# What is the craziest thing you have had to research for a book or story?



## Ralph Rotten (Mar 9, 2018)

A recent post about research for a book got me wondering; what are some of the craziest things that other writers had to research for a book, novel, or story?



For me, most recently I had to learn NASCAR and bootlegging.  Another time I had to study serial killers.


----------



## Terry D (Mar 9, 2018)

Dog fighting
The dark web
The Texas prison system
Large scale Marijuana cultivation and processing


----------



## Tettsuo (Mar 9, 2018)

Sociopaths, psychopaths and the difference between them.


----------



## Pete_C (Mar 9, 2018)

Terry D said:


> Dog fighting
> The dark web
> The Texas prison system
> Large scale Marijuana cultivation and processing



Wow, that's tough. I know nothing about the Texas prison system.

Wanna come to a party?


----------



## PiP (Mar 9, 2018)

The craziest thing I have ever researched were images of ladyboys so I could describe them in a short story I was writing at the time. However, be careful what you research because shortly after that we had to call a technician as we were having problems with the internet. I don't know what the technician did but he called up all the images I had downloaded. He looked at me.. then at my husband and was out the house in a flash. The expression on his face was priceless. Needless to say my husband then quizzed me WHY I was looking at pictures of ladyboys.


----------



## JJBuchholz (Mar 9, 2018)

- Naval jargon
- Sociopaths
- Wingspan of an archangel

-JJB


----------



## Ralph Rotten (Mar 9, 2018)

Okay, I had to google ladyboys.


----------



## Ralph Rotten (Mar 10, 2018)

I wrote one book where I had to study astrophysics.  The research included one of Hawking's books, and dozens of college level books and resources.  The book sold like crap, but it was fun to write.
Actually I still study astrophysics; the topic is fascinating.


----------



## moderan (Mar 10, 2018)

Ossuaries, Slavic gods, the history of fungi, insect sexual organs, medicines derived from plants, how to make illuminated manuscripts, slow-acting poisons, junk DNA, the biography of GG Allyn, fetishism, displacement hallucinations in coma patients, necrotic skin diseases...and that's just today.


----------



## CrimsonAngel223 (Mar 10, 2018)

Geometric shapes, sailboats, crazy huh?


----------



## LMWriting (Mar 13, 2018)

I can't tell you how many times I've had to do some deep research into various Latin phrases while mix matching things together in order to create a new word for something in my book that still needed to sound scientifically accurate even though I had just made it up and could have simply called it whatever I wanted.


----------



## JustRob (Mar 13, 2018)

This is an interesting subject. I will have to refer to _The No Rules Handbook for Writers_ by Lisa Goldman yet again, if only because it's the only book on writing that I have ever bought as opposed to borrowed from the library, so I have it to hand. Classic rule number one that she tackles is "Write what you know." Obviously this thread is about writing what you didn't know because if you did you wouldn't have needed to do any research. In fact, having done the research you do then know, so she suggests that a corollary to that basic rule is "Write to discover what you don't know yet." 

Her point is that if you write about a subject that you know well you could bore the reader with your enthusiasm, which could potentially be regarded as obsession. I recollect reading a number of the books in John Norman's series about Gor when I was much younger. Okay, so apart from the science fiction and fantasy there is a good deal of erotica in them which often involves men tying up scantily clad women, apparently an obsession of his. That is reasonably entertaining in its way but I didn't really need the lengthy detailed explanations of how to tie the knots that he frequently indulged in. I've seen books on tying nautical knots which cover the subject far better if one is really into that sort of thing. Equally if one wanted an erotic element to the subject one would read about kinbaku (No, Google that later if you need to, not now.)

What Lisa meant by her corollary was that by choosing to research a previously unknown subject you are more likely to present it to the reader from a refreshingly different perspective compared to someone who is well acquainted with it, especially if it puts you out of your comfort zone in some way. (I doubt that kinbaku is _that_ comfortable.) Hence writing what you know well already may not be the best approach. I haven't hurried to incorporate any kinbaku into my writing yet though, so I'll have to think of something else to offer for this thread.

The obvious candidate in my case is our possible, or allegedly impossible, ability to sense events that will happen in the future. There can't be much crazier than that. I've even joined the Society for Psychical Research and attended a few of their talks and I now regularly receive their magazine _Paranormal Review_ as well as their very studious journal, which covers the weirdest subjects including precognition with scientific thoroughness. I blame Lisa for this though.

When she wrote "Write to discover what you don't know yet," I took it entirely the wrong way and wrote about what I hadn't researched yet. In fact I wrote about it even before I read her book, even before it was published in fact, apparently because time is far more flexible than we imagine. So, now I'm researching this crazy subject because I made it a part of my life by writing about it. I think there could be a book in it now though. That's about as crazy as it gets, writing a book in order to have something to write a book about. Perhaps I should have researched kinbaku instead. Well, there's still time. Er, angel, are you tied up at the moment or if not ... ?


----------



## AdrianBraysy (Mar 13, 2018)

Nietsche's philosophy on slave vs master morality

How a sex change operation works, step by step

The psychological basis for foot fettishes.

Augustine and Thomas Aquinas


----------



## ScarletM.Sinclaire (Mar 15, 2018)

This was most crazy thing I've ever had to research, you ready for it? Igneous rock, basalt rock, pretty much any rock made from volcanoes, lava and cooled lava. Also, medieval tents.


----------



## NathanielleC (Mar 15, 2018)

Paradoxical undressing for a story with some paranormal elements based on overhearing a doctor utter the phrase, "It's a slow night," while I was using the hospital cafeteria's free wifi. 

Not research but I've been on a three day watch on the psychiatric ward of a hospital. So I used my own experience to describe what a character in my Sherlock Holmes pastiche was going through.


----------



## Deleted member 61744 (Mar 15, 2018)

When I was younger, before I realised just how complex bodies are, I wanted to know how to create a new life form. I decided to research everything there was to know about mammals. I wanted to describe in my book exactly how this creature was made. I also remember secretly hoping that if I jotted down every single detail of my creature, then God would like the plans and decide to make it.
I wish I had just read Frankenstein...
Recently the strangest thing I've had to research was medieval instruments. Discovering the existence of the hurdy-gurdy made it worth it.


----------



## Ralph Rotten (Mar 15, 2018)

These are some fascinating responses indeed. Although writers are best served by writing what they know, a good writer fact-checks everything.  I once read a book where the hero cocked a Glock, then two pages later he double cocked it (both actions are impossible with a Glock.)  Had that writer taken the time to research he would not have had twenty bad reviews from people pointing out what a schmuck he was.

TV shows ARE NOT a valid way to research a topic; Hollywood gets a lot of stuff wrong, even in big budget movies.


----------



## Cephus (Mar 17, 2018)

I did a lot of research on dangerous subjects like Sarin gas and VX.  I got really nervous I'd get a knock on the front door from the government.


----------



## JustRob (Mar 17, 2018)

Ralph Rotten said:


> These are some fascinating responses indeed. Although writers are best served by writing what they know, a good writer fact-checks everything.



That was how I first realised that there was something odd about my writing. It was my first attempt at fiction writing and I just wrote whatever came into my head and then did the research to check whether it was right afterwards. I discovered that it always was, even when I didn't think that I knew anything about the subject. The only times that I found that I'd got something wrong was when I already suspected that I had and was checking that. I assumed that the normally correct approach for a writer was to do research into a subject _before_ writing about it, but apparently that wasn't necessary. Some people say "just write" but one wouldn't expect that to work very well when one doesn't know the subject. I have done a lot of research for my novel, but all of it _after_ I wrote it. As a consequence I now understand it, whereas I didn't really when I wrote it. It just doesn't figure. 

Stop the world; I want to get on.


----------



## shouthuzzah (Mar 17, 2018)

I haven't dug into anything _too_ weird yet. I spent a month reading up on a bunch of Norse mythology, which is pretty wild. In particular, a story about a giantess who urinated into a river to try to drown Thor and Loki (who were in the river, probably frolicking or fishing). She was described as "gushing." 

Also, I recently looked up the average weight/height for a 13-year-old boy to try to help myself visualize my MC. As I looked it up, I thought that if there were people in a lab somewhere watching out for weird or problematic activity on google, that maybe "average body proportions for a 13 year old boy" might be a red flag. I looked around my empty apartment hesitantly, quickly jotted down 4 feet 11 inches, and closed the offending tab.


----------



## Ralph Rotten (Mar 17, 2018)

LMWriting said:


> I can't tell you how many times I've had to do some deep research into various Latin phrases while mix matching things together in order to create a new word for something in my book that still needed to sound scientifically accurate even though I had just made it up and could have simply called it whatever I wanted.



You do know that Google speaks Latin, right?
It also speaks most other languages.  Just search for "English to latin translation". Works well.  I had to have a character babble in Portuguese the other day...I know like 3 words of Portuguese.


----------



## JustRob (Mar 18, 2018)

Quantum consciousness. The subject itself may be fictional or at least too fictional so far for anyone to truly believe in it. I haven't really started writing the book that needs that research yet though. 

Some research can result in one discovering that nobody has any definitely correct answers to the questions. At that point one can feel safe to write speculatively without fear of criticism. When writing fiction it can often be a good thing _not_ to find any clear answers in one's research. Scientific research just keeps making our task as fiction writers all the harder. Science fiction tends to be classed as hard or not but there is a grey area in between those two where the hard answers just don't exist yet. That's the sweet spot for the fiction writer. Use it while it lasts.


----------



## moderan (Mar 18, 2018)

JustRob said:


> Quantum consciousness. The subject itself may be fictional or at least too fictional so far for anyone to truly believe in it. I haven't really started writing the book that needs that research yet though.
> 
> Some research can result in one discovering that nobody has any definitely correct answers to the questions. At that point one can feel safe to write speculatively without fear of criticism. When writing fiction it can often be a good thing _not_ to find any clear answers in one's research. Scientific research just keeps making our task as fiction writers all the harder. Science fiction tends to be classed as hard or not but there is a grey area in between those two where the hard answers just don't exist yet. That's the sweet spot for the fiction writer. Use it while it lasts.





> The subject itself may be fictional or at least too fictional so far for anyone to truly believe in it.


What does that even mean? Quantum consciousness is a pretty-well-established bit of theory.


> Science fiction tends to be classed as hard or not but there is a grey area in between those two where the hard answers just don't exist yet. That's the sweet spot for the fiction writer.


This too. Are you talking about extrapolation from current theory, a la Greg Benford, David Brin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Alastair Reynolds, or are you just trying not be be pinned down? Cuz this makes very little sense as is.
I spend the bulk of my time researching. There are rabbit holes but I cannot recall a subject where research muddied the waters. Unpacking the science for the layman is part of the specfic writer's job.


> nobody has any definitely correct answers to the questions. At that point one can feel safe to write speculatively without fear of criticism.


This means what -- that you don't understand what you're researching, so it's okay to just make it up out of whole cloth?
It is...plenty of people have done it, but few have gone to such lengths to justify such activity.
Quantum theory is difficult. What's a qubit?


----------



## Dave Watson (Mar 28, 2018)

How to preserve human eyeballs was something I never thought I'd Google. Until I started writing.


----------



## JustRob (Mar 28, 2018)

moderan said:


> What does that even mean? Quantum consciousness is a pretty-well-established bit of theory.



For that matter what does "pretty-well-established mean? Can you identify research sources that pretty well establish quantum consciousness as anything?



> This too. Are you talking about extrapolation from current theory, a la Greg Benford, David Brin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Alastair Reynolds, or are you just trying not be be pinned down? Cuz this makes very little sense as is.
> I spend the bulk of my time researching. There are rabbit holes but I cannot recall a subject where research muddied the waters. Unpacking the science for the layman is part of the specfic writer's job.



I've had considerable trouble tying down anything about backward causation. I have read (and yes, most likely failed to understand) a review of the subject which summarises the situation in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Prior to its revision in 2015 that article concluded that the situation was that research had identified no evidence of backward causation ever being necessary, which is a long way from establishing whether it is ever possible. After all, the universe did a lot of things before researchers even existed to look for evidence. The revised article has muddied the waters further now by concluding that it is unlikely that anyone can agree what evidence of backward causation would look like. So, now no evidence of backward causation being necessary has been found because researchers can't agree about what they would look for if they tried. Well, as a fiction writer I can work with that, but explain it to the reader? No way. What is there to explain? (cf. "Harmless" being revised to "Mostly harmless" in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)



> This means what -- that you don't understand what you're researching, so it's okay to just make it up out of whole cloth?
> It is...plenty of people have done it, but few have gone to such lengths to justify such activity.



I had to look up the expression "whole cloth". It appears to mean "something fictional" in this context. Yes, I admit that I wrote a fictional novel. Some people have described it as science fiction because some of the science in it fictional, although I doubt that they'd state exactly which parts. Does it matter where the boundary between fact and fiction actually lies? Isn't that part of the enjoyment of reading fiction, to walk the imprecise line between the two wondering which side of it one currently is? Actually, as my four dimensional geometry isn't that hot it is possible that some of my geometry is fictional as well, but again nobody has picked me up on which parts. 



> Quantum theory is difficult. What's a qubit?



During my research (after writing the novel of course) I asked an old friend who used to be a chemistry lecturer at Oxford University about quantum thoery (which I evidently can't even type, let alone comprehend) and its implications in reality. He told me that he regarded it as a model that gave the right results so consistently in his work that it was useful, but that nevertheless it was only a model and one couldn't assume that it was the right model for other purposes. 

I read somewhere that thought processes appear to be similar to quantum processes, but that doesn't mean that they actually _are_ quantum processes, simply that the same model seems to fit both contexts. A parallel would be the way that electrical currents appear to flow in a similar manner to fluids. Indeed, some years back there was some research into making logic devices using fluids in pipes in place of electrical currents in wires and these did work. I don't have the background knowledge to know what fluid phenomenon would be analogous to quantum tunneling but there may even be one. 

So, my weaselly answer to your question would be that a qubit is a construct within a model that helps us to understand something about reality. That isn't really a weaselly response though, because in my working life I specialised for some years in devising ways of modelling reality and training others in using them within the computer systems department of my company. When dealing with abstractions like qubits it makes no sense to ask what they are in reality, not when quantum theory (which I don't even type consistently wrong) is itself just a model. In fiction writing we tend to play games with the models, implying that the reality could also follow suit.


----------



## JJBuchholz (Mar 28, 2018)

I have just been doing research on the following things before I started writing my newest story the other day:

- Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas
- Seas on the Moon
- Body armour

-JJB


----------



## Ralph Rotten (Mar 29, 2018)

JJBuchholz said:


> I have just been doing research on the following things before I started writing my newest story the other day:
> 
> - Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas
> - Seas on the Moon
> ...




Be sure to learn the difference between the different classes of body armor with regards to stopping power.  Hollywood always gets that wrong. Soft Class II & III body armor does not stop rifle-class calibers. You gotta have level IV.
Try this source:
http://infidelbodyarmor.com/body-armor-101-ezp-36


----------



## moderan (Mar 29, 2018)

JustRob said:


> For that matter what does "pretty-well-established mean? Can you identify research sources that pretty well establish quantum consciousness as anything?


I'd say that "pretty-well-established" means that many reputable people have identified this as an idea and have published opinions on it or whatever. 
The rest of whatever that maze was, I'm not touching it. It's still steaming.


----------



## JJBuchholz (Mar 29, 2018)

Ralph Rotten said:


> Be sure to learn the difference between the different classes of body armor with regards to stopping power.  Hollywood always gets that wrong. Soft Class II & III body armor does not stop rifle-class calibers. You gotta have level IV.



The story I'm writing is set in the 27th century, and the body armour suit worn by my protagonist is a hybrid that contains a futuristic compound called 'alumite'. (Futuristic combination of super-strength aluminum and kevlar). It's also coated with some other compounds as well for his line of work (Muahahaha!).

-JJB


----------



## Cephus (Mar 30, 2018)

JJBuchholz said:


> The story I'm writing is set in the 27th century, and the body armour suit worn by my protagonist is a hybrid that contains a futuristic compound called 'alumite'. (Futuristic combination of super-strength aluminum and kevlar). It's also coated with some other compounds as well for his line of work (Muahahaha!).



The real problem with writing in the far future, and my sci-fi universe is much farther ahead than yours, is realizing that there's no way to logically look forward that far out and imagine what the technology will be.  There is simply no conceivable way that people living in the 1300s could have looked forward to today and imagined what we take for granted.  Even people 100 years ago couldn't have imagined what we have today.  You really have to be willing to let your mind wander and come up with the most bizarre things you can imagine, then be willing to go even farther.


----------



## Ralph Rotten (Mar 30, 2018)

For my current WIP I have a section where they grossly overload a B200 and try to fly it from Wisconsin to New Mexico.

To ensure accuracy, I flew the course with my simulator to confirm.
It works, but you need a lotta flaps to get off the ground. 

That counts as research, right?


----------



## DOGGLEBUNNI (Mar 31, 2018)

I am currently researching the Soviet Union, Coast Guard arrests at sea, anything about life on a cargo ship.


----------



## DOGGLEBUNNI (Mar 31, 2018)

That certainly counts. For my book I am taking a tour boat down the Houston Ship Channel, I am going to pretend it is a freighter.


----------



## DOGGLEBUNNI (Mar 31, 2018)

That's hilarious!


----------

