Hi Westworders,
Hope you’re having a brilliant week so far. I’ve been writing – thankfully the words are starting to flow again which is important as my deadline looms large. I’ve also hit the gym and been for some long walks, soaking up the atmosphere here in New Zealand. As a writer it’s fantastic to be able to get a real feel for a location. Not only to think about what it looks like but what it smells like, tastes like, sounds like and feels like. Those are details you should think about in your own work.
Today I wanted to talk about the importance of research in narrative writing. While my characters and storylines are creations of my imagination, often I use real places as settings and real life problems too. For example, when I was writing Alice-Miranda in the Outback, I spent a lot of time on Google Earth, Google Maps and Google Streetview – particularly when I was wanting to describe the outback roadhouses, towns such as Coober Pedy and the fictitious station of Hope Springs where the children end up. I’ve been to the Northern Territory and outback Western Australia (where I encountered eagles just like Alice-Miranda sees below – and also described them to my husband as looking like pterodactyls!) but I’ve never been to Coober Pedy so in order to get an understanding of the place I watched lots of videos and talked to everyone I knew who had first hand knowledge. I read as much as I could too. It’s important to me that the place is authentic as well as the characters. I was also keen to find real life dilemmas that people who live in the outback might be faced with. I wrote myself a long list – getting lost, lack of water, cattle theft, accidents, snake bites, mustering – on horseback, motorbikes and with helicopters – the tyranny of distance, droughts and flooding rains for a start. Of course it’s easier to write about somewhere if you’ve visited yourself but that’s not always possible and in the past year or so it’s been out of the question due to the pandemic. However it can still be done.
Kensy and Max Take Down is set in Singapore. It’s a place I know well and have visited many times but still when I was writing the story I had help from a friend who lives there. He took photos of things I would never have paid really close attention to – like the colour and pattern of the carpet at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre. That sounds like a trivial detail but to me – it’s the details that can really make a difference. Fortunately I had lots of photographs from my own travels there that I could use but there was a lot of research involved too. One of the big problems in the story revolves around exotic animal theft. I spent a significant amount of time online learning about the ways people do it and the reasons why – the horrible statistics and what happens if poachers get caught. It was interesting and eye opening and helped to make the story much more authentic.
Next month Alice-Miranda in Egypt will hit the shops. I loved writing this book (the 20th in the series). Sadly I wasn’t able to visit Egypt to do any research but on the upside I had a pretty solid knowledge of Ancient Egypt having studied it at school and also undertaken many units of work with my own classes over the years. Still there was a lot that I had no idea about. Again – I researched and spoke to many people who had been to Egypt as well as watching a host of excellent and timely documentaries. There were things I didn’t know and had to have help with. For example there is a man (who I adore and if I do say so myself is extremely funny, called Ahmed Ally) who turns up as a dancer on a dinner cruise. Initially I wanted to call him a Sufi dancer but found out that Sufi dancers have religious affiliations and he was there purely for entertainment. So he was in fact a tanoura dancer. One of the proofreaders at my publisher picked up that fact and I was really grateful that we could get it right. Food was also incredibly important for setting the scene and adding to the atmosphere as well. I gather lots of photographs and keep files for each book with all of the inspiration as well as bookmarking lots of websites. It all helps.
I love when the writing really comes to life and you can imagine yourself in that place – even if you’ve never been. I work hard to include the atmospheric details and these days with access to the Internet, it’s much easier to do. I’m in the middle of writing Kensy and Max’s 8th adventure set in Portugal and Berlin. I have two screens in front of me and there is almost always one of them open to Google Maps or Google Earth or Streetview – so hopefully I can get it right.
Have a great week.
Best wishes,
Jacqueline
0 Comments