The Closest I'll Ever Get To A NANO How-To Article

I just got finished watching "Weapons Of Mass Distraction" and it's not about what one might think. No, instead of being about the Bush White House's attempts to control the media, it's about two warring media barons who attempt to crush each other personally and professionally (though hardly ethically) in order to secure the purchase of a football team.

It has Gabriel Byrne, Ben Kingsley, Jason Lee, and that good looking curly haired British woman from E.R. So, in theory it seems like it could have been watchable.

If you ever get the inkling of doing so, however, don't. It's every bit as horrible made-for-cable movie as the other information besides the actor's list would note. I notice, and this is a rarity, that no one on my Netflix friends list has watched it yet so there's no one to share my pain. But, hey, in this case it's a good thing.

Why does every movie or program that HBO or Showtime makes have to be a show about the show business industry?

Well, that or war I guess.

Seriously, it's as if they don't want to hire any writers who will actually produce something about the lives of everyday people. I thought that's what Bravo was for - actor, directors, and producers patting themselves on the back.

Which brings me to what I actually intended this entry to be about - research.

Being as last year the research was already done for the most part by just traveling to Warsaw, this will be the first year that I actually engage in researching something that I don't already know about (and yes, I know quite a bit about mental illness and trying to communicate with depressed people - the other theme of "Why Sleep When I Only Dream?" as well).

While I'm starting at a point of knowing something about campus radicals, march planning, and the like (though I plead the fifth if most people ask how), the one thing I know very little about, as I've said before, is the major event in my story that makes all the divergences from the reality time line occur - the War of 1812. So, for the newbies to NANOWRIMO who may be reading this, to whom I hope don't consider me some kind of guru, here's what I do to research for NANOWRIMO.

There's a very good discussion on the Historical Fiction board about the very topic. In this discussion, it was suggested to write first and fact check and edit later.

Now, depending on where you're desiring the NANO to be on the scale between "historical" and "fiction," fact checking is going to be either unimportant or crucial. But either way to leave it to the editing process, especially if you're writing the book linearly, which most NANOs are written (and is horribly incorrect according to every writing manual on Earth), events build on events. Therefore, if you don't research ahead of time and you set one factoid on the wrong path, you're building a house of cards. The first correction you have to make is going to need to be corrected all the way down the line.

Now, correcting timelines (creatively) and the like is one of the biggest joys of NANOWRIMO but correcting names, places, and the like (which find and replace are brillaint functions) is one of the biggest pains.

And if you're writing fiction about something anyone else knows about (which is always the case unless you're writing fictionalized autobiography or fantasy world), there is going to be someone out there who corrects you.

In my case, it's kat_chan who actually, thankfully, caught me on the fact that despite the Americans losing the Revolutionary War, the Northwest Territories would still fall inside United States boundaries. Imagine if I had set the story in Illinois (still not sure where I'm setting it) and based everything on the fact that it was a separate country controlled by the French. Every little minutae of plot point would have been wrong and needed correction.

But it is a good point that while you're writing in November, every second is crucial to achieving 1,667 (more a magic number than 42) words a day. So, here's what to do to get your facts right before you start.

Have a general idea of everywhere your characters will go (or could go). If you don't plot out the story, that's not a problem but now where it might take you. In my case, it's Washington D.C. (which will be renamed Victoria or something), a mid-sized university campus, London, Birmingham (though one that isn't post-industrial). Buy maps of these places. Or, there are literally dozens of mapping web sites on the internet. There are also plane and train schedules which list such things as travel times between them. If you have someone getting from London to Birmingham in half an hour, you better have invented a time traveling device or someone's going to catch it.

Wikipedia.org is the speed writer's best friend. All the information of a real encyclopedia is small article form. Also, there is unlimited information on the internet if you dig hard enough. Believe it or not, last year I actually found the security procedures for Air France right on their web site. And you get the added bonus of getting your name marked in Homeland Security's threat book (I don't think that happened but I like to tell the story anyhow).

You can cheat source material by watching movies about a subject. This is a really weak way out but here's the thing. If enough movies portray a certain thing a certain way, it's the mental picture that most readers get when you say the words. Personally, as a realist to the highest extent, I like to give the actual reality but this is fiction and sometimes the reader will see real as false since it goes against what the media has told them.

Don't trust your memory, use pictures. Nothing helps the research process more than having actual pictures of a subject you're researching in front of you. Psychologically the memory plays tricks on everyone. The view you have of an object is distorted by the memories you have attached to it. Plus, as the old saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words." A memory, at least as far as descriptive usefullness is not very good. Having a picture of a subject helps your word count.

NANOWRIMO's Character and Plot Realism Q&A Message Board is not only a good place to build a police file on someone (seriously ask someone "how do I kill a character using only an egg beater?" and about six or seven people will come up with creative ways to do so - and some will describe it in such detail you think they've done it) but a valuable and quick source of research. Sure it's a cheap way to do research (having people do it for you) but it put a set of minions on a quest while you keep typing away - and trust me, a lot of people on that board care less about finishing their speed novel and more about showing off their arcane knowledge of medieval battle swords and popcorn machines of the 1920s. Words of warning though. You should still fact check whatever you read on that board - keep in mind these people are human too (see the rule about memory).

Take field trips - they're the perfect breaks in the middle of November. Sure you're not writing actual words when you're at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City but you need to see, smell, and feel your source material if at all possible. You can't fake the smell of a Parisian street (trust me I tried it last year) if you've never been to Paris. Now, don't go robbing a bank or anything (if you do it, I am so not responsible) but go to a bank if you're trying to write about a heist. I once wrote a short story back in high school about a comic book warehouse robbery. And you know what? I'm still not sure to this day if they exist so thankfully it never saw the light of day. "Hey it's fiction" doesn't work for certain genres.

Start doing book research now - October should be NANORESMO for goodness sakes - take careful notes and then you'll be ready to go and won't have to take time out in November. No one expects a speed writer to actually read 1000 page source materials but they have a great thing called an index that will tell you exactly what subjects are on which page (alright, now I'm getting too basic). Library cards are every NANOWRIMO participant's second best friend behind Wikipedia. And, if you're like me, you now have 26 days to pay any overdue fees before NANO starts. :)