Using Grammar and Good Manners to Save the World

I’ve been talking about the difference between gathering information for specific reasons or for general information, because sometimes you need to know specific things and sometimes you just want a big, general overview.

Digging into archives to dig out a specific name, a particular fact can be satisfying. Like a detective looking for clues, you know you’re looking for one, certain thing that can prove your hypothesis, or that you can hang your entire story on. It’s like solving a puzzle, and that can be very, very satisfying. But I find that there is as much pleasure in just doing general background reading. The beauty of that is—if you’re not trying to get to a specific place and are just meandering through—you’re going to see so much more, be open to new possibilities.

Okay, say you need to drive from New York to California, you’ve got two possibilities. You can plot the quickest route, climb in the car and head out to the highway and cruise at 70 m.p.h. for the next 10 hours with a couple rest stops. If you persevere, you’ll be there in a week.

Except, you will have missed the chance to see any sights on your way. The Great Lakes? Oh, was that the gleam I saw on the horizon on the way by? The Mississippi River? Well, it was dark when we crossed it. The Rocky Mountains? Oh, I remember those, the car really had to work to get up the incline.

Research is often blinkered—you get so focused on the one piece of information you need, you forget to look around.

Or, maybe you take the Tourist’s approach. You need to get to California, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime journey, so you decide to take advantage. You swing south to stop at the nation’s capital and then head down toward New Orleans, cruising along the Gulf Coast, stopping at the Grand Canyon, and generally just meandering your way across the continent, stopping when you see something interesting, and just taking in the view.

The beauty of reading for general background (as opposed to specific research) is that all the possibilities are open to you.

Just in the last week, I’ve found a few details that have made my creative juices flow.

• Like, for example, after WWI ended, Britain had 2 million more women than men, having lost so many soldiers in the war. One headmistress told her graduating class that only 1 girl in 10 of them would ever get married because there simply was no one left for them to wed; they would have to find something else to do with their lives. For a generation raised to believe that marriage and motherhood were the pinnacle of feminine abilities, that is a terribly frightening statistic.

…I immediately started to wonder, what do you do if you would like to get married but there literally is no one to marry? They’re not just hard to find or “the good ones are taken.” They are dead and gone, and your entire generation, sorry, is out of luck. But, in the meantime, you’ll excuse the rest of us if we look down on you for being a spinster and are reluctant to give you a job because the men need those, can’t you sit in a corner somewhere out of the way? All 2,000,000 of you?

• Or, I needed to know the name of the Governor of New Jersey in 1917 for my main character to shake hands with. It turns out that Walter Evans Edge—a man I’d never heard of—was governor not only during World War I but World War II as well. In between, he served in the U.S. Senate and was ambassador to France until the outbreak of WWII led him to re-enter politics.

… This caught my attention. He must have been a remarkable man. He must have done a wonderful job leading the state in World War I, if the electorate was willing to vote for him again 30 years later. So, why have I never heard of him? Is there a monument somewhere? A plaque? Something that honors a 70-ish year old man for taking up such a hard job again in a time of war? What kind of governor was he? What kind of man?

• Did you know that in 1917, King George V changed the family name from the German-sounding House of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha to the House of Windsor? This goes way beyond calling Sauerkraut “Liberty Cabbage.” Your name defines you in so many ways–whether it’s the name you were born with, or one you married into (or away from). It’s not something most of us change lightly.

…At a time of war, when hundreds of thousands of young men (and some women) were being slaughtered … what made the British royal family decide to completely change their sense of identity? To cut themselves off from years of German-related pride? Kaiser Wilhelm I was the first-born grandson of Queen Victoria, after all.

But, see? This is the point.

If you’re busy focusing on the one thing you need, you’re not going to have time to take these little mental side trips. And isn’t that what creativity is all about? Visiting the lesser-seen spots, pointing out the inspiring views and interesting history along the way?

(This is part 3 of a series. Read Part 1 HERE. And, Part 2 HERE.)

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So, what’s brought this subject up, anyway? (Read Part 1 here.) I’ve been reading about the World War I era to get a feel for it for my Titanic-book sequel. I’m skimming my way through books and websites, picking up ideas and tidbits of (possibly) useful information, but I’m not looking for anything specific.

At this precise moment, I don’t even know what I need to know.

I haven’t worried about the dates of the battles, or the names of the generals—they are not really necessary to my story. My characters don’t know all the details of what was happening at the front, and they don’t really care. They are busy just trying to live their lives.

Background is all about color.

I’m reading these WWI books for an idea of the world my characters lived in. Without some general knowledge of life in 1917-1919, my book would be like a pencil sketch of a person, detailed in itself, but which has no background, no real setting to give it perspective.

When you’re writing—no matter what you’re writing—you want a full-blown painting—rich with color, and with a complete background.

You can’t get that with just a few facts. Anybody who ever sat through a boring history class in school knows this. Bare facts are dry, but stories are interesting. I might know that the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on February 3, 1917, but it doesn’t tell me the reasons—the debates at home about German submarines, or trench warfare, the economic involvement with Britain and France, the debate over the draft. My characters might not be busily debating these things in meaningful chapter-long dialogues, but they’re reading them in their morning newspapers, worrying about them when they toss in bed at night.

I don’t need to mention them, I just need to KNOW them, just like I know that my vacuum cleaner sucks up dirt and dog fur, that my cellphone can send text messages, that there are 50 states in the United States of America, and millions of other little bits of information that set me in MY place in time. I know these things that inform my world, but they don’t necessarily have an immediate impact on my daily life.

Research is for when you are looking for something specific.

On the other hand, if I want to describe what my main character wore to meet the Governor, I’m going to need an idea of what fashions were like in 1917. That’s research.

If I need to know the name of the Governor, that’s research.

Did she ride in a car or in a horse-drawn carriage to meet him? Research.

Could he have received an important phone call while she was there? Research.

See? Knowing that telephones are fairly common in 1917 is background, but the minute I need to know for a specific reason, it becomes research. Knowing that there was a governor my character could meet is background (because, of course New Jersey had a governor), but learning his name was research.

Mind you, this distinction is entirely my own personal definition. A lot of the time gleaning background information and doing research are exactly the same—sitting with a book or a handy search-engine, looking for knowledge. But you can read a car’s instruction manual out of pure curiosity and you’re a responsible car owner, or you can read it because your engine is leaking fluids and you need to figure out why right now … the NEED is different.

(This is part 2 of a series. Read Part 1 HERE.)

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I’ve had a few thoughts about research rummaging around my head lately, and thought I’d turn them into a blog post, but it turned out to be way too long, so I thought I’d try a series, instead.

There’s a cozy mystery by Alisa Craig with a character famed for writing historical fiction, whose “research” involved randomly flipping a reference book open, sticking a pin into the page, and inserting whatever factoid it skewered into her book. She couldn’t be bothered with real research, she just wanted a few, random things to make it look like she knew what she was talking about.

I think we can all agree that research can be important for writing. Fiction or non-fiction doesn’t matter.

If you’re dealing with facts, they need to be right.

Inaccuracies reflect badly on us, the writers, whether it’s a statistic in a marketing piece, a quote in a blog post, or a historical fact gotten wrong in a piece of fiction. But, still, I feel there’s a difference between “doing research” and “gathering background.”

If I’m writing a piece on air purifiers, I need to know some facts about how they work. I need to know, in general, what they do, why they’re beneficial, and why you should have one. That is not the same as talking about the specific air purifier I might be trying to sell, or what makes it better than its competition. It’s more background-gathering than real, heavy-duty research.

What’s the difference?

The objective.

Research, to my mind, has a specific purpose. You could be looking for the date a war ended, the year a gadget was invented, the name of a company founder, the causes of cancer. These may or may not be questions that have ready answers, but they are specific information needs.

Background, on the other hand, is more general. At what time did having a telephone in the house become common? What was life like in the 1500s? What sort of town was Bath during Jane Austen’s time? Why is going to the dentist important? Is marketing really that useful to my company?

No matter what you’re writing, there’s a certain foundation of knowledge you need to have.

If you’re writing a marketing piece to sell vacuum cleaners, you can probably assume that potential buyers already know what a vacuum is and why they want one—your objective is to tell them why they should by THIS one. But, if you’re selling something that you have no personal knowledge of (say, professional-grade harvesting equipment, Zamboni machines, obscure medical devices), you’re going to need some background first.

You need to have at least a general idea of what you’re talking about if you want to sound even remotely convincing.

If you’re writing fiction, you need to know all sorts of things that might not find their specific way into the text. A story set in 1860 Atlanta will have all kinds of things in the background—the outbreak of Civil War, slavery, Abraham Lincoln’s election, tobacco, the latest hoop skirt fashions, the scent of magnolia blossoms, the tart zing of lemonade, what a hot, Georgia summer feels like without air conditioning, what it was like to travel in a carriage on bumpy roads … you get the idea. Will all of these things have a role in the story? Not necessarily, but they’re THERE. They are things that even a character solely focused on bringing in his cotton crop knows is happening in his world.

Okay … that’s enough for this installment … please share your thoughts below!

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Did you know that Writing has a lot in common with any good Fantasy? You know the kind, where a hero faces enormous odds to go on a quest to save the world?

• Skills and Talents: Obviously every good hero needs a skillset. In fantasy, that would be sword play, great strength, nobility of heart. In writing, we’re talking grammar, vocabulary, a talent with words. Before starting your quest, you need to make sure you have the equipment you need.
• Magic: The best part about writing—that magical moment when everything comes together perfectly and you get that “Oh, that’s good” glow of accomplishment. It’s one of the best feelings in the world, and only happens when all the pieces fall precisely into place.
• Wizards and their tricks: Have you noticed how many nifty tools there are for writers these days? We don’t just have just pen and paper, now we’ve got computers, and even they aren’t limited to basic word-processing any more. There are online dictionaries and thesauruses. There are timers to help you focus for blocks of time. There are spelling and grammar checkers. Voice recognition software for when you can’t type. Recorders on your MP3 players for interviews and random thoughts. Organization software to help you keep all your pieces in order. Plus dozens more that I’m missing.
• Quest: Every good fantasy needs a goal, and for writers, it’s that perfect document at the end of the journey. It might be a magazine article, a blog post, a novel, a poem, a piece of perfect sales copy, a spot-on web page … anything, really … but you want writing that is perfect. Strong, clean, noble, brave … all the things a fantasy hero needs to be.
• Apperances can be deceiving: You can’t always believe what you see, though. Just like heroes can look like small, incompetent weaklings, and villains can be handsome and strong, you can’t assume that what you find is what it is. Good writing digs past the surface to explore the true meanings.
• Luck: As important as skill can be, don’t underestimate the importance of luck. You might keep your sword meticulously sharpened, but it’s not going to help you fight a battering-ram. Sometimes, all the skill doesn’t matter if you don’t have the luck and wits to think on your feet. Keep your eyes open to possibilities.
• Danger: Look out! There are distractions trying to pull you from your path! Time-sucks eager to delay you and keep you from your goal! Don’t let yourself be deceived by the innocuous distractions, the ones that make you think, “I can always finish this later. What’s wrong with a little recreation?” They could be evil, trying to prevent you from reaching your goals. Beware!
• Determination will win the day: The only way to successfully complete your quest is if you don’t give in, you don’t give up. Keep your eyes focused on the prize and don’t let yourself be distracted. It’s the only way to win the day.
• Happy Endings: The best fantasy stories always have a happy ending. The article gets published. The book hits the bestseller list. The sales piece sells a million units. The trick is to traverse the dangerous path to get there, but if you’re brave and strong and focused on your goal, you will succeed. That’s what happy endings are all about.
• Sequels: Don’t forget the sequels. Always be ready for more … this could be an actual sequel, as in another piece to follow up the writing you’ve done, to continue the story. OR, it might be an All New Adventure … publishing. If your successful quest is finishing your piece of writing, the obvious next part would be the quest of getting it published so other people can read it.

So–what’s your writing fantasy?

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Image by Jenny. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenny_twum/

I was reading a book the other day … a highly educated, informative tome with dozens of pages of footnotes and an index as long as your arm. It was written, needless to say, by a well-educated person, published by a well-known publishing house and, no doubt, read over by many a skilled and critical eye for typos and errors.

However, it’s a fact of life, though, that errors slip into even the most carefully produced books.

In this case, it was the “yolk of oppression.”

Instead of the bright yellow center of an egg, the author meant the wooden yoke that harness oxen and other animals to carts, plows and other labor-intensive vehicles.

But there it was, glaring as bright as ever a sunny-side up shone from a dish.

Do I think that the author didn’t know the right word? Of course not.
Do I think he mistyped it? Possibly, or it could have been the type-setter, or any person along the line who made a small little goof. I don’t doubt that the people involvedwere well-trained and attentive to their work, but this was a big project. Huge, in fact. The book is 688 pages (including the back matter). One or two small errors are bound to happen. In cases like these, you more or less just hope that they’re small ones.

The thing that worries me, though, is not that mistakes happen, but that we’ve become so oblivious to them. And, worse, that they happen so often … careless mistakes, misspellings, slips of the fingers, momentary brain-freezes … that we start expecting them.

I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but it’s a rare day that I don’t see someone making stupid mistakes when they write. (Sometimes it’s me.) Tweets, message boards, blog posts, emails … But it’s one thing when somebody in a rush types “then it’s leg broke” when describing the titanic crash their curio cabinet made after their bloodhound tried to chase the cat over the top. They got caught up in the story, it happens.

It’s a different matter when you stumble across these kind of mistakes in “formal” media like newspapers, magazines, and books. Headlines, for example. Titles on published books. Billboards. You know, places where professional people put together something for the public to see and made a stupid, glaring mistake.

Mistyping “yoke” for “yolk” is minor. Yes, it caught my eye, but I remembered it mostly because of the humor–the mental image of an angry egg cracking a whip over a group of oppressed people. I’m honestly not holding it against the author or publisher (which is why I’m not publicly outing them).

What worries me, though, is that the more we grant free passes for honest mistakes like these, the more we shrug off the they’re/there/their mistakes and people confusing your for you’re, it means the more we’re simply accepting the new, lowest common denominator.

I realize this makes me sound like a crank with nothing better to worry about. There are wars and famine, disease and despair rampant out there in the world, and I’m worrying about typos?

Except… if we can’t be bothered to look after the little details, how can we be sure that we’re looking after the big ones? How can we be sure that society isn’t being as cavalier about the Big Issues that really do come down to life and death when they regularly disregard the simple, little things like spelling, punctuation and saying “thank you?”

Life is made up of small moments and minor details that add up to a life lived with grace and strength as opposed to one that’s careless and slovenly. You don’t need an immaculate home to be a good, worthy, wonderful person. You might even excuse the mess by saying you’ve been too busy saving the spotted owl and trying to solve the problem of world hunger … you’re focusing on bigger things.

But, when you’ve got a potential donor, or client, or anybody you want to impress at all, appearances matter.

You might not think that one, little typo is the end of the world (and I agree), but stop and ask yourself if it was an honest mistake or something that slipped through because you just didn’t care. The answer can make all the difference between a simple, legitimate mistake and the beginning of a slippery slope covered in eggshells and albumen because we were too darn lazy to clean up the yolks when we dropped the first egg.

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Okay, not really. I’m exaggerating. I AM a writer. I enjoy it, I’m good at it, I even make some money from it, in the perfect blend of vocation, hobby, and inclination. I’m the first one to admit that the joy of easily flowing words is incomparable. That blissful state may not happen all that often, but when it does, it’s magic, and one that only another writer can truly appreciate. (You could make an argument for other creative folks, I suppose, but I’m telling this story.)

Anyway, there’s no question that I’m a writer and proud to be one. I can get as caught up in weaving my web of words as the next writer. I find myself drawn to my keyboard periodically through the day for no other reason than to tap out words for a story, an email, or a blog post.

But, my little, guilty secret is that, as much as I enjoy writing, I love reading more.

Reading was my very first addiction, and it’s still my strongest. I can forego chocolate. I can give up television or music. But books? The sheer pleasure of curling up with a good book–especially the rarest of rare things, a brand-new book by a favorite author? Nothing else compares. And with that kind of temptation, I am weak, weak, weak.

This was brought home to me this weekend when I did almost nothing but read.

This started Friday night after I got home from work … after I baked a lemon meringue pie and did all the supper-time kinds of things and checked email and did some knitting … after all the things that have to be done. I stayed up until 2:30 to finish the first book (Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s newest Liaden book Mouse and Dragon). The next morning, I started the next (Allison Winn Scotch’s new The One That I Want. I stopped reading for about five hours to celebrated my sister’s birthday and have a little nap, and then I finished that book and started the next (Joanne Harris’ Runemarks). That, I finished around lunch on Sunday, and since it reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones’ Eight Days of Luke, if only because of the Norse god similarities, I pulled that off the shelf and polished it off before supper. Then, because it’s a favorite, I took out Sean Russell’s Beneath the Vaulted Hills.

In just over two days, I read over 1,300 pages.

The thing that amazes me is how easy this is. Reading is my first love. Even when it’s a book I’ve read multiple times, I still get drawn in, still get caught up in what’s happening. Fiction or non-fiction doesn’t matter. Nor does time–I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning with no trouble whatsoever, simply because I wanted to know what happened next. I can spend an entire day doing nothing but read. In fact, curling up in a comfy chair with a book and a cup of tea is practically heaven–especially if my dog is sitting with me.)

I’ll confess, as much as I love writing … it doesn’t pull me in this strongly.

Does this worry me? Do I fret that I’ve missed my calling? That I should somehow have arranged a career that allowed me to read for a living?

No. And I’ll tell you why.

Most of the writers I know became writers because they loved reading.

There are some writers, of course, who write because it’s their job, or because they got into it from the marketing or business side. But most of the writers I know started off as kids with their noses stuck into books, just like me.

So many of us ARE readers, which is exactly what draws us to writing. We may have thought “I want to do that,” when we read a story we loved. We may have read something so appallingly bad we told ourselves, “I can do better than that.” We may have started writing down the stories we had in our heads simply because nobody else seemed to be telling the stories we really wanted.

Being a Reader first and a Writer second only makes me stronger as a writer.

Being an inquiring person, I’ll read almost anything that comes recommended highly enough. I have a wide variety of interests and like to know about things, or to be entertained in new and different ways. I read fiction and non-fiction; books and magazines; websites and blogs.

And–even without thinking about it consciously–this has made me a stronger writer.

By continually reading new things, meeting new ideas, discovering new authors, I have broadened my own horizons and at the same time have developed an eye and ear for “good” writing rather than “bad.” I can appreciate writing styles that are wonderful yet completely different than my own. I can pour withering scorn over the styles that are out-right bad. But … most importantly … I am keeping my love of writing alive by feeding it good things to read.

Like any other skill or talent, writing demands nourishment.

There are writers out there … writers of all types, writing marketing pieces or cookie-cutter novels … who basically write the same thing over and over and over again. I was watching the wonderful “Jeeves and Wooster” series with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry the other night, and in one episode, one of Bertie’s friends is reading a series of novels to his uncle to soften him up to the idea of him marrying a waitress. Every time the camera stops by Bingo and his uncle, you hear “Scornfully she tossed her black/blond/red curls as, eyes snapping, she replied…” The hair color changed from book to book, but the sentence remained the same. Every time.

Now, Bingo’s uncle enjoyed them, and all, but obviously this writer wasn’t doing a damn thing to expand her writerly horizons. She just stuck to what she knew and left it at that. My guess is that, after publishing her first book, she never picked up another book that wasn’t her own again. She never primed the pump or did anything to try to improve or do more. Nothing to generate new ideas.

My contention is that, while curling up with a book or four over the course of a weekend may not seem immediately productive … and I admit that it doesn’t … in fact, it serves a dual purpose. Not only does it give the Reader Me a relaxing visit with somebody else’s words and story for a change, but it reminds the Writer Me that new and different are good, possible, inspiring, and downright fun.

It’s all too easy to get caught in a rut. especially when things are going well, but you owe it to yourself to let that conscious mind relax once in a while while you pull out some fresh flavors, some new ingredients and let it all stew in the background with a dash of inspiration. You never know what might grow out of it.

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