Week 4 has switched our focus a little to start with. The first 3 sections we're just talk about our notebooks, and ideas. It's now moving towards research. Research is a key part of writing, and something else the notebook can be useful for.
Whilst a notebook for ideas is a new thing for me, I'm not a stranger to the idea of research. 'Google is my friend' has long been a motto and it's rare I hear anything I'm not familiar with without quickly looking it up. I even use it during reviews. The other day I reviewed a piece that mentioned someone going blind because of a disease effecting the muscles around her eye. I spent ten minutes or so on a 'eye disease' website trying to find a technical name for the disease to offer the author as a way of adding detail to their writing.
By far the most research I remember doing though was for a piece of writing set in a fictional place at the time of the 'Newsies' which I'd never heard of. It proved to be a very interesting topic which I enjoyed greatly. Life experience can definitely help. A few trips to America during my life meant the currency wasn't too much of a problem although I did have to look up what sort of price things were back then.
Should research be invisible in books? I'm not sure. It certainly doesn't seem to have hurt Dan Brown's sales too badly. He's stories positively ooze with knowledge. Likewise the series I'm reading now by Alastair Reynolds very clearly demonstrates his knowledge/research of Astrophysics and somehow that makes it more fascinating to me.
In 4.5 we'll be planning some research. Lets get to it.
Happy Writing :-)
Like you, I'm doing the course even though I've been writing for sometime. I've never used a notebook either.
ReplyDeleteResearch is a word that covers such a wide range of things from immersing yourself in a particular time period, location (my novels tend to be set in foreign countries) or environment right up to the simple checking of facts quickly looked up on Google or the Atlas etc plus much in between. I've written about this on my April blog.
Love your blog by the way!