm only ever going to write fantasy completely divorced from reality aside from my own personal experiences. But research can be fun, actually! Slogging through google is a pain, but asking a friend some questions over burritos is totally doable and cool and a very bespoke experience.
It was a little awkward to start. Since I brought my laptop with me to take notes, I felt like I'd contacted some expert stranger via email like "Dear Sir or Madam" or something, but kind of just barrelled through the feeling and a lot of his answers actually helped me resolve some unrelated issues I was having with my plot!!
I'm really excited to write a second draft sometime. Personally? I think it's my best ever stab at original fiction, even as is. It's got so many problems I need to fix, but it's doing a lot of things I've never quite managed to make original fiction do before.
Sorry for typos. I'm no longer able to type and am going to BED.
journalsandplanners snowflake challenge because a few prompts in a row just didn't apply to me, or this is just how all dreamwidth challenges are going to go for me. All in on the first half, sleeping through the second.Well, technically the stickers and washi tape prompt absolutely applies to me, but it's been a hard week and I want five naps instead.
Anyway.
I woke up on Tuesday morning at 5am with a solution to some of the problems plaguing my vampire/vigilante novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo. The crimes I was writing were sort of... not grounded in the city in which they were happening, just sort of taking inspiration from other fiction I enjoy, like Burn Notice. It's a romance novel so I hadn't really set out to invent some cool new action angle, but if there's one thing I learned writing TJD, it's that like it or not sometimes you have to invent a cool new action angle to give good depth and realism to your romance, especially if they're both competent combatants. So I kind of took into account the weirdness of the city and reworked the motivations of the criminals to fit the setting.
Wednesday, I drunkenly remembered that there's also some scenes where they kind of hack computers for information because it's set in the future and they can't exactly be rifling through papers all time, but god those bits were so lackluster. I don't know the first thing about how to steal information. But I did use to go to school as a CS major and met some people who went on to have careers in information security, so ding ding! Texted a friend I haven't seen in a while asking if I could pick his brain, and met him for lunch today to do just that. :)
Now I just need to also corner someone about guns too.
This friend also offered to answer some gun questions, but I still haven't really figured out why I'm dissatisfied with the gunplay I have so far.
Every time I read about people doing research for their novels, I shudder a lot and swear I'm only ever going to write fantasy completely divorced from reality aside from my own personal experiences. But research can be fun, actually! Slogging through google is a pain, but asking a friend some questions over burritos is totally doable and cool and a very bespoke experience.
It was a little awkward to start. Since I brought my laptop with me to take notes, I felt like I'd contacted some expert stranger via email like "Dear Sir or Madam" or something, but kind of just barrelled through the feeling and a lot of his answers actually helped me resolve some unrelated issues I was having with my plot!!
I'm really excited to write a second draft sometime. Personally? I think it's my best ever stab at original fiction, even as is. It's got so many problems I need to fix, but it's doing a lot of things I've never quite managed to make original fiction do before.
Sorry for typos. I'm no longer able to type and am going to BED.
