{"id":1000,"date":"2009-11-05T09:31:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-05T17:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/?p=1000"},"modified":"2009-11-05T11:26:43","modified_gmt":"2009-11-05T19:26:43","slug":"research-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/?p=1000","title":{"rendered":"Research, Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two items of Q&A – with one ‘A’ from me and one, I hope, from you…<\/strong>! \";)\"<\/p>\n

The first is something I was asked this week via the MySpace page of Jagmat<\/strong><\/a> from The Black Tattoo<\/strong><\/a>. Huge respect and kudos \u00e2\u20ac\u201c partly just for not letting the whole shapeshifting blancmange monster thing put him off! \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to Mykell<\/strong>, from Maryland, USA<\/strong>, who wondered:<\/p>\n

What kind of research do u do when u are writing ur books?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Research\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 hmm. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking about facts and figures, details of setting and time and place and action\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 it depends.<\/p>\n

I think details are important, especially in a fantasy story: they give the reader something to hang onto; they make things seem real. For instance, I got the fight scenes in Black Tat<\/strong> checked out by genuine martial artists. While I was writing the book, I met a lady at a party who turned out to be the ranking Number 3 North European Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sabre Champion! She was wonderfully sporting about reading Black Tat<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s swordfights for me: I got these excellent emails from her saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWell, ok: if<\/em> I was fighting a thirty-foot-long hedgehog centipede beast<\/strong>, I suppose I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d start off on the back foot, with this sort of a grip\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and off she went. I hope those kinds of details give some realistic weight and crunch to Black Tat<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fights. And if a story needs other kinds of information, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find out everything I can.<\/p>\n

But here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the thing: that stuff should only ever be in service to the story. The story comes first<\/strong>. Because no amount of detail is going to make the readers care if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not involved in the scene, feeling for the characters, wondering what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to happen next.<\/p>\n

The story is the hard bit \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the main thing to focus on \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it seems to me.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Which brings me to my second question<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Jethrosplatter\"<\/p>\n

Slice Three<\/strong> of JETHRO\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S ACE OF HEARTS<\/strong>, the thirteen-part story I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m currently serializing<\/a> on Trapped By Monsters<\/strong>, goes live for your delectation tomorrow (Friday 6th Nov ’09) at 12 noon GMT<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

My current plan is to have Slice Four go up this Monday, Slice Five go up next Friday, and so on. But a couple of my fellow TBM prisoners think I should go up to three episodes a week<\/strong> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c posting on Wednesdays, too.<\/p>\n

You, reading this: Hello! What do you think?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think savouring the story slowly would be best \u00e2\u20ac\u201c three slices a week might dominate the blog, and the story would finish very quickly. Or am I just being mean and stingy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leave a comment<\/a> on Trapped By Monsters<\/strong> either way: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m all ears<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two items of Q&A – with one ‘A’ from me and one, I hope, from you…! The first is something I was asked this week via the MySpace page of Jagmat from The Black Tattoo. Huge respect and kudos \u00e2\u20ac\u201c partly just for not letting the whole shapeshifting blancmange monster thing put him off! \u00e2\u20ac\u201c […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,8,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1000"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1019,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions\/1019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}