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Research and Worldbuilding
for Those Who Hate Libraries
By
Betty
L. Meshack
©2004, Betty L. Meshack
A fiction
writer has the luxury of making it all up. She can create religions,
governments, races, histories and myths, geologies, star systems, and
technologies directly from her imagination. And who can check the facts? The
writer made it all up. Well, readers often check facts internal to the book.
And the writer will be punished with bad reviews or low sales if the internal
logic of the story fails to hang together. Even non-genre writers must, at a
minimum, place their characters firmly in the world if the characters are to
breathe and live convincingly enough to make the reader care about the writer's
idea and theme as they are developed in the work.
If the
writer's worldbuilding is done well, readers will, more often than not, suspend
disbelief. Indeed, if the time, place, and manner of life of the characters are
done well, the writer's fiction could even spawn a new religion in the analog
world, as happened during the 1960's with Robert Heinlein's publication of
Stranger in a Strange Land (Ace Books ISBN 0441790348). The fiction could
become a cherished icon of a political movement as did Harper Lee's To Kill a
Mockingbird (Little Brown & Co. ISBN 0446310786), Ralph Ellison's The Invisible
Man (Vintage ISBN 0679732764), and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (Bantam Classics
ISBN 0553212451). George Orwell's 1984 (Econo-Clad Books ISBN 0881030368) has
even become a shorthand literary reference for politically totalitarian states
that use language to control populations. So rich was Orwell's worldbuilding
that a sixty second commercial was able to visually capture its flavor to sell a
product virtually without words. How did these writers develop the information
they used to create worlds beyond their own imaginations and knowledge? They
did research as journalists, they were keen observers of life as they lived it,
and they went to archives and libraries.
So where does
today's busy fiction writer go for the real world information that can inform
her writing and make it live? In the past, our mythical writer would have spent
two or more years getting details right, while traveling from city to city,
library to library, and archive to archive. She would have spent vast amounts
of money and time on research. Depending on the subject matter, that kind of
research may still be necessary. However, for the person who wishes to write,
two years spent researching delays the process. Fortunately, a tool has been
developed over the last twenty years that can help shorten the research and
worldbuilding process significantly. The World Wide Web provides a new means
for our writer to rapidly locate and digest vast amounts of information
digitally tailored to her interests -- and for free.
I've spent
more than my fair share of hours in the stacks of libraries looking for obscure
references while sneezing from allergies. When the hunt went well, it was not
unusual to end up with ten or twenty huge reference books in front of me, index
cards marking the passages I needed to copy out for a paper or article. The
task of copying the quotation and citing it according to the dictates of the The
Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (17th ed., 2004 Harvard. Law School)
often added to the pressure. The internet has changed all of that for me. I
have purchased several books that I use as references, but to fact check or find
obscure references, I now use the Internet for much of my research and
worldbuilding. With the Internet I now am able to locate the basic facts I
need within moments of asking a question, incorporate them into my
worldbuilding, and move on.
Today, I
conduct much of the research for work as well as fiction writing on-line. In
fact, while I don't really hate libraries, the hours that I could have spent
finding the occurrences of solar eclipses for the last 1000 years have been
better spent considering how to incorporate the information I retrieved quickly
from the Internet into my current work-in-progress. How did that happen? I
obtained likely dates within a few minutes by conducting a plain-text search for
"historical solar eclipses," which led me to several sites listing the dates of
occurrences over the last 3000 years. One of those sites was "Solar Eclipses
of Historical Interest" by Fred Espenak, at
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhistory/SEhistory.html. When I
needed to learn about lunar eclipses, I performed a similar search and located
"The Blessings of the Lunar Calendar" by Karima Burns (MH, ND),
http://www.islamonline.net/English/Science/2000/4/article6.shtml, which
describes the development and significance of the lunar calendar in the Islamic
religion.
I've learned
that just about any subject on which I need information to enrich my
worldbuilding may be found on the Internet. For example, I needed to find
likely names for Arab men and women. Using Google's search engine, I merely
input "Arabic Names" and the following website is returned to me: Sudairy.com,
maintained by Christina Sudairy, at
http://www.sudairy.com, which lists not only feminine and masculine names
but also words and phrases in Arabic as well as recipes. While it was nice to
have the names, I wondered about Arabic naming conventions. Placing that
phrase into a search engine, I was rewarded with the website, "Period Arabic
Names and Naming Practices" by Da'ud ibn Auda (David B. Appleton) © 2003,
http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/arabic-naming2.htm. I did the
same kind of search for medieval Moorish names and came up with a site called
"Memoriam Tempestatis",
http://memorium.puremagic.com/links.html, a role playing game site which
contains numerous links to medieval historical fact sites, which are useful for
worldbuilding. Why was this important to me if I was writing fiction? Like
the RPG members, I wanted the details to be right so that the knowledgeable
reader would not be put off by simple errors and I could appear to be brilliant,
erudite and culturally sensitive when I published my historical fantasy.
For my legal
thriller and historical fantasy novels I've located several sites that have
proved useful for me. This list is not exhaustive, but includes a variety of
sources in a number of contexts.
Need a quick
translation of Latin? Go to Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid,
http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htm, a compilation website maintained
by the University of Notre Dame.
For
comparative religious history and mythology: The Catholic Encyclopedia (1908-14
on-line ed.),
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/, is an excellent source. You want to know
the offices of the day? This is your source for the answer. Interested in the
highlights of the papacy of Alexander VI? Again, you can find the answer
here. Want to know what the gnostics believed and why they are considered
heretics? Go to this site. (Newest print version is Berard Marthaler, ed. The
New Catholic Encyclopedia: Jubilee Volume: The Wojtyla Years. Farmington Hills,
Mich.: Gale Group, 2000, ISBN 0-7876-4787-X.)
I found
similar sources regarding the proper forms for daily prayers in Islam (Salaat)
as well. See, e.g., "How to perform Salaat, The Islamic Prayer Ritual" The
Canadian Society of Muslims,
http://muslim-canada.org/index.html. Compare "How to Pray the Rosary," The
Rosary Center Homepage,
http://www.rosary-center.org/howto.htm.
The complete
works of Shakespeare may be found at The Bard Of Avon, Shakespeare In
Stratford-upon-Avon,
http://www.shakespeare-w.com/english/shakespeare/index.html, together with
text analysis and translation into modern English. See also Shakes-Sphere, A
Comprehensive Study Guide to the World of William Shakespeare, maintained by
Michael J. Cummings,
http://sites.micro-link.net/zekscrab/.
Mental Defects
and Personality Disorders described according to the dictates of the American
Psychiatric Association and DSM-IV may be found at Complete DSM-IV Diagnosis
Criteria for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV Made Easy, The Clinician's Guide to
Diagnosis) by James Morrison, M.D. (Guilford Press, ISBN 0898625688) at
http://www.geocities.com/morrison94/. Ever wanted to know the differences
between a schizophrenic and a victim of bi-polar disorder? This is your
website. The author has provided a summary of his $65.00 book on this website.
For a
comprehensive site on illnesses, their symptoms, and the medications useful for
treatment, go to RxMed: The Website for Family Physicians and You,
http://www.rxmed.com/.
Ever wondered
what the coroner looks for while conducting an autopsy? Here's your answer at
Moyle Information Services for Law Enforcement, by Mike Moyle, a retired
detective:
http://dmmoyle.com/didig.htm.
Ever wanted
the words to All God's Chilluns Got Shoes? Here's your source: Negro
Spirituals.com, organized by The Spiritual Workshop,
http://www.negrospirituals.com/news-song/, which provides the history of and
lyrics to many Negro Spirituals and hymns.
I wanted to
find out the healing practices of the Fulani. After making this request I found
a scholarly paper on-line, "Ethnoveterinary healing practices of Fulani
pastoralists in Cameroon: combining the natural and the supernatural," by Mopoi
Nuwanyakpa, Ngeh J. Toyang, Sali Django, Christopher Ndi, and Clare Wirmum, at
Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, July 2000,
http://www.nuffic.nl/ciran/ikdm/8-2/ngeh.html.
Spanish
architecture as well as some history is described along with illustrative color
photographs at a travel website, All About Spain,
http://www.red2000.com/spain/primer/arch.html.
Looking for
information on daily life in ancient Japan? Try typing in "Ancient Japan" and
you get this result:
http://search.netscape.com/ns/search?fromPage=nsBrowserRoll&query=ancient+japan,
a list of over 100 likely sources for information.
What
historical facts were taught during the early 20th Century in Colleges and
Universities? You might want to know the answer to this question to determine
the knowledge base and historical blind spots of an educated gentleman (or lady)
of 1910. The Great Republic I-IV, by Master Historians, edited by Charles
Morris (published early 1900's; Great Republic, ISBN 0671646648), which covers
U.S. history from the colonial period through Thomas Jefferson's presidency, can
answer this question and is online at:
http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/The_Great_Republic_
By_the_Master_Historians_Vol_II/. See also The Public
bookshelf,
http://www.publicbookshelf.com/, which alleges to be a collection of some of
the greatest books ever written; The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica,
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/; and the on-line edition of The Norton
Anthology of English Literature I & II (7th ed.), edited by M.H. Abrahms (W.W.
Norton & Co. ISBN 0393151107 & 0393947777),
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/welcome.htm, which covers
historical topics from Middle Ages through the Twentieth Century. One thing to
consider, however: these historical articles may be biased but are not tainted
by political correctness. As you browse the sections you might be surprised by
the style of writing compared with the texts used today. See also The
Visigothic Code, translated by S.P. Scott (Boston Book Co. ISBN 0837712335),
http://libro.uca.edu/vcode/visigoths.htm, which records the legal and
juridical codes under which peoples of the Iberian Peninsula lived prior to the
invasion of the Saracens, and which formed the historical, political, and
religious underpinnings of The Inquisition.
Want to know
about women explorers? Go to the University of Pennsylvania's digital library
site, a Celebration of Women Writers,
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/, and you'll find out information
about the 19th Century explorer, Mary Sheldon,
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/eagle/congress/sheldon-may.html.
British Royal
Navy slang can be found at the website
http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/static/pages/348.html.
The brave new
world of the information highway provides many shortcuts for the on-line
writer. If getting it right is important to you, then this is one tool you
should put in your writer's toolbox. Want to check that the information you
retrieve is correct? Check several sites for comparison. Of course the warning
caveat emptor still applies; although you're not buying anything except
information when you click on these websites, you still must be aware and wary
of information you retrieve off the Internet -- but that is true with
information you retrieve from books as well. Always consider the source.
The Internet
will not replace the joy of holding real books in libraries or bookstores -- at
least not yet. But when used creatively, it can save much legwork and time, and
assist you in refining the research you actually need to conduct in a library.
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