Thursday, October 2, 2014

Research Junkie - That's Me!

I love doing research - as boring as it sounds - but I do.  Before I begin writing anything, I do my research into what I'm going to write.  It may sound like a really boring, horrible way of studying, but really, if you don't do your study into what you're going to write, your readers will pick up on it.  And believe me, there'll be people out there who will know more about your subject than you do - and there's nothing worse than having somebody who's going to e-mail you later and tell you that you've got something in your book wrong - well in their eyes and through their life-time of studying the subject you've based your book on.

So, I do love to research my books thoroughly before I even move too far into writing the first few chapters.  What I do first is:  write down the premise of my book - exactly what do I want to get across to my audience.  Can it be done?  Who cares?  This is exactly what being a writer is all about - making the audience believe what you write.  Okay, sure, it means you lie to them... but you gotta make the lie sound like the truth, then make it stick like crazy glue, and then your readers will hang onto your band wagon no matter where you take them!  

Yep, it's true!  

Okay, right now, I'm writing a book called 'Angel Love'.  It's about Angels, Heaven, Hell, Demons and Lucifer... oh, yeah, and humans too.  It's a love story. Doesn't sound like it, right?  In amongst the biggest pissing match to beat all pissing matches between the Archangels and Demons, the humans are caught in the middle with Lucifer walking the Earth (well, whoops!  Who let him out of his cage?) and then there's Hell Hounds, The Scribe of God and The Minder of Souls... yeah, I added in a new guy.  I have two love stories in this book - but only one will pull through.  Which one will have a happy ending?  I'm not going to tell you, and even I don't know yet; but it's going to be a hell of an ending.

But I had to do my research before I even put pen to paper.  I had to find out about Angels, Demons and Lucifer... I had to find out about their roles in God's eyes.  The really weird thing is that I'm totally not religious and found researching this the strangest thing... I firstly went to Google and it came up with too many meanings for the Angels and Demons thing.  I looked around my own library, and I didn't have enough works about them.  So, I had to fork out some money on two books about these things - yep only two were out there that were any good.  One of them I scored at a second-hand book store, and the other was one I had to order in brand new.  I've gotten all my other information from friends and religious leaders I've been in contact with.  It hasn't caused me to question my own path (well, okay, it has, and I really want to be a Buddhist now because it's not great being a believer of God with all that stuff going on - so much fighting between the Angels and Demons).  But it's interesting writing about them all.

Then, I've written a couple of sci-fi books.  Now, these are fun.  You can write about a real place or fictional place.  But using a real place is easier, as you can really nail down buildings, city plans and keep track of streets with photographs and city planning for the future.  And then there's all the gadgets you invent for your book - you really feel like a 007 spy when you get into it all; and it's quite a lot of fun!  But you gotta be careful, as what you write sometimes becomes reality far sooner than you realise - and that's damned creepy!

However, I do love research in a big way... I think that's why I love to read and why I have such a large book collection.  I think reading - in its own weird old way - is research.  And the more you read, the more you absorb, the more you learn and the more ideas you get for your own works.  What do you think?  Love to hear your opinions.  Until my next post, happy reading!

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