How serious is (your) story research to you?

[NicoleZ]

Before and during the process of writing a new story, is it important to you that your descriptions are accurate or do you just make them up as you go along and hope that no-one notices? A sentence such as "She cried out joyfully as the feelings engendered by his massive 10-inch cock entering her virginal ass took her to heights of ecstasy she had never experienced before" will immediately be seen for what it is by someone who has suffered from constipation. Also, I doubt many readers would be upset to find that their solicitor Mr Peters, who actually does live at 65, York Road, Basingstoke, has been replaced by one Mz Susan Ashman. Bad or non-existent research really can kill a story as surely as taking too great care to get your details just perfect, so how do you deal with the following situations?

* Locations. Do you just make up generic ones as does Stephen King, or do you base them on actual places and try and render them as accurately as possible?

* Language and dialects. While phonetic transcription is definitely taking things too far, do you strive for correctness of vocabulary and try to inject at least some local colour into the dialogue? Or couldn't you care less if an American character speaks of "the lift" and says thing such as "The harbour is a colourful venue" or "Are you mad!" when it's clear that "mad" is supposed to be a synonym for insane and not angry?

* If you yourself do not have any personal experience of, say, cross-dressing, do you just leave it to your imagination or would you actually consider buying the relevant items of clothing and go out wearing them in order to experience for yourself what it's like? Now let's increase the stakes: You want to describe a scene where your heroine uses a strapless to make love to her SO. Again, do you rely on your imagination or what others tell you, or do you go out and buy one and then use it when you make love to your SO and have her use it on you before you get down to writing that scene?

I'm sure you can come up with a whole host of other and probably more relevant examples, but these will do for starters.

 

[oggbashan]

The research for my stories comes from a long lifetime. I have a disclaimer at the start of most of my stories - the people and places are fictional.

I do sometimes use actual places but only ones I know or knew. I wouldn't write about US places that I haven't visited even if I could do extensive research about them. Most of my places are imaginary. For example I set two stories in 19th Century India but they're not a real India only an imaginary India. I tried to give a flavour of India under British rule but not the reality. The reality was more unpleasant.

But people? Never, or almost never. The exception and the only 'real' person in any of my stories is Fag-Ash_Lil in jeanne d'artois story Unatit. Fag-Ash_Lil actually existed and was like the character but even more unpleasant to encounter. She is now long deceased.

Every other character is a construct taking bits from people I've known or met. Except for Fag-Ash_Lil none of my characters are based on a single individual.

I think it is dangerous and potentially awkward to use real people because I could cause offence. Places? Anyone who knows a particular place well could spot mistakes but I sometimes get feedback saying "It wasn't like that" or "That couldn't have happened then". Rarely they are right. Usually I know that it WAS like that and that ACTUALLY happened then - because I was there at the time I was writing about.

 

[lovecraft68]

I do very little research. Most of my stories take place locally so I never have to look up landmarks or names.

I don't do period pieces so never have to research any type of history. The only two things I write about aside from simple sex scenarios are the BDSM lifestyle and the occult and I have lived plenty of both of those lifestyles and never have to look anything up.

As for your example about the 10" cock entering the virgin ass to her delight? To me, that's not lack of research, that is a writer going with good old fashioned porn absurdity.

In reality she'd be screaming and in agony and that wouldn't be sexy so they go with the porn trope of a virgin who somehow fucks like Sasha Gray.

Look around the top lists, mindless 'pure porn' dominates here. Research or common sense or reality need never apply unless the author wants it to be realistic for themselves.

 

[OmnislashXX]

I look up visual representations of places and clothing sometimes. Gives me a feel for what a person's house will look like for example. Also, what the characters are wearing so I can realistically describe how they take them off.

 

[TxRad]

I do very little research for Lit. As Ogg said a long life and experience go a long ways. A good imagination and common sense go a long ways also.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I research it all.

99% of what I write is from experience, and most of the time my fund of experience is different from porn fiction or the studio porn movies.

Most of the time my story settings are Tampa, particularly Hyde Park, Ybor City, and Seminole Heights. Or Tallahassee circa 1890. I know my settings intimately. My latest features an Ybor City building of 1890, still around, and used for hotel, bars, restaurants, clubs over the years. I call it The Black Market in my series. I have many photos of the place, so I can describe it all accurately.

Homosexuality never registered in my mind till I came across a scene Lawrence Block wrote about anal sex. Block researched sex to an extreme degree. Take his writing to the bank. But he wrote how anal sex creates erections made in Heaven for the fuckee. Then I understood. The woman in his story insisted her lover get a cock in his ass while they fucked, so she'd reap the benefit of the erection. OK, I learned something.

Many years ago I had a hooker sweetheart. I often spent the night with her. And I was curious about why me. She fucked guys every night. What she told me was QUICKIES DO NOTHING FOR ME, AND WHEN YOU COME ALONG I KNOW I CAN GET RELIEF WITHOUT RACING THE CLOCK. I'm not a power stud, I stay up a long time and make all the stops along the way.

Most sex lasts 6 minutes, the oral stuff adds minutes.

 

[ChloeTzang]

...........

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I do a lot of research if it's needed for the story. For my Chinese Takeout series, the research for me was all around bikers, biker lifestyle and motorcycles, none of which I have any experience with. So I read, I emailed backwards and forwards with the real Round Out, I went out riding on the back of a Harley to get a feel for what it's like. I went and researched how you make leather jackets, biker slang, expressions, all the stuff I didn't know - and then I ran what I wrote by Round Out for authenticity. The nice thing was to get comments and emails from real bikers saying "you got it".

For where restaurant scenes come into my stories, I go find real restaurant menus and food and wine reviews... and for Tae Kwon Do and fight scenes, I go talk to the master at the TKD school I train at and run them by him (he's an ex MMA fighter and he knows....). Same thing where I work guns in - I shoot a bit but for guns I don't know, I'll ask my partner or his buddies that we shoot with down at the range and mostly I'll write about guns I actually have used. Most of my stories go beyond just the sex and I like to get all those little details as authentic as possible and then work them into the story as naturally as possible.

I'm working on a story now where the main character drives a Ford Mustang Cobra SVT 2004 so I've been off on Mustang forums asking questions and getting advice on what mods you'd do to a mint 2004 model. Quite fascinating and I love those details, time consuming as they are. But I always feel if you're going to go there, you better get the details right.

Mostly I use generic locations but every now and then I use real places, like Twin Harbors in Strawberry Chapter Four. So I've actually been there camping a few years ago, but I went to google and looked at maps and photos of houses and buildings there to get the geography and the shops and houses right before I started.

So I guess I'm saying I do a lot of research where I need to for the story. I really like to get those little details right. Even a throwaway line can give a story that much more authenticity and make it feel so much more real to the reader.

In the early 80s I worked at the Tampa Shipyard and became intimately acquainted with a gang of bikers my union signed up to man the job. They looked fierce but soon revealed their true characters. All had the leather jackets and boots and scarves and beards, but few had bikes. They were sidewalk commandos. Not one was what I call bright or clever. They reminded me of the clowns in the Clint Eastwood movie, EVERY WHICH WAY.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I research places as a lot of my work has the characters crisscrossing the country(USA). I have been to a lot of places in the US...a lot. From Boston to California...Minot to Key West. I also use Google Earth a lot to get a sense of the lay of the land.

People...after sixty-six years of life, I have run into all kinds of people. I find most are just people you might live next door to...but there are some, really characters who I find I instantly dislike or instantly become enamored with. But they are all people. Plain ordinary people. And no matter what he says, Jimmy is no different than anyone else he's people.

Lifestyles. If I need to, I read about them. If it is something I can use, I do.

Everything else, I make up. After all, it is fiction.

 

[NotWise]

* Locations. Do you just make up generic ones as does Stephen King, or do you base them on actual places and try and render them as accurately as possible?

Most of my stories are in generic locations; a few are not. My Valentine's Day contest story was in a real location. My Summer Luvin' contest story was in a real location, though some details were made up. Before Lit, I wrote a series of stories in historical locations and those required quite a bit of research.

* Language and dialects. While phonetic transcription is definitely taking things too far, do you strive for correctness of vocabulary and try to inject at least some local colour into the dialogue?

I try to avoid dialect because even if I can write it well it makes the dialog less readable. The Valentine's Day story was an exception, since it uses a little Spanglish--not a lot because, again, it becomes hard for most people to read.

* If you yourself do not have any personal experience of, say, cross-dressing, do you just leave it to your imagination or would you actually consider buying the relevant items of clothing and go out wearing them in order to experience for yourself what it's like

I mostly stick to my own experience, so sex in my stories is usually pretty plain vanilla.

 

[GoldenCojones]

I'm somewhere in the middle, I guess. I use google maps to give realism to locations, even in my home town because I don't know all the street names and numbers. For my High Fantasy stories (not on Lit) I have done quite a bit of research on different medieval armor and weapons and dress, but the rest I make up because it's my universe and I can do what I want (within reason).

I got dinged a little on my "The Summoning" story for not researching Wicca enough, even though they were definitely NOT Wiccan, but I get it because they resembled Wiccan and Naoka really wanted it to be more female centric.

As far a language goes, I really dislike when an author goes so overboard on using dialect that it is hard to read, but using a little, IMHO, does add to the story. If the character is Texan, I throw in "ya'll" and "gonna" a lot and make them say colorful phrases now and then. If the character is Aussie, I use "sheila" for women, and a few other trite Aussieisms. I'm careful not to say "lift" when an American is speaking of an "elevator" and so on, and I do some research when I'm trying to write a speaker from a foreign country (to me) that I'm not familiar with.

IMHO, the right amount of research will enhance the story. Too much can make it read like James Michener.

 

[holliday1960]

Most of the work I have done, and not yet published, are period or historical pieces based on real characters. Those require months, if not years of research. The little shorts I post on lit require less if any research at all.
I agree with the fact that OVER doing details, especially when working on a timeline in a story can totally trip you up and you'll get caught in a web of miscalculations that may just wind up with a story that won't pass the censors or the reader's keen eye.
Unless a story is based on an actual address that has some historical connection to the story, why would anyone specifically give an address? You're inviting criticism and trouble in doing so. (Just my opinion.)
If a story is based on reality, then research is a must. Accuracy counts. Otherwise, anything goes in fantasy.

 

[Hypoxia]

I, too, am old, experienced, and forgetful. I am possessed by a reality fetish and map addiction. What I don't know, I research, often in telling detail.

Some stories require specific locations; the setting may be an active character. Some stories can take place almost anywhere so generic or unspecified is fine. The people are mostly real but I manipulate them. I avoid anachronisms in period pieces; the technologies must fit. If I don't know an unimportant detail, I wave my hands and make it happen.

Language: I don't usually mess with dialects. If my players speak Spanish or Hopi or German, I include an Author's Note to the effect that it's rendered as Aenglish. And if a foreign word is uttered, a translation quickly follows.

Hey, it's storytelling! Paint vivid word-pictures. Involve the readers. Give them enough to see the scene, feel the flow, smell the sweat, etc. But don't move Seattle's Space Needle to Egypt.

 

[Kantarii]

When I consider the fact I'm writing fictional fantasy type stories, I don't really bother that much with research. Just doesn't seem a huge need to try to keep fiction on the same level as non fiction. Kant

 

[CyranoJ]

If I'm doing a period piece, I'll typically put a fair amount of research into getting period details right; generalities of history, culture, costume, attitudes, religion and so on. I'm careful about doing too many period pieces because that kind of research is easy to get lost in, and one can wind up never actually producing a story.

* Locations.

Freely invented, using real places as inspiration where applicable.

* Language and dialects.

Where I want to suggest dialect I usually try to do it subtly and sparely, and to make sure I feel halfway comfortable with the dialect involved.

* If you yourself do not have any personal experience of, say [...]

I usually base sexual content on personal experience as much as I can, or on extrapolation therefrom, or failing that on particularly hot (to me) descriptions of a kind of activity I haven't directly experienced that I've encountered in decent erotic writing. And I try to make sure the basics of anatomy are right; I find it distracting when a story revolves around the hymen but the writer clearly doesn't understand what or where a hymen is.

That said, it's sexual fantasy; I'm not concerned with making everything perfectly naturalistic. Characters can be improbably beautiful, willies can be improbably large and well-performing, boobs improbably firm, buttsecks and deep throating miraculously easy and so on.

 

[NoJo]

I read lots of books about Japanese for a little story set in the Edo period. Best thing about that story for me was all those books I read.

 

[ChloeTzang]

........

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I have to research. I have to have things be real.
For my Serendipity story it was based in Milwaukee, I've only been there once so I researched a few things for the story.
In one chapter they visited an art museum and talk about a sculpture so I made sure it is actually at that museum.

Little things like that I like to be realistic.

 

[Areala-chan]

Sexual stuff in my stories is based pretty much entirely on my own personal experiences (incest-y stuff excepted due to lack of real-life sister).

Most of my writing has required very minimal research. I'm from Indiana, so I set most of my stories there even if it's only in my head while I'm writing and never explicitly stated.

"Crash Into Me" required the most info digging, as it involves a character who loses a leg in an accident. I spent the better part of a month watching videos on YouTube of people who've documented their experiences with such a surgery, I read about the medical procedures, post-op care, prosthetic limbs, post-amputation support groups, and rehabilitation. Real life even got in on the fun, making sure I experienced my first deploy-all-the-airbags, thank-god-that-was-not-my-fault, how-the-fuck-did-that-not-kill-me? car crash a few months after I started writing. While it did ruin a two-decade perfect driving record (and my beloved Kia), I walked away with minor injuries, a far superior understanding of what happens when you get hit that hard, and all my limbs intact. Needless to say, I re-wrote the accident scene after enough time had gone by that thinking about it no longer triggered an adrenaline fear dump.

Thanks, real life.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I write in fictional settings for the most part, partly because I like world-building and partly to emphasise that what I'm writing about doesn't necessarily translate to the real world. But personalities have to be realistic and facts that do correspond to the real world have to be correct.

I don't say where things happen (to emphasise that I'm writing about human nature, not specific settings or cultures) so I don't worry about maps. But I'll spend an hour or two reading about medieval spanish culture or psychological conditions or molecular biology, just to get a sentence in a story right. I like research; and stories are ruined for me when someone gets some basic science or other simple fact checking wrong, so I don't want to do it to others.

When I write sci-fi, I'm not afraid to introduce the scientifically unlikely, like FTL travel or mind reading/writing. But I don't attempt to justify it or explain it; it becomes part of the mythology.

If I had advice for others, it would be to leave computer science and computer technology out of your plots. If you don't understand software, you'll get it wrong. If you do, your story will be horribly dated in 20 years. If you try to project forward, you'll get it wrong and look stupid in ten years.

 

[sr71plt]

I closely research settings, time periods, etc., when that's important to the story (and it often is in my stories), to provide a solid base of believability and lay the fiction on top of that. I stay away from dialects to the extent that's possible, because I don't do them well and they tend to intrude on the read unless you just use a hint of them. In matters of sexuality, I don't stick to the clinical. That's not what erotica is about for me.

 

[HeyAll]

First off, I never had a problem with 10 inch cocks in a story. Why? Because they actually exist. There's a few of those in porn, or at least close to that size.

As for everything else, it doesn't matter. Sometimes I'll name a city, sometimes I'll just say downtown, or the community.

Basically, as long as it doesn't get crazy, I don't worry about it.

Common sense is the main thing.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

Wow that is COMMITTED.

I thought I was being clever with Wikipedia. I'm way too lazy to do much more than that.

I do a lot of research if it's needed for the story. For my Chinese Takeout series, the research for me was all around bikers, biker lifestyle and motorcycles, none of which I have any experience with. So I read, I emailed backwards and forwards with the real Round Out, I went out riding on the back of a Harley to get a feel for what it's like. I went and researched how you make leather jackets, biker slang, expressions, all the stuff I didn't know - and then I ran what I wrote by Round Out for authenticity. The nice thing was to get comments and emails from real bikers saying "you got it".

For where restaurant scenes come into my stories, I go find real restaurant menus and food and wine reviews... and for Tae Kwon Do and fight scenes, I go talk to the master at the TKD school I train at and run them by him (he's an ex MMA fighter and he knows....). Same thing where I work guns in - I shoot a bit but for guns I don't know, I'll ask my partner or his buddies that we shoot with down at the range and mostly I'll write about guns I actually have used. Most of my stories go beyond just the sex and I like to get all those little details as authentic as possible and then work them into the story as naturally as possible.

I'm working on a story now where the main character drives a Ford Mustang Cobra SVT 2004 so I've been off on Mustang forums asking questions and getting advice on what mods you'd do to a mint 2004 model. Quite fascinating and I love those details, time consuming as they are. But I always feel if you're going to go there, you better get the details right.

Mostly I use generic locations but every now and then I use real places, like Twin Harbors in Strawberry Chapter Four. So I've actually been there camping a few years ago, but I went to google and looked at maps and photos of houses and buildings there to get the geography and the shops and houses right before I started.

So I guess I'm saying I do a lot of research where I need to for the story. I really like to get those little details right. Even a throwaway line can give a story that much more authenticity and make it feel so much more real to the reader.

 

[Hypoxia]

I try not to let research run amok. I don't immerse myself in subcultures -- if I don't know about it, I either skip it or throw in just enough Wiki'd detail to be plausible. My forthcoming autogyro stories (if I live so long) won't be procedurals. It's enough to know the bugger flies.

Some of my top (and bottom) stories are based on personal experience; re-reading old journals sets me straight. One top story covers real historical figures who left extensive personal histories... about everything except how they got together, so I had to make up that stuff. The sequel will be a-historical and mostly lies but the settings will be coherent.

If chemistry, medicine, electronics, physics, technologies etc are involved, I either get them right or gloss-over them. I don't hesitate to include dated technologies in period pieces -- they add the right flavors. 1950s USA cars had windwings but no seat belts, radios but no tape decks (but maybe a portable record player), and big, wide, bench seats suitable for wild fornication. Also huge engines smoggily burning cheap petrol. Much can happen in that Edsel.

Beside such research, I pay close attention to timelines, sometimes mapping-out generations to make sure everyone fits. Like place, time can be a major character. If I specify a time and place, I make sure I have the weather right, and lunar phase, and whatever else is germane. Yes, Easter 2010 in Portland, Oregon *was* a cool, cloudy day -- that's why they snuggled-up by the fireplace. And a half-moon broke the cloud cover that night so they could see what they saw and do what they did.

Fantasy worlds are another thang entirely. I may merely copy them from old F&SF stories.

 

[NicoleZ]

Thank you for your excellent replies this far! There really is plenty of very good advice here, pure gold for writers starting out and even for people who have published a great many stories already. I especially liked HandsInTheDark's advice about leaving computer science and computer technology alone as it applies to any story that takes place in the near or foreseeable future (such as Larry Niven's & Jeffrey Pournelle's "Footfall" where SS Challenger is in the thick of the fighting against the alien invaders only a few years after it's ill-fated flight).

To all replies above!

Yes, the genre you're exploring with your writing certainly does play a major role in what and how much one needs to research as does the geographical setting chosen. Detail does add flavour to any story, just be certain that the flavour you add is correct and do not season too much!

But no matter how careful and judicious you are, you will unfortunately run across the imbecile know-it-all eventually. Mine was another writer, a professional critic in real life, who kept deriding my story because my dialogue did not incorporate renditions of local dialectal words, pronounciations and peculiarities of speech, which heconsidered characteristic of that particular region, in every single sentence, something he claimed rendered it completely unreadable, and he kept poisoning every installment with YouTube videos to illustrate his point. In the end, I left the story unfinished just short of the half-way point after having written about 40,000 words, deleted what I had already published and also quit that particular site.


PS. I'm sorry HeyAll but I cannot resist the quip about whether you intend "common sense" in the former or the latter sense.