LITEROTICA PODCAST
LIT CAMS (200 Free Tokens)ADULT TOYSVOD MOVIES

Weird stuff you've researched?

SyleusSnow

SyleusSnow

Experienced?
Joined
Jan 13, 2017
Posts
612
Maybe it's been asked before, but what weird stuff had you researched when writing a story?

My latest story delves into modern witchcraft, beekeeping and making fudge, things I knew nothing about and had to research for weeks. It occurs to me I've looked into a lot of odd stuff for stories, none of which I ever expected to. An incomplete list: :)

Gypsum processing
Laryngitis
Demon summoning rituals
Jewelry-making
Living homeless
Compersion
Moose mating habits
Lobster suppers in tourist towns
Hypothermia
Dissociative identity disorder
Parrot rescue centers
The banjo and famous banjo artists
Hippie culture and lingo
Old and new methods of stealing cars
Chainsaw mills and log cabin construction
How to clean fish

What are some odd things you've researched for your stories?
 
- the importance of prepositional verbs in Lugandan
- commonly confused aspects of statistical analysis
- Wuxia
- the experience of ADHD
- Kiwi slang
- Flamenco guitar techniques
- human tower building
- the layout of the Manchester University students' union building
 
I spent a weekend researching how to store, retrieve, and run computations on data stored as DNA. That led to a day of research into xenotechnology, which is taking frog stem cells and replacing the DNA with custom sequences to create programmable biological computers that could hopefully get injected into someone (to do things like kill cancer cells, correct vision, repair damaged organs, etc).

I did NOT use this for my "blowjob competition" story.
 
I'm not sure I've looked up anything weird per se, but I have looked up a wide variety of things.

Such as a lot of medical things, everything from how long does it take a piercing to heal, to how long does it take a bone to heal. And how to give stitches, to what damage does strangulation cause. Seriously at one point I half expected Google to go, "Hit the space bar twice if you want me to send help."

I've also looked up things for a fantasy world where I don't exactly need historical accuracy, just technological realism. Like I wanted to use the phrase, "She could practically see the gears turning in her mind." So I had to look up when gears were invented. They've been in use since the copper age. So might be well known in a fantastical iron age setting. And that led me down a very interesting rabbit hole about early machines.

I also keep looking up how aquatic creatures move, how they stay buoyant, how they sense things in the water, how well do their senses work in general, can they vocalize underwater. Yes they can vocalize, as long as there is water flowing over whatever they're making noise with.

I've also looked up buttplugs for my writing, but I'm sure we've all looked up some sort of sex toy for writing here.

And how long can wool last submerged before degrading. Six months, longer if it's oiled, however if it's in salt water oiling won't let it last that much longer because salt acts like a weak detergent.

Heck, when you're writing a story with a mc who is an aquatic person you gotta look up a lot of stuff to do with that. Even if my audience won't care, I do.
 
Not exactly "weird," but I spend many hours on Google Maps researching locales to the street detail level, and travel distances and times. The greater environment the characters operate in is, I guess, one of the main characters.

In fact, just yesterday I wrote a 1300-word scene based on an unexpected discovery doing map research.
 
Been there, done that, no research required. Thought about it during the other two, but didn't do it.
SyleusSnow said:
Maybe it's been asked before, but what weird stuff had you researched when writing a story?

My latest story delves into modern witchcraft, beekeeping and making fudge, things I knew nothing about and had to research for weeks. It occurs to me I've looked into a lot of odd stuff for stories, none of which I ever expected to. An incomplete list: :)

Gypsum processing
Laryngitis
Demon summoning rituals
Jewelry-making
Living homeless
Compersion
Moose mating habits
Lobster suppers in tourist towns
Hypothermia
Dissociative identity disorder
Parrot rescue centers
The banjo and famous banjo artists
Hippie culture and lingo
Old and new methods of stealing cars
Chainsaw mills and log cabin construction
How to clean fish

What are some odd things you've researched for your stories?
Click to expand...
 
Researched
Poisons and their effects on the human body
Guns, Knives, and other implements of personal protection/destruction
Serial Killers and how and why they kill
Psychological disorders
Aberrant behaviour
Police procedures
BDSM -- Breath control, whips, crops, restraints, mumification (Saran wrap), medical play, forced chastity, and other stuff!
Methods used to dispose of bodies

And other things all for stories
 
Way before AI became as big as it is now, I did a lot of research on it for a story involving a state-of-the-art, high-tech "smart" vibrator for women.

Turns out they have those now, but not near the level of the one in my story, EARTHSHAKER.

I wound up not using a lot of the info in the story; as technobabble, I felt it made the story too "Tom Clancy-ish" and worked against the pacing.
 
ThatNewGuy said:
Anyone who reads a story called "Kyle the Weremoose Gets Lucky" hoping to nitpick the authenticity of moose mating habits has problems. Just sayin'.
Click to expand...
I can't talk about therianthrope stories with my SO, because the only reason he didn't major in biology in college was because, "Too much math." And he'll go on and on and on about how that's not how that animal works! But, they're also human, so who cares?
 
MillieDynamite said:
Researched
Poisons and their effects on the human body
Guns, Knives, and other implements of personal protection/destruction
Serial Killers and how and why they kill
Psychological disorders
Aberrant behaviour
Police procedures
BDSM -- Breath control, whips, crops, restraints, mumification (Saran wrap), medical play, forced chastity, and other stuff!
Methods used to dispose of bodies

And other things all for stories
Click to expand...
Well, that's both compelling and terrifying.
 
ChuckWolf said:
Way before AI became as big as it is now, I did a lot of research on it for a story involving a state-of-the-art, high-tech "smart" vibrator for women.

Turns out they have those now, but not near the level of the one in my story, EARTHSHAKER.

I wound up not using a lot of the info in the story; as technobabble, I felt it made the story too "Tom Clancy-ish" and worked against the pacing.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Barely 1% of anything I research ever actually makes it into a story. But without knowing everything about a subject, how can you know what to include and what not to?

I have to resist the urge to show off my newfound knowledge of a subject and insert too much detail into the story.
 
THBGato said:
- the importance of prepositional verbs in Lugandan
Click to expand...

AG31 said:
Can you tell us more about this one? The why as well as the what?
Click to expand...
Okay, so Ramona, one of the key characters of several of my stories, is from Uganda and Lugandan is her mother tongue.

At the very end of Forty - in a scene that was described as a *chef's kiss* by one commenter - another character speaks to her in Lugandan. They are in public, on ferry in fact, but nobody around them can understand what is being said. Obviously, I rendered the Lugandan in English for readers but gave some thought as to what this would sound like. Lugandan makes lots of use of prepositional verbs (similar to phrasal verbs in English e.g. turn off, get in, move out) but the rules for them seemed very complex. The speaker was a beginner, so I decided to have her speak very simply e.g. "I kiss. I lick. I touch." and avoid phrases that would require prepositions. Now, that's obviously not exactly the same, but I felt it would convey the sense of what it's like to speak a language that you only have a very basic grasp of. I did include one word in Lugandan though, one of my favourite, which is okutogaatoga, which means "fingering" (more or less).
 
Some random stuff I've researched:
  • Fly poop
  • Popular sled riding spots in London (Primrose Hill, if you're curious)
  • Layout of Tate Britain
  • Metropolitan Police ranks and divisions
  • Orthodox saints
  • How to make crop circles
  • Moon dials in grandfather clocks
  • Box cameras
  • 19th-century varnishes
  • Fourier transform infrared microscopes
  • Amedeo Modigliani
  • Traditional Ecuadorian dishes
 
I often have to "research" (more like look up) minor things about the daily life in the US, where most of my stories are set, because even having lived there for many there years there are still many details I could easily get wrong. The various intricacies of the education system are probably the biggest example.

As for more specific examples, I'd mention:
  • Ranks / command structure in the San Francisco Police Department
  • Illegal fishing methods practiced in the Pacific
  • Exact layout of satellite dishes in the Arecibo radioobservatory
  • Management of pet shelters
  • A few words from one particular constructed language, to disguise them as the alien language in one of my sci-fi pieces
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

trysail
A Commonplace Book
3 4 5
Replies
105
Views
8K
trysail
trysail
Back
Top