Scenes You've Loved Researching

This thread is great! I want to go learn about everything everyone has mentioned now!

Not a scene exactly but I've loved researching training of pilots in WWI-- I found a surprising number of books, many of them written by WWI pilots, and they're just full of ancedotes. Give nineteen-year-old guys airplanes and turn them loose to fly whenever, encouraging trick flying, and you certainly get antics. (except then they get killed in a week once they're sent to the front, and it gets depressing. stupid WWI).

Today I researched how my character would have travelled from London to Bombay in 1889, and using contemporary issues of The Times (available online through the National Library here) I not only managed to decide which ship she would have travelled on, but I could trace its progress more or less day-by-day. I know that's geeky, but it really gave me a thrill to realise just how detailed info I could get with very little effort.

ETA: I doubt it'll even make the page, but I know it took her 23 days and that it was the maiden voyage of the steamship Oriental. It just helps me to imagine her world.

I just finished the first draft of my WIP, which takes place in 10th century Ireland. Last summer, I spent a week in Ireland driving around with a friend. We stopped at every single ring-fort we drove past. I had a wonderful time running around them, taking pictures, etc. I didn't know at the time that I would end up writing the novel. I just thought, Wow, this is so cool, I have to write about this!

The true story of 117th Engineer Regiment, 42nd Division,
1st Battalion, Company A

In the Great War

mayqueen said:

I just finished the first draft of my WIP, which takes place in 10th century Ireland. Last summer, I spent a week in Ireland driving around with a friend. We stopped at every single ring-fort we drove past. I had a wonderful time running around them, taking pictures, etc. I didn't know at the time that I would end up writing the novel. I just thought, Wow, this is so cool, I have to write about this!

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Sounds like me with Civil War battle sites.

I'm researching the sad reality of West Indian sugar plantations.

Sunflowerrei said:

I'm researching the sad reality of West Indian sugar plantations.

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Oh, that's one of the darker parts of history, for sure!

There is a photo of my movie star on an ostrich (publicity shot), and I thought "I wanna know what the story is behind this."

When I researched, I found that there was a place called the Cawston Ostrich Farm near Los Angeles. I think in Pasadena. Most certainly the location of the shot. So I described her getting sent to Pasadena for the day, and the process of trying to ride the ostrich.

That was a FUN scene to write.

In my Las Vegas crime novel, "Joey's Place," there is a sequence where my sheriff's detective protagonist is taken to meet the infamous Meyer Lansky. Researching this legendary mobster was a real treat (and eye-opener!).

Falconry.
As it happens, my plumber has hawks, and I'm pondering whether I need to wait for the next burst pipe or if I can just ring him up and ask him.

You should ring him up - people LOVE to be asked about their hobbies and knowledge. Plus, he'll be one of your great partisans as the novel comes to completion; you'll have a cheerleader who wants HIS part in your research seen by everyone he knows!

Flicka said:

Oh, that's one of the darker parts of history, for sure!

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Yeah. So I wouldn't say I loved researching it, but it was educational. I recently looked up info on Quaker plain dress in the late 18th century.

Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia. I wrote a novel a while ago where the characters go from Cairo to Johannesburg. The Giza Pyramids, Luxor, the Sudanese Pyramids, and the stone churches in Lalibela in Ethiopia all hold me captivated. My close of service trip at the end of my Peace Corps stint might, just might, include these sites.

Sunflowerrei said:

Yeah. So I wouldn't say I loved researching it, but it was educational. I recently looked up info on Quaker plain dress in the late 18th century.

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I am literally researching the same thing right now (although I'm looking at Quaker plain dress up to the mid-19th century). I have a Google Book open right now and am reading about strictures against wigs.

ETA: And I'm having trouble finding information about beards in particular, which is something I touch on in my current WIP (the Quaker character starts wearing a beard when he decides to get more serious about his religion). Hmph.

I loved finding streetcar maps for the city in which a good portion of my novel is set. I walked around town telling my husband "The streetcar went down this road, and this one and this one!"

I just bought a book on Muism. And also Joseon court life. History geek attack... I'm hoping to milk both for everything they've got.

My current WIP is about William Marshal and I have to say, researching the Plantagenets he interacted with is so much fun it really does threaten to distract me from actually writing. That, and it gives me all kinds of ideas for novels based on other people on the fringe of power at the time. Simply fascinating time period to me (1066-1300ish).

I set a book in Ireland, Ulster in particular, during the early reign of King John (yeah, I'm another Plantagenet fan). Found Sir John de Courcey, self-styled Lord of Ulster. He'd scored an amazing victory against the Irish King of Ulster, then proceeded to build castles and towns and win the adoration of the Irish folk by bringing relics from Ireland's three patron saints together into one church.

He also was minting coins with his own face, and there's some suspicion he was setting himself up to become King of Ireland and challenge John (which he was likely to win, all things considered). So John sent a couple of brothers up from Meath and the story of how those brothers captured him pretty much formed the middle of my book.

Now I'm as fascinated with John de Courcy as I am with William Marshall. Why does this time period have so many fascinating men?

I had a great time researching a character at a tiny rural Georgia Civil War reenactment. Though I was the only Yankee within miles, I ended up around an evening campfire, shooting rifles, reading Civil War letters and learning more about my character ( who was a real person I am fictionalizing) than I learned the following week wearing cloth gloves and whispering at the tony archives in Massachusetts.
I had so much fun!

My current story actually arose from my research at the university - a race to stage a play between Ireland and Britain in the early part of the last century. And, generally, I think that's a better route to go - where the research has actually provoked the story rather than the other way round.

But some things I did find interesting that I had to research for the story itself were early condoms (more interesting than it sounds), prostitution in Dublin (it had the largest red light district in Europe!) and various slang terms in the Edwardian era.

angeliz2k said:

Hm, no particular scene, but pretty much everything related to the Affair of the Diamond Necklace is intriguing.

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I'm having fun looking in to a slightly later period when Napoleon did his first political job and helped smash the Jeunesse Doree and their royalist associates (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_Vendémiaire ). After that, one of the eggers-on of the JD was sent on a mission to suppress the White Terror. Now there's a switch: from right-wing hack to tool of the centrist post-Thermidorians fighting the right-wing terror. I assume the dude was "philosophical" about it -- at least he hadn't been shot by Napoleon's troops or executed by the Directory.

Berserkers. I always assumed they were just a bunch of guys who were hyped up on some magic mushrooms. Then I discovered some guy who runs a training school for people who to this day have a sort of psychological loophole in their chemistry that makes them act and feel differently than the rest of the population. He referenced the Fianna of Ireland and the Menaeds of ancient Greece. Then I started getting really intrigued. Pity there is not a huge amount of information on the subject out there. And that led me on another tangent -- historical drugs, as well as herbal poisons such as wolfs-bane. That was so fascinating, I just may have to have someone poisoned in my book.

I'll say this - my new MC is a 19th century actress & opera singer and they do Don Giovanni, which gave me an excuse to get tickets for it tonight (research, you know). I love that!

One of my MCs was a guest of the prince of Novgorod, so I had to figure out how late 11th century Novgorod looked like.
It's not the same today of course, but now I would really like to go and visit.