 This is going to be a discussion talk on research. I've done this many times in different formats and so on and so forth And I'd like what I'd like to do One of my professors in grad school writing Professor said he can teach everything he knew about writing in 45 minutes And then we said well dude why are we around for three more years? And he said the rest is practice and practice and application more practice and more mentorship and all that's true Because writing is a skill as opposed to a knowledge base and almost like hitting a golf ball You can do it and you have the theory which you have to have the practice over and over and so research is one of the things I like to think about too and I like to work inductively from concrete examples to theory of craft So we'll look at several examples and I use my book Our books because that's what I know and I know what I did in those books to achieve Whatever the end result was Before we get started. I'd like you to take out a piece of paper and Jot down what you think are and do this very quickly what you think are the two most important reasons a Creative writer does research two reasons There may be okay. Does everybody have two? No, we'll come back. We'll come back to this later What I'm gonna do now is to read a portion very short portion from beautiful assassin the book that I had signed and For those who didn't get a chance to read it or not taking this Seminar as a credit for credit a brief set up It's this is story loosely based on a Russian female sniper in World War two her real name was Ludmila Pavlchenko That's the model for my character. It's not the same character. This story takes place in four months in 1942 beginning in June And it was the first part of the novel takes place on the eastern front in particular Odessa and Sevastopol And the second part takes place in America where my character based on that other character Tatiana Comes to the states at the invitation and request of Eleanor Roosevelt to help promote the war effort here in America And that part is all true and she did come here. She did fight I'm gonna read the first page in a half Imagine a woman in a tree a silly foolish young woman holding a gun and preparing to kill a man She does not even know there. She sits waiting hopeful of the smallest lapses that will spell death for her opponent She is fearless. She has on her side the vanity of youth the blindness that comes from a righteous sense of revenge She believes herself on a sacred mission that each death she inflicts on the enemy brings her a little closer to peace She doesn't yet know that she could kill every single German in the third right and she would not find peace She has yet to learn this but she will That time in the tree was mere luck nothing more than that in war you cannot count on luck You can only count on avoiding making mistakes if you make one mistake in battle you pay for it usually with your life That day I made not one but two mistakes the first was hiding in the tree The second was that I let myself daydream If it was so unlike me to let my thoughts drift when I was in position Rifle at the ready all of my senses heightened like those of a wolf stalking its prey Such an indiscretion often and bet ends badly. Let me tell you but there I was Recalling a summer morning before the war remembering a way of life that seemed unreal as Gossamer as a fairy tale in The memory I lay in bed alone Kolia my husband was already off to his job working in the city of Kiev I recall that the bedroom window was open the yellow curtains I made the first year of our marriage ballooning like a bellows the cool air from the nepper Wafting into the room and from the apartment below ours drifted the wistful cell notes of the music student who lived there Mostly though what I remembered of that morning was the feeling that strange and all-together Wondrous sensations somewhere deep inside a woman when she feels no when she knows She is carrying life within her. I lay very still feeling that life beginning in me taking hold Filling me knowing already that I loved the tiny creature that was sharing my body Loved it with all my heart and soul Loved it so much that the tears welled up in my eyes as I listened to something hauntingly beautiful by rock mononov I thought to myself this is love this feeling this moment I had never felt it before not even with my husband But I knew right then what it was at that moment the war had faded far far away okay, so that's the opening After the pro there's a prologue, but that's the opening of the main portion that's told by Tatiana In order to write that section even that section What would I need to know? What are some of the things I would need to know to write that in terms of research? Okay Okay tactics tactics of snipers and I wouldn't have to need I would need it there and throughout the novel But certainly is that a tactic do you go in a tree? Is that odd? Is that unusual? Is that normal? Okay, so that's one thing What else would I need to know? Okay, very good rock mononove is fairly easy But is a Russian composer and and by the way in those days and that time in Kiev in the 30s The Russian composers sometimes up and down and later on I use another Russian composer here that Shostakovich that loses His way and then is then is applauded by the by the powers that be so you'd have to do some a little bit of Research even in a small section about Russ Russian music Okay, yeah, and where the nepper is if you first of all you have to know that the nepper is is near the Kiev and Some basic things like that. So what I need for that by the way What's one thing and I used many of these throughout this novel there's a research, huh? A map. Yeah a map I had in front of me this bulletin board and I put up maps and I put up faces and and unlike some of my books that I'm developing the characters out of whole cloth this character was real and so I used this character I changed this character But I used it as a basis as a springboard to my fictional character. Okay, so I had pictures I had maps sometimes I draw my own maps There's a scene later on and I'll read a very small portion of it in a moment a scene later on where she's at a place fighting In Odessa, excuse me in Sevastopol and so I had to get warm apps and to see where they were and it's in the final days of the siege It was a year-long siege and Sevastopol and very bloody and very brutal and the Germans simply level the whole city and The Russians I'll say Russians although I mean Soviets were slowly being pushed toward the sea in this last the scene that I'll read They're right on the sea and their backs are right up against the sea and I'll read that so maps pictures What else is the scene would I need? Yes? Okay, yeah and in some ways that's the easiest and that's the hardest to get at okay The other stuff is technical and you can get it you can find it But how does it feel to be this person? Okay, how's it feel to be not only a woman in general, but this woman in particular? So you'd how would it what would I do for that you talk to women you talk to women who are pregnant? I had been married and my wife had a couple of kids And I remember talking to her when she was pregnant and seeing her and being with her there's that so if you don't have that Experience you need to find out that experience, and I'll talk more about that again. We're just talking Inductively here examples to him. He's right and the seminar That is that is the crux right there. What is that? I never heard that put that way It's the hardest part of that person's day. That's brilliant. It is I have never put it that way, but I I aim for that If you're a sniper, what is the hardest part? So what I had to had to do in this in Researching this novel I had to find out what does a sniper do and and the hardest part they got to get up way before I was gonna get in this in a moment, but way before the Sun comes up They had to get in their position. They had to be quiet. They had to you know muzzle They had to put stuff around their gun They had to be there with their spotter. They had to be and then they had to be perfectly still Okay for a long long time and the heart that was the hardest part of they getting there getting in position being ready Okay, now you said what is the hardest part of one per of a person's day think and by the way? Don't be thinking of my novel be thinking of your novel use this as a metaphor an example of what you're doing as I'm talking you should be thinking about your novel you should be jotting down things Oh in my novel I need to do this so in my novel I need to do this In fact when you read my book or any book you should have a pen your hand and the back of the book put take notes for your book Okay, whether it be tactical whether it be emotional wasn't mean to be a woman or as June said Very perceptive. So what is the hardest part of any this person's day? That's brilliant and In addition to finding those things I'll jump ahead of myself here again But that's fine. I want to give you as much as I can give you and if you have questions, please stop me. I I In doing research You'll have a plan and you'll say I need to know this and I'll talk more about where I start how I focus how I narrow in but in doing research you'll have these moments of serendipity and you'll find things that just open up whole other spheres and Getting back to June's point. I stumbled on a YouTube video of a woman in her 80s Picture not a woman in a tree but picture an old woman in her 80s or 90s who fought in the war and they interviewed her Okay, and she has gray hair and she's small and she's speaking Russian or Ukrainian and she her words are being Translated and she said I remember the first German. I killed I remember the first German I killed I cited him. I was in I was it was close to Berlin. I cited him in I Got him in my crosshairs and then my hand started to shake and my hand shook and shook and shook and I said to myself This is an enemy. I need to kill him, but he's also a man. He's also human being. He's somebody's son Somebody's brother somebody's husband. Okay, and she said I was gonna end his life and my hand shook And I controlled my my emotions and I pulled the trigger and I saw him go down and the tears came down my face And as I read that I said, oh my god I I knew that I thought I knew what the hardest part of the day was because in all my research about the Ludmila Pavlachenko, she was hard as nails She never showed this at all ever, but this one woman showed this other side So in the last chapter the last part of the first chapter she shoots a German and She goes up to him and she's angry with him and she's angry because he made her kill him and She hates him for that because she feels terrible that he made her kill him And I got that and that was the hardest part of her day here. Okay, so that's that's a very good point Other things that you'd have to know in the first chapter. Yes Very good, and I have some handouts I'm gonna talk about that very issue Why is it harder for a female soldier than me and there were something like 80,000 or so females that fought in World War two and something of five or 10,000 depending on how you counted them snipers and many of them received the hero of the Soviet Union Medal which is the comparable the congressional medal of honor. Okay, so they fought bravely and 60 70 years later. We're finally getting to that point. Should we allow women to fight in war? They were already doing it and not by choice. Okay So and I'm gonna read a passage about that very issue But what how is it tougher for woman later on after she comes back after this day with her trophies his gun His medals his chocolate that she got out of his uniform Which they passed around in eight one of the males uses his maleness because he's jealous of what she's done And this woman the actual one killed 309 Germans in one year And she had the most kills of anybody in the entire Russian army in that first year There was another guy later on they killed 500 but in that one year she had the most and there was a great deal of Anger and jealousy surrounding her so there was that too There was a tension there even though the Soviet Union I had to know this too Even though the Soviet Union had at least in theory equality of the sexes like any place. There's none There's not. Okay, so that's another thing. What else? Yes What are the deepest things that drives that Yeah, and in this passage that I read what's the deepest thing that drives her Revenge revenge connected to what even though I didn't say here Death of her daughter. Okay, and I don't know how her daughter died her children did die And I think she had more than one her children did die and war and I took that and use it in a different way I wasn't a slave to my research and that's another point you should be you're a fiction writer You're a creative writer. You're a memoirist. You're a poet. Don't be a slave to your to your research Okay, research will talk about what research can do, but it you should never be a slave to it Okay, so I used my research to tell I hope an interesting story You know as Dale was saying You said again say just rephrase that or say it one more time Drives that Yes, so here the deepest she she's on a Quest a mission to kill the Germans because she's once revenge and that revenge is connected to her child the death of her child And I get to that later on but a hint at it here Okay, so that's and that's all based on the research I did I found that I there are lots of things that I made up in the book, but there's lots of things that research Handed me gave me So that's important. What else do we have to know in this again? Just this passage Monday How in here Okay culture values, that's a good point And I think that's going to apply to a lot of characters It's certainly going to apply to my character and you're going to see that by the end of chapter 2 here. What else? Yes Russian names, okay Russian ideas Russian thoughts Russian words. I mean if you're doing historical piece You're going to sometimes use other words, okay? And you have to do it carefully and and I just finished reading a novel Called the glass room has anybody read the glass room at first it drove me nuts because of all the Czechoslovakian German Terms that they use but later on it became a really I think a really it's not a great novel a very good and very interesting novel Anything else? Yes Exactly this was June. Okay, and that's a very important point And she was bathed in heavy-duty stuff to so nothing none of her skin would show and she's got this heavy stuff It's June. It's 95 degrees. It's hot. She's sitting in a tree. She's drenched in sweat Okay, and you have to know that and you have to know, you know If you're basing it on something real the stuff around them the stuff they have the stuff They're wearing the stuff they do, you know If I read about another page you'd see other details that would need research or scope and the and her gun Okay, anything else in this just this passage Nature the war at this point. It's almost Leningrad s Stalingrad s they're in a siege They're fighting you know door to door almost, okay The Germans I just looked at a map just recently before I can't did this Lecture and it shows June where the Germans were and then later in June and then still later in June They're closing the ring. Okay, and you had to know that and where different later on they're gonna be I read a passage where they're fighting on the heights in In this in this Sevastopol and the heights were here and the Germans were just like a pincir action closing them down toward the sea Pushing them in the sea. So you had to know that too. Okay all very good ideas Let's see if you take a look Well before I take a look at the handouts, where did I get this business of the the tree of her being in tree? Well, the Miller Pavlichenko handed it to me Okay, she had an article she came to America and she wrote people were interviewing her and I got many of the scenes come right out of interviews with her on the streets of New York in Washington in Saturday evening post and all these different magazines she would give interviews and she would talk and sometimes she wrote the essays and In one she talks about how she had a duel with a sniper for several days And this one time she thought she was gonna outfox them by climbing a tree and Being in the tree she got there in the middle of the night in the middle of the darkness of morning Still night and she said from here. I can see down on the German lines I'll have a good angle which to spot him and kill him finally And and the son was at her back Okay into his face and what happened was and this is true that the bombs had been Shattering and taking the trees and shaking them that by June leaves were falling Leaves were falling and because of the gunpowder and the fires and so on the heat leaves are starting fall So instead of it was an apple tree that was in a cemetery. She wrote all this Okay, it was an apple tree in a cemetery She climbed this tree and as soon as the Sun came up. She said, oh my god I really screwed up because there's all sorts of openings in the tree She's she's not hidden and what the real woman did she stayed there and they started shooting at her and she's behind a Small branch of the tree and she said they're gonna kill me and what she did and what I had my character do it in that First chapter for those who read it. What does she do? She pretends to be she shot and she falls down and lands and she waits there all day long For the German to come up and indeed he came up and when he did she picked up a rifle and killed him That's a real story. That's what she said if she's lying then I'm lying too, but I believed her Okay, she was so in her interviews so literal and so, you know when they'd say to her What do you want to do and she'd say she's over here Eating and feasting and they're giving her fur coats and guns and whining and dying here and she keeps saying I want to go back And kill Germans I want to go back and kill Germans. Okay, that's the way she was So when she said this I believed it and she handed me this whole scene and it was too good not to use as fiction So one of the things that in doing research that sometimes whole scenes will be just handed to you Okay, given to you and that that's another reason for You know doing doing research. Okay, if you take a look at handout number one Okay, this comes from the book itself you've probably read this chapter if you came here and If you if you look there's some there's some details like from my pocket I took out a certificate the man had a red face at the recruiting office. Oh, so via chem That's the paramilitary organization. It's almost like the Hitler youth Okay, it was the Soviet kind of Hitler youth where they do physical things in this case She was she was an actual marksman the real woman and Kiev and seven point six two millimeter shots and so on and the Mosin that got a rifle Okay, and we don't have to read all this but she has there's a scene in which she goes up to the Recruiting station and and the recruiter says to her you're a woman you sign up for become a nurse Okay, and she says no I have my certificate. Here's what I've done. I am a marksman I I'm very good using it and I want to kill Germans and he said no no you're a girl go go home And okay, so she shows up the next day and so on so forth. I sort of condensed that but if you look at the last handout Okay, this is from a woman named Ludmila Pavlochenko her The line of volunteers at the entrance to the Voidnoy transport need District military registration enlistment office notice a very long term Was so long that my turn only came when I began to grow dark the military Commissar or commissar's office was stuffy and laid with cigarette smoke people kept coming and going his face blue red the Commissar was saying something in a horse voice looking up at me He barked medical personnel will be called up from the front tomorrow But he had not even been big begun from my bag I took out my documents certifying that I'd finished school for snipers and put it in front of him This obviously irritated him He snapped his his he snapped that sniper was not an army trade and then added something about women wanting to be soldiers right about women and men and in service and And without realizing the difficulties and so on and so forth Early next morning I was back and she insists that he takes her as a soldier not as a Not as a nurse or a medical personnel again this my scene is Expanded elaborated, but basically she told me what it was like to be denied to be Treated as a woman in a man's world her desire to want to kill Germans The fact that she had a certificate and all this stuff again another whole scene is handed to me through the research Okay, so That's that's something else that again in doing research. Okay, so Couple of questions here the larger issues What else would I need to know to write this book if you read the whole thing or if you read part of it? Or from even what I'm saying beyond what we've already talked about. What else would I need to to know? Okay, I'm gonna put down cultural and military attitudes And and a lot about Eleanor Roosevelt, okay Eleanor Roosevelt, I had to read two books I should have read more but again, you're not a researcher. You're not an academic researcher You're a novelist or you're a memoirist or your poet reading enough to get the job done. Eleanor Rosa. What else? Yeah translators. Yeah Good Okay, some dates dates In history, I mean if you're if you're writing a historical novel, obviously you want to know those things But I would argue that I have I've published three books that are in present time or Relatively recent and I've done probably as much research for those as I've done for this book Okay, so so you need to know some of these things as you go along no matter what you're writing. Okay. What else? Jim and then come back here Okay Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about perspective, you know, what's their angle of viewing things? Okay for instance My character goes to a big ball. Okay, and who's there but a guy named Uncle Joe Okay, and other famous people and she doesn't know all of that stuff from Let's say their level. She knows it from the level of a rank-and-file soldier Okay, so she's gonna have a limited perspective and just like when she comes to America America She's gonna have an even more limited perspective. She only knows what she knows So I read a number of things about what does an average soldier know think feel towards Soviet for instance When the Germans came into the Ukraine and my character was was a Soviet but Ukrainian Soviet many Ukrainians hated the Germans, excuse me hated the Russians and many welcome the Germans in come on in come on in and Things changed once they got there But many of them will because they hated Moscow so much and you had to know that you had to know their perspective And I do a little bit of that there and there was a great I also had to know that there was a great of famine in the 1930s in Ukraine Okay, the Hallamador, okay The economy so the economy here the social Okay, social political economic situation, okay And of the Russian soldiers, what else do I have to know? Yeah, that's not secret service then but the the OSS yeah, yes Yeah, I'm gonna get back to language in a minute, but language is important. Okay. Yes At the beginning and you pick the journalist point of view, right? Okay, the in the prologue and the epilogue Okay, and that took a lot of research to and that was at a different angle to the story. What else yeah Okay, the political I'll just sort of put another check here, right and yeah Yeah, and I had to do so much research on that and and the stuff that was going on and the Kinds of stuff that the Soviets were doing here Okay, and the fact that you know, we were on the supposedly Nominally on the Soviet side, but we also knew that after the war we were going to be against them It was just a given. Okay, so We passed between the British and ourselves any of the facts about the Manhattan project But we did obviously share them with the Soviets Okay, so they wanted to get at what we had and there was a whole thing and hey Oh, I read a couple of books on that and there was so many crazy ideas that they were sort of trying one was to Blackmail as well. Eleanor Roosevelt That was it blackmail that she was lesbian a lesbian and therefore put it out there and that she would give Somebody as if I was gonna crack her. Okay. They didn't know Eleanor Roosevelt. Okay Little tough cookie for them other comments other things we might need Yeah, yeah Yeah, the details. Okay, and as a couple of people are saying the details of her life Okay So what I do when I'm doing research is I start if I'm writing about a lawyer from writing about a doctor if I'm writing about Whatever start with the immediate details of what is their profession like? What is her profession? I've shot guns all my life, but I never shot a 6.2 Moisen the gun and I was lucky enough that a friend of mine had a Russian Sniper gun with it with the attached Scope I didn't shoot it, but I held that it worked the bolt. Okay, and so I felt comfortable doing that How many shots can you get off in five seconds or ten seconds? Okay, so you did food? I had to go online and I got hundreds of pictures of You know hard tack and military rations both in the the Germans and what the Germans would have because she Robbs him after she kills him and what would she have? Okay, what would they have? What would they eat? Okay, so I had to learn a lot of that stuff, you know, I'd learn about other guns I had to learn there's a scene later on where there are you know, Ty there are tanks Panzer tanks, okay, or surrounding them. You had to know about that So lots of stuff and that's her life if you're writing about an ophthalmologist If you're writing about let's say a lawyer if you're writing about a hunter you have to know that life You have to understand what that life is about. Okay, anything else? I mean, there's more more Exactly when I was writing this book There was it was the late 90s early 2000s We didn't have the access to online stuff that we do now So I went to the library and got three books on fashion Okay, close through the ages and I would go through that when I needed to have them wear something the same thing with soul catcher I had to have them wearing something and so I I would need to know what they would wear So if you start you if you're writing historical or if you're writing Currently, but something that's not you and as I always say, you know, the old dictum of write about what you know I think it's very boring. I Think right about what your your passion is where did this idea come from I should back up a little bit more For me I was coming down the stairs in my house in Guilford and I had the history channel on and I came across the end of A history channel segment on snipers and I heard about 25 seconds That said and she was the greatest female sniper of all time. What? What and then I saw her name and the next day I went to Fairfield University and looked up a little it was a little bit of a quote And I went to the the guy who does John the guy named Jonathan was great at the library All right, and he got me three or four books and articles and then it was a constant Barrage of stuff that he sent me. Okay, so I had to learn that stuff and and By doing research it just started to open things up for me. Okay. All right In terms of why do research? Okay, that's the question I asked you why do research before I give you my list I'd like to hear what you think are the most important items that why we why creative writers do do research Authenticity precision kind of authenticity, right a number another form of that credibility Verisimilitude believe the believability Huh Intimacy Okay, what do you mean by that? Okay, take all of that other stuff Intimacy very very similar to the authenticity precision all of that stuff It comes down to we have to create characters that are interesting and believable that that that are that our readers can Understand and identify with and see the complexity in okay, and and that's the notion of intimacy Okay, June said it in different. What's it another way of looking at what's the toughest thing this person is going to do today? It's intimate but intimacy and so all of your research in a sense should be in one way or another Intimacy getting into this character. Let me hold those thoughts for just a minute I got about 200 pages into this novel and I was telling it in third person Okay, for those of you are asking me or asking other people should I tell it in first person or third person? I don't know Because at least two of my novels I started one person and switch to another and sometimes I didn't switch back But I if I go back to what Sam was saying intimacy my agent sat down with me My editor sat down when she said I don't think you're close enough. I don't think you're close now I don't think you're in her head in her heart, and I read it and I didn't feel I was in her head or her heart And I did this also with another novel of blind side of the heart I told it before but I didn't go so far was only about 50 or 60 pages and I switched from third to first. Okay, and I wasn't in Ludmila Pavlichenko or Tatiana. I wasn't in her heart. I didn't know her heart I didn't feel her heart and so I switched and I had to go through the whole thing It's not as you know who you've done that it's not a matter of going from she or he to I Because you have to change the voice You have to get into her skin and I had to do that and after that first page or two I started to feel her feel her baby growing your feel what it was like to lose a child. Okay, and fortune fortune I've not lost a child, but if we in using our research we can use our You know our imaginative leap You know the notion of empathy imaginative empathy or empathetic and empathetic imagination I talked about that a couple a couple of residencies ago if we can do that We can use all this stuff to get more intimate closer to our characters and to our story Okay, so I actually went from third to first and I mean, I'm not the only person who's done that we in golden in Memories of the gays she went from third to first try to get inside of this character That doesn't always work, but it worked in this for me it worked in this case So what what's some other things that we need to why do we research? Yes Accountability, what do you mean? Okay, what did she mean? That's a good point you want to be accountable so we can say and I've had writers say well, you don't need to do that Edward P. Jones, you know what I thought was a really wonderful. It's not a great novel the known world. Okay, I Was captivated by and I remember reading an interview with him later on that all of the figures all of the numbers about It's a novel about slaves owning slaves in pre-war You know 1830s in Virginia all of the detailed numbers he had figures in different counties I think was Manchester County were made up We're all more made up now. I have writer friends and say big deal. It's a story. It's a novel. It's not non-fiction I felt cheated I felt cheated so when I do research and that's saying you have to do but when I do research I want that awesome authenticity. I want that verse of millitude. I want that credibility that precision I want it for the reader, but I want it for myself Okay, I want to be if not come a hundred percent right. I want to be close to be right Okay, I one of my books a dream of Wolves. It was about a doctor and I did a lot of research. He's an OB-GYN doctor. I did not deliver any babies Okay, but I did get a note from a doctor that said how long have you been practicing? And I said, well, I hope I haven't been practicing at all Okay, I've never but I had to feel and in there's a scene where he has to Deliver a baby by C-section. Okay, and I had to do a lot of stuff so I could feel comfortable to do that and get in and Get in that scene and feel comfortable and pull it off. So there's authentic authenticity. What else do we need to know? Research yeah, what why do we research open up your possibilities. That's in the top two That's in the top two. We're gonna have about four in the top two That's in the top four You you things are given to you in research. Okay. Yep Discovery, okay. Good. These are all great things and I don't mean to downplay the importance like very similar to very very important Okay, the appearance or semblance of truth. Okay Here's here's one and it sort of touches on what Elizabeth is saying is that I say it's to get a feel for the fictional or Non-fictional if you're doing memoir or poetic Okay landscape You want to feel comfortable? Okay, how can I write this scene about her in a tree if snipers snipers never did that? She told me they did it. She told me she did it So even if most snipers didn't do it and by the way after this I looked at about five YouTube's where Snipers are shooting other snipers in trees Okay, so it not only did she said but I felt it was comfortable that others did it as well But to get back to Elizabeth's point you want to feel comfortable with your own fictional landscape You want to feel I can enter this world. It's not just their world. It's my world I know what's going on in this world if you're writing a memoir about your family Find out what was going on in? 1942 the cars the food the house. What do they do? What do they think? What's going on on TV if there's an early TV in the 40s? What's going on in in the country know that stuff That's where research comes in and you do research Hemingway said you you do enough You know enough about your subject to leave stuff out Know enough about your stuff it subject to leave stuff. Why why when my freshman do a research paper they pour everything in Okay, because they want to expand they want to get to those eight pages or ten pages They want to show you how much they know they don't want to do a good research paper to convince you or persuade you or or Entice you they want to show you all that they know you don't want to do that You're telling a story whether it be a memoir or a poetic story or a fictional story You want to tell a story and you have to know enough as Elizabeth said so you feel comfortable there You're in that world. You're not outside looking in you're in that world. You're in that tree Okay, you're in that tree. I'm going to read another keep those thoughts. Yep Sure Yes, and I'll get to that that's a good point. I think I'll get to it if I did my research, right? I'll know I plan this out Okay this is at the end just before sabastable collapses and I took not this particular scene, but where Lumilla Pavlichenko Said it almost this way this matter of factly. Okay, so in my book The Tatiana crawls through sewer comes up behind the German lines because there's some sniper killing all of their men and Women she gets up behind she peeks over like a parapet and she looks down and she sees she's behind the German lines And they're all vulnerable now They're all but and she scopes trying to find where the sniper is and and it was almost verbatim I took it almost word for word from what she wrote and it was so easy to do was just you know It's like shooting fish in a barrel. No pun intended every pun intended Okay, so here's what she says I made a quick scan of the area looking for the sniper's position Then got out my field glasses and carefully glass the area below me inch by inch Nothing, I continued looking still nothing. I could keep searching hoping to find him or I could take what was given to me I decided on the latter course Slowly I slid the barrel of my rifle through the crack in the wall. I shot the machine gunner first Then before his assistant knew what had happened. I shot him too both in the back. I Moved down the line toward the other Germans in the trench. I shot a soldier smoking a cigarette Then a man loading a mortar when his companion reached for his rifle. I shot him too I continued down the line and shot three more men. It was like shooting targets at the range I wasn't thinking just acting on instinct a soldier's instinct. I had no fear I figured my life was over already and I thought only of killing as many as I could before I died and That was almost what she said in one of the articles that I read. I shot this one His companion looked I shot him another one crawled out. I killed him. I thought oh my god I wouldn't want to mess with this woman. She was amazing Gets you to switch gears so that you're not tethered to what you've read that was factual Well, I went as I read a section like that. I mark it. I put it down a notebook I may grab it if it's online and plug it down in my what I have I have my my pages where I have my novel beginning and I have my pages where my research is and I can Plunk it down and I number it and usually I have 20 30 40 50 pages of research notes before I start or as I'm writing my novel and it's there and I can grab it I can look at okay. I don't usually take at the moment. I do it occasionally. I do but mostly it's there Waiting fermenting and I'll come back to that too. Okay a couple of things I want to feel comfortable with where I am. I want to put things on my stage I tell writers even if they're not doing research if you have a character in a house Okay, what are you gonna do with a character in house? You're gonna have a table you got to have a lamp you got to have a bottle you have something on the table I have a pair of scissors something yet. They have a bird on somebody's head Where'd I hear that you got to have stuff around them and if you have stuff around them they can react Okay, they can do something. Okay, and so I try to fill up my landscape with stuff As I said feel comfortable to help me imagine scenes Okay, and that's that's the thing we talked about before and in fact I'd say that's probably the most important thing to help me imagine scenes You know we talked about verisimilitude and we talked about credibility and usually writers put those things down as the most important verisimilitude and credibility and that is important it is clearly important, but it's important I do research as much for myself as my audience my reader. Okay. I want to find out so I'm there I can use it. I know it. I'm one of the shooters here I'm one of the snipers or in the doctor book one of the doctors. Okay. I'm doing a novel now about a Middle-distance runner a Jewish middle-distance run German Jew Middle-distance runner and will end 1936 So I had to read tons of books about running and being a runner and I played sports But never ran and so I had to understand what it's like to be a middle-distance runner how they train I had to come across the words like the 1930s fart lick Anybody know what fart lick means? It's not what you think. It's a training technique. Okay It has nothing to do with with elimination Okay Another example when I'm doing research, okay, and I and his book research and his field research There's online research and so on in terms of the the field research That's where you get out and you talk to people or you go see things. Okay for For this book, I couldn't do a whole lot of field research except to go to New York and Washington I didn't have the money to go to Odessa or to Zvastopol and if I went the places that they saw no longer exist The Germans leveled them. There was not a building standing when they finished I saw pictures as a rubble But what I did do here is I looked at picture after picture after picture of what the strand looked like and Zvastopol and how these two she and her husband Kolia used to walk along it and their baby was out in the water and All of that had pictures of that so that's the closest field research I could do there in soul catcher the novel It's set right before the Civil War. I jumped in my car one time and I went up to Lake Placid Okay, because one of my characters in that novel is John Brown, okay, and he was connected to a freed slave Commune or society not too far from now. This is up near Lake Placid. I jumped in my car. I drove up there I got I swear to God. I got at least two chapters from that from that visit Okay, one chapter was coming down this very steep road It's sleeting and snowing and I pictured them on horseback going through this snow storm Stopping here stopping there. I saw John Browns Can't I know his farm, okay? He's got a lot of places all over the country including out West and Kansas and Ohio and in Connecticut and in upstate New York And there's John Brown's farm not too far from where the Olympic jump is up there. So I drove up. It was open There was no one there. It was March. I got out. I walked around. I had my camera always bring a camera I took pictures I walked over and I could I step back almost like Bill is doing taking pictures here And I looked at the whole scene and I saw where his house was and where his barn was and in my imagination I imagine my one of my characters coming out of the barn of a runaway slave and John Brown And it's one of his sons coming out of the house I could picture all this and they met and they talked in my imagination and I said my goodness This is gonna be a scene and if you look in I think it's chapter 3 of chapter 4 That's exactly what I do and my other character the main character who is a slave hunter the slave catcher the soul catcher Is in the woods behind me watching these with his other four Henchmen if you will and they're seeing all the scene and they're making plans on how they're gonna capture them What they're gonna do and that was all sort of given to me by me going out there and doing research I could see it feel research is important because you see it you smell it you taste it You walk it my first novel was set in Maine and I drove up to and it was about German POWs at a camp in Maine And that there was an actual camp. I drove up there many times. I had a feel for the place That's another feel you have to get now a the cultural feel but the feel of the place Okay, and if you can go to the place Go to the place okay, where you can get out and walk it and smell it and take pictures of it and live it Okay, so if you if you have in mind a book that you're writing and you haven't been to that place At least a couple of times go there if you can so I got out and I Tramps traipsy through the woods and I took pictures and I said here's where the German POW camp was right here And I said okay now I can picture I can picture all of my book research Being real being in a time and a place right here okay, um Questions I have a couple more pages here, but I'd rather have some questions Okay, in terms of research I do a ton of research up front and I would suggest that especially if the if the subject is new to you or Distant from you and time and place time or place do lots of research so that you get a whole abroad and a deep View of where you are okay do lots of research and then I do research every day Okay, I do research every day I what's the name of the car where for instance my current novel the one that's coming out in next year Resting places. It's about a 50. It's current novel It's about a 51 year old woman whose son a year before the novel opens drives cross country And she gets a call that he had a car accident in New Mexico car flipped over He was thrown from and killed and she didn't know why he was there He was supposed to be in San Francisco. She didn't know he's doing there There's a bunch of other discrepancies in his death according to the police report and so on and and it's bugging her so In the novel she's gonna get in a car at some point and and go south go out to New Mexico and follow his trail What did I do? I followed this trail and she followed my trail because I listen. I'm the boss. I'm the Don't follow her chair. She followed my turn But I drove out and I took hundreds of pictures and I stopped in a place where my character died in the little town I drove out in the desert where his car actually flipped over and I saw it and I took pictures So I knew it. I felt it. Okay, I felt I ate there. I felt what it was like there Okay, and I wouldn't know that if I didn't do that. That's research, too. I call it feels research. Yeah Yeah, yeah, that did present a problem But that's why I went to New York a couple times. She gets out. She goes in Grand Central I took pictures of Grand Central and I went down to Washington took pictures there I took pictures of where Eleanor Roosevelt, you know, I had pictures of where Eleanor Roosevelt had her secret garden Okay, she actually had I got that from from one of her biographies And and I had been out to Denver before so I knew that area And in soul catcher I was in Virginia many many times. So I knew that area too. Yes It's if she's a public figure, okay, she's a public figure and There have been a number of books And I read one of those number that clearly has a thesis that she was she was lesbian Yeah It was a little trickier for the Miller herself because she died 1976 as buried in In Moscow and I really wondered if if I would get letters from I don't even know if she has family I Worried about that. I was concerned about that But I think I've made a number of changes if you go on Wikipedia and you look up Beautiful sassan they say it's loosely based on the life of such and such, okay So it's not a big secret and I haven't been shot yet I didn't that's a good point. There's a about a chapter. So in Mexican American war in the 1830s I didn't see the point of going down there for a chapter. Okay. It didn't seem crucial But I did a ton of research Online and read a number of books about the war and what happened and a terrible battle where my main character is Wounded badly almost killed and the fact that the that the Mexicans went from injured soldier to injured soldier and shot them Yeah, so I mean Americans weren't much better, but they did that. Yes You mean legally yeah, yeah, you know, that's I wouldn't be the one to ask that I have my own concerns I just write the damn thing worry about it later. Okay, you know if when I when I you know at Harper Collins, you know They have lots of legal legal people looking at this stuff and and they'll say we think this is a little too close We're not close enough or or whatever. Okay. I worry about as a writer Okay, certainly public figures are almost completely free game We have a couple lawyers here that you could ask that and probably be better to answer it Just a couple more things Language somebody said language before and I don't want to forget that and I want to open it up to some more questions in a moment But language and what I mean by that is the technical language of the people That that their jobs their careers there what happens around them whether to be doctors or snipers. There's that language There's a historical language. There is the cultural language. Okay, let's say in this case I need I needed to know lots of Russian words. Okay And I would say this is is one of my great Insights it was my insight. I sort of stole it from from Russell Banks in his novel Cloud Splitter about John Brown He said that he used a Dictionary from the 1830s and 40s. He got his hands in one I got my hands on one for soul catcher to in fact and there were all these terms that You know, you wouldn't know what they mean now and I was able to sprinkle them Okay, sprinkle. Okay. It's like if you're making a stew and you put in too much It's it's bad, but you can sprinkle and give a flavor for that and that's I think that's important If you're dealing with let's say when I was dealing with the doctor. I had like three General medical books right at my desk and if I needed to know, you know Caesarean, what's the where do you begin on that or or you know pre-eclampsia? I needed to know that it's right there I had that so I can use technical language, but it's also language of the period whether it be 1930s or or now if you're dealing with a lawyer Let's see, you know, if you're dealing with a lawyer, you need to know about law. Okay other comments questions Yes, I would say any fiction, but certainly her store That's a good question. I Guess I guess I would say all of this research is intended to do to answer June's questions And Sam's question What is the hardest thing they will do any day and I mean that in the broad not just the technical their job sense But in their being a human being and what Sam said what how what's the most intimate thing in their lives? Okay, and so I try I need to find that whether it's contemporary fiction or Historical fiction sometimes the store can be harder Garden of martyrs was about two characters that really were not known in history and a third character a great deal Is known about the first Bishop of Boston and I had to fictionalize I had to learn a lot about him and I had to get over What the stereotypes were about him? For instance, I read his biography by a woman named Melville Okay, she wrote a biography in 1950s in 1950s when you wrote a biography of a religious figure You you did it like this Okay, they they were they approached the figure with great solemnity and reverence Okay, so for instance she has a scene in that book where in Paris in 1792 during the great slaughter of Priest and other high-ranking officials what they were called the September massacres Father chevrous my main character is there on that day on that faithful day He goes in he is not a prisoner But he goes to minister to the other priests hundreds of them in the convent of the carms in Paris And that day there's a riot they storm these Parisians storm Okay, this place Grab the first guy and say will you swear allegiance to the new government and and the Archbishop says no They cut his head off next one and my character witnesses all that Melville says he watched the bloodshed he ran to the wall climbed the tree jumped over and went home That's what he did He did that after seeing all his buddies being chopped up Okay, so there was research and it was just barest bones of of a story and I took that research And here's another example of what research can do the research didn't give me anything But he gave me the possibility of saying if anybody ever had PTSD It's gonna be this guy. He saw the worst possible thing to all his Friends and colleagues. He lived he snuck away. He cowered and so I took that and ran with it Okay, and in a sense it was given to me But in a back-ended way because nothing was ever said and she covered in about half a page Goodness sakes. That's all she came up with you know, so All right other comments questions. Yes Right Why I just think it's a great memoir where you could do research You could look at that book if you're a memoirist and say where did she do research? She came to Fairfield a couple years ago, and I interviewed her Probably the worst interview that I have ever experienced because she didn't want to talk about her book She didn't get anything way She wanted to come she sat there and I'm on stage and I said so can you tell us a little bit? No All right question two Okay, she came one other time and she was radically different, so I think it maybe she was still Feeling terrible so any bit, but that's I think almost all the things I'm suggesting here can be applied to a Poetry that's telling a story in some other age. I mean if you ever read Bill's poetic historical stuff Tons of research goes in that or if you're writing a memoir, okay? Anyways, where do I find research? Let me quickly go through this Internet obviously now libraries interlibrary loans Knowing a good friend at the library. I'm a horrible researcher I don't know how to go through all that stuff, but I can get online. I can find things I know my own way of doing it Okay, and I have good friends at libraries that want to do good things for me and I got I probably got on a Have on my computer probably 400 Files sometimes are very small. They're mostly a newspaper files or magazine files that Jonathan from the library sent me One after I get three in one day. I get 20 in another day. He just took a mission He's gonna do this okay, and and he's been great He's done this over and over and over again for all of my novels So no if you don't know how to do the research find somebody at a library who wants to do it They're just sitting there waiting for a novelist to come up and say hey, can you help me sure sure? well, okay, this book taught me took me because I was directing this program then and doing a lot of other things and screwing up my life in other ways It took me about three and a half years Garden Mars about the same thing soulcatcher took me ten months, and there's as much research I think and that is his own so Yeah, yeah, I don't mean I don't mean to suggest you want to over research it And at some point I'd be reading a really remarkable story, and I'd say stop Time out. I'm not interested in that story. I'm interested in my story, and I just need to know this I don't need to know all of it for instance. I just recently read Unbroken and I read Unbroken Because it sat in 1936 and that's the novel that I will get back to when I finish revising the current one and That's where my character goes he goes to the 36 Olympics And so I had to read it and end up reading the whole thing But I didn't need to know all the Japanese stuff because that wasn't part of what I needed I ended up reading the rest, but I was You know, I guess was good for other reasons, but you need to focus and cut out stuff Okay, so I do a lot of research up front. I do research every day I do research at the finish to make sure I've checked my facts and by that point it's more fact-checking for credibility Authenticity precision for instance the term soul catcher for that novel. I used that Because I thought I came across that term somewhere in all of my research And and then I I said geez did I make that up? Did I whatever and I looked it up and I couldn't find it couldn't find it finally I Saw it in a in a Google search and it was by used by another writer who wrote sort of historical romance is set in in the early part of the 19th century in New York the War of 1812 and so on and I saw it in her and I wrote to her and I said Soul catcher. I can't find that term anywhere. She said yeah, it was what slaves often called slave catchers Because they not only caught your they not only caught your your body to cut your soul and brought that back So I I said okay, it's I think I was right on that so one last thing and then completely questions in terms of verisimilitude when I finished this book I said there's all sorts of Russian terms Ukrainian terms Historical terms and I'm not quite sure that I have right in fact. I know some of them are downright wrong So there's two there was a person at Fairfield who is Ukrainian and she teaches there and And her husband is the head of the Russian studies. Okay, David McFadden Okay, so I called her and I said I'll pay you X amount if you go through my book and catch any errors Well about a month later. She comes in and David McFadden is with her and they sit down and he praised my book for 10 minutes What a great book blah blah blah blah blah and they both are holding something in their hands And I said what the hell is this? So I actually got two for the price of one because David didn't take any money But they both had seven pages of mistakes Single space mistakes. I'll just give you one at one point in the novel Tatiana calls somebody a weasel and I wanted to use the Russian term for weasel And so I put the Russian term and David said that's not weasel. I said I said, what do you mean? It doesn't mean weasel. He said yes, it means weasel, but in Russian weasel doesn't mean what we mean by weasel I said, okay, what does mean and he told me and I put it in okay And a bunch of other things like she probably wouldn't be reading this poet. She might be reading this poet So historical things so that was great and I went through and I I said, thank you. Thank you. Thank you And so there it was more tactical, but they begin the whole thing. It's intimacy It's knowing what the hardest thing a person is going to do it's getting into this skin It's understanding the fictional landscape feeling comfortable I guarantee if you do enough research, they're gonna be gems that are be handed to you on a silver platter And you have to be smart enough to grab them arrange them for fictional reasons or memoir reasons and put them in and not too much You know just enough. Okay, so it it gets yours. You're telling a story Whether it be a poem or a memoir or a novel you're telling a story Keep that foremost in mind and all of this research stuff is just to do a better job. I remember James Dickey wrote a novel called to the white sea has anybody read it. It's a beautiful brutal novel I was I would strongly recommend it and he has one character being a tail gunner on a B 24 and they're doing bombing runs over Japan and they get shot down and he's a survivalist he grew up in Alaska and they and the guy is parachutes down and he lands in Japan It's not a good place to be in Japan after you've been firebombing them. Okay, and you're Caucasian Okay, and so he somehow figures out how to get from here to here to here and I read an interview later I said boy this this guy must have yes, Dickey fought in the war, but he had never been to Japan Okay, so here's somebody who did research and pulled it off as if it's real So how have you do it? You're telling a story whether you actually go out and do it or do it from home You have to tell the story and make it believable and get right Any we got a couple minutes any other questions? Yes Well, I got my hands on two dictionaries of pre-civil war language And I still have them on my computer And it's a it's it was it had all sorts of colloquial stuff Terms phrases expressions. There's one expression that they used before the Civil War called socked allager and What it meant was a blow that was a knockout blow so somebody gave him a socked allager blow Now you don't want to use that every word every other word, but you know here and there plays it will give you a sense of How they spoke? Okay Reading one of my novels is sitting in Ireland in well, excuse me It's it's set in early America, but it's about two Irishmen from 1805 1806. How do they talk them? Okay, without making them sound like characters of Irish. Okay, so I got I remember I got a Journal by an Irishman written in the 1820s and 30s and he had a diary in a journal And he just kept it and he uses terms he uses expressions and I was able to capture a couple You only need a couple to give a flavor Again, if you're making a stew you put in too much is spoil it you you put him in you put let's say language You put it in delicately. Just like if you're using foreign expressions You don't want to fill it up because it become it can become really annoying or foreign expressions or foreign language You do it delicately to give a flavor. I Just search. Oh that journal. I I Forget yeah, I mean, there's there's lots of there's lots of stuff I'll tell you one more example in just a moment, but there's lots of stuff You can you can easily do Google's knowing and get thousands of hits when I was doing Tatiana And I was doing little middle Pavlchenko There were like five hits if you went Google the middle Pavlchenko there must be 5,000 now I Don't know if it's I don't think it's because it but there's a lot more stuff on snipers and you know And and Russian and women and fighting in the war and blah blah blah You can find you and if you can't do it you go to the library Say I'm writing a book and can you help me? I'm looking for a book on let's say Czechoslovakia and folktales Okay, put of something up here. You get a bunch of friends. They if they don't know it They know somebody who might know it. Okay, you do it that way. Let me give you one last one This is kind of fun in soul catcher Kane gets shot in the side Okay, for those who read the book he gets shot inside and he's way out in the woods And he's bleeding to death and he's got to do something to get that bullet out And so I said, how can he do this? What can he do? And so I called a good friend of mine Who's a surgeon who's had a surgery at Bay State Medical and he was my student up at Stone Coast So I said Dave here's my situation and let me just give you one aside He has written the book on how you can on how to kill off a character. Okay, if you look at Dave page Okay, Dave page PA. I don't know if it's GE or PA, I G He's got a book on how you can kill off characters in literature by poison by gunshot He's got it all down. So he's the guy that he's the go-to guy. So I said Dave How would you and he's plus he's a surgeon? I said Dave? Here's the situation a guy's alone. He's been shot He's got to get a bullet out. He's bleeding. Could he do it by himself? And he said, I'm gonna give you two answers I'm gonna give you a short answer. I'm gonna give you a long answer. Yes The long answer I'll get back to you and So he got back to me a couple days He talked to several of the surgeons at Bay State and buddies of his who are more historical have you know And he said yes I said he told me about the sterilization and what what they would know and not know what he would do He said, you know he probably is using something to make his bullets like a little bullet mold and that it's like a pincer He probably could use that to go in and take out find the bullet and take it out And that's what I used and then about a year later Master and commander of the movie. Anybody see that? There's a doctor in there He commits he does his own surgery and they're holding a Marist But he's doing the surgery taking out the bullet the the wound in his stomach. So yes There's a limit there's a limit I Would rather now I shouldn't say I've been through too many Okay, sure Well, let's just say this if you say 1930s Louisiana Okay, if you want to find out a book that would give you the best sense of Cajun dialogue in the 1930s Where would I start? There's a guy here named Al Davis I would start there and I would say what do you know? He might tell me two books and I would go to those books and I'd look in the bibliography sections of those books And I get two more books and it'd be like pulling threads and you keep following that and somewhere along line You're gonna get a couple books that are really good. Okay I can't tell you the dead ends I and you'll reach dead ends in your research When I first started doing Lumiere Pavlachenko, she had a book She wrote a book. I said my god. She wrote a book. I got to get that book I got that book and it was 80 pages in Russian So I said I got to find out what she said in that book So I gave it to somebody and I paid that somebody to go through it and they did and they and it was all technical stuff about killing people shooting people blah blah and It was all militaristic nothing about herself and it was virtually worthless. Okay, and you know, there's a dead end Any of it Last question short Thank you. Good luck