Research: Or, how not to send an SOS at least a decade before it was invented
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| Title: | Research: Or, how not to send an SOS at least a decade before it was invented |
| Creator: | Sheila Paulson |
| Date(s): | 1997 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | Fandom & and "the Net" |
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Research: Or, how not to send an SOS at least a decade before it was invented is an essay by Sheila Paulson in Psst... Hey Kid, Wanna Buy a Fanzine? #6.
Its focus was on doing proper background research for fanfiction.
Excerpt
How do you avoid making an idiot of yourself in front of the whole membership of MediaWest*Con? Three little words: Research, research, research. Take the trouble to check out your facts. Someone once submitted an otherwise great story to me in which they made the claim that St. Vincent's Hospital (where our favorite Beast, Vincent, was discovered as a baby) was the hospital nearest to Central Park. I would have called on this anyway, and checked it out, but as it happened, I had chanced to walk past St. Vincent's Hospital only a few weeks earlier, and knew it was a considerable distance from Central Park. A quick glance at a New York City guidebook proved that there were other hospitals far closer.You don't have access to a New York City guidebook? Well, how about a library? They do, and reference librarians might find your questions more interesting than the usual, 'where is the copy machine?' or, 'when is Tom Cruise's birthday?' Three reference librarians pitched in and helped me when I was researching the Tsimshian Indians, and two of them trailed around after me as I researched the Effigy Mounds, a national monument from the Mound Builder era. When I'm researching a story, I spend a lot of time in libraries. Or check out the World Wide Web if you're on line. That's helped me out more than once. Still on the subject of hospitals, I once placed a scene in a hospital in a town I had never visited. I phoned the hospital and asked questions like, "How many floors does your building have?" and "What direction does the emergency room door face?" Probably no one from that hospital is ever going to read the story; no doubt I could have invented a fictional town and a fictional hospital without hurting the story one iota. But when you can opt for a touch of realism, do. It sounds more believable if you know what you're talking about. Remember that old adage about writing what you know....
One can overdo, of course. I've read stories that were superbly researched but the writer took it upon herself to put every detail of that research into the story, sinking it beneath the weight of excess minutiae. The readers don't need every detail. They only need enough for the plot to work. The writer has to know more than his readers. Tell too much, and you'll not only bore your readers into skimming your story but also you give the impression you are showing off. Use of detail must be handled deftly. I remember once reading a Rat Patrol story and I could tell the writer had done a lot of research on the period, knowing things like the brand names of food in use during World War II, and books and magazines and the like. Such information was tossed in by the characters in dialogue the way someone today might mention Fritos or the Letterman Show. It made the story seem more real. That story stuck in my mind because it evoked the atmosphere of the period so well and made it come alive for me.
You say you write fan fiction for fun and you don't want to do so much work? Well, I read it for fun and pay good money for the zines I buy. A sloppy, poorly researched story is enough to make me avoid future issues of the zine in which it was printed. Yes, for most of us fan writing is a hobby. Not all of us will go on to become pro writers; nor would we necessarily want to. But that's no reason for not doing our best when we write stories. We love these characters or we wouldn't bother writing about them in the first place. It's only fair to give them our best. Yes, it's our hobby, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't put real effort into it. [1]