But hey, books can be complicated. Maybe one of your characters commits a crime, or one gets hurt and you have to search for what happens during blood loss (it was a vampire story, ok??). Not every story is happy and fluffy and requires zero sinister or questionable activity.
I've had a particular story on my mind for the past few days and I was thinking about all of the research I'm going to have to do for it. And when you put all of those things together, it seems like a very screwed up kind of story. So that's what I did. Put all of the things I have already searched for or will eventually have to search for in order to write this book into one weird list. Some of the things are more tame, others are not.
So here are all of the potential Google searches for this particular novel, whose title is most likely going to be Truth or Dare, and I may or may not ever write it. It could just stay in the back of my brain forever.
- Colleges in New York City
- Wedding announcements
- Private investigators (although I'm more than likely going to have a character find another one through Facebook instead)
- Paternity testing
- Candy Land
- Do open bars ask for ID?
- Characteristics of an abusive relationship
- Types of recreational drugs
- Effects of rohypnol
- Several legal questions, including:
- Third degree assault
- Attempted sexual assault
- What the victim has to go through to report these things
- How likely it would be prosecuted & what happens when the defendant pleads guilty
- Also, statute of limitations on a past crime
- How long does a black eye take to heal?
- Bunk beds
I figured I'd end on a light note there with the bunk beds. And maybe at some point I should write just a normal, happy, fluffy story. Yeah, at some point...
Happy Friday!
Question: What's the weirdest thing you've ever had to Google while writing a story?
I've done some quite indepth research into what happens within a cult - eye-opening, to say the least. I've probably had to google some really questionable things too, but I can't remember them at the moment.
ReplyDeleteRight now most of my searches have to do with aliens or related to that.
ReplyDeleteMy Google searches can be quit crazy. I'm surprised I don't have the government knocking down my door. LOL! Just the other day I was Googling "the most popular handgun."
ReplyDeleteIHehe yeah sometimes I search for some very random stuff!
ReplyDeleteI haven't done a lot of Google searching, since I usually just "write what I know," but I understand that it is necessary and important to do it when you want to write more than that. Good places for wedding announcements, I think, are wedding websites; a lot of people have wedding websites where they describe their engagement, including the proposal, and the details of what their weddings will be like, as well as pictures. So that could be inspirational if you're writing about weddings.
ReplyDeleteI think that most bartenders are pretty strict about IDs, because they don't want to get in trouble, even if it is an open bar. I wonder how they deal with it at weddings, though, without bouncers to protect them if the guests get unruly.
we are so lucky to have the internet to make researching easy! but we do have to be careful on what we take as fact and we have to double check often. i like the "how long does it take a black eye to heal" i've done many similar biological searches! so fun! happy discovery!
ReplyDeleteI use both Google and Bing, and the two strangest things that I've had to search for were: how to drive a motorcycle (non-automatic) and The Divine Comedy. The strangest things I've had to actually ask people (women) was bra sizing, the difference between A, B & C cups on said bras, and BDSM.
ReplyDeleteFather Nature's Corner
I remember hitting one sight accidentally, and quickly clicked off, and thinking big brother is watching....
ReplyDelete