To actually say something about research. Okay, I'm going to ramble and speculate, hope that's alright with you? I just love the way you've opened this up. 1) Writing rituals. So, maybe, some people need to have blue lined paper and a pencil, some people need absolute silence, some people need to be in a pub, some people need to have their keyboard at a particular angle and use a particular font. Starting writing is so hard. Can there be a way in which doing research becomes one of those rituals, like lining up three different colour pens? Can it be a way of procrastinating? Is it a way of assuring yourself you're doing something useful while waiting for inspiration to strike? Or is it the way you get inspiration to strike? I don't mean you as in tkp, I mean that I suppose the uses of research are different for everybody: as a useful tool, as a distraction, as insurance, as part of the pleasure of writing.
I think we come to fiction in order to get our disbelief suspended, and it's a juggling act, fic in particular having a tendency to be preposterous and convincing at the same time. It all comes under what we mean by storytelling, I suppose. I wasn't going to get into this, but in my opinion, it has a lot to do with emotional honesty in a writer. Some writers can take you to the strangest places...Inca, for instance, could write about flying pigs with hats on and make it enthralling...it's a pleasure to see her imagination unfolding. On the other hand, there is a writer whose work is really well-crafted, imaginative, exciting etc, and i can't get into it because somewhere at the heart of it is a really punitive attitude towards pleasure and desire. It's not that that attitude is there, so much as that it is hidden, that bothers me: probably I'd be ok if it was overt. I can get into sadism as much as the next person...
I've drifted away from the subject again. I guess my point is that you can forgive, or not even notice, questionable details if the story has enough internal conviction to carry you along. But it's part of the contract of respect between writer and reader to be accurate, to have done the work, looked things up, not to been cavalier about it. It's one of the signs the reader has that the writer is doing their best with this story, it sort of...makes the reader trust the writer more, be more open to what the writer wants to do with them (the writer, of course, wants to have their wicked way with as many readers as possible). So I think I'm coming down on the side of research as a technique of persuasion, one of the many a writer has at their disposal.
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1) Writing rituals. So, maybe, some people need to have blue lined paper and a pencil, some people need absolute silence, some people need to be in a pub, some people need to have their keyboard at a particular angle and use a particular font. Starting writing is so hard. Can there be a way in which doing research becomes one of those rituals, like lining up three different colour pens? Can it be a way of procrastinating? Is it a way of assuring yourself you're doing something useful while waiting for inspiration to strike? Or is it the way you get inspiration to strike? I don't mean you as in tkp, I mean that I suppose the uses of research are different for everybody: as a useful tool, as a distraction, as insurance, as part of the pleasure of writing.
I think we come to fiction in order to get our disbelief suspended, and it's a juggling act, fic in particular having a tendency to be preposterous and convincing at the same time. It all comes under what we mean by storytelling, I suppose. I wasn't going to get into this, but in my opinion, it has a lot to do with emotional honesty in a writer. Some writers can take you to the strangest places...Inca, for instance, could write about flying pigs with hats on and make it enthralling...it's a pleasure to see her imagination unfolding. On the other hand, there is a writer whose work is really well-crafted, imaginative, exciting etc, and i can't get into it because somewhere at the heart of it is a really punitive attitude towards pleasure and desire. It's not that that attitude is there, so much as that it is hidden, that bothers me: probably I'd be ok if it was overt. I can get into sadism as much as the next person...
I've drifted away from the subject again. I guess my point is that you can forgive, or not even notice, questionable details if the story has enough internal conviction to carry you along. But it's part of the contract of respect between writer and reader to be accurate, to have done the work, looked things up, not to been cavalier about it. It's one of the signs the reader has that the writer is doing their best with this story, it sort of...makes the reader trust the writer more, be more open to what the writer wants to do with them (the writer, of course, wants to have their wicked way with as many readers as possible). So I think I'm coming down on the side of research as a technique of persuasion, one of the many a writer has at their disposal.