(no subject)

[lovedstrangely.livejournal.com]

I know this community has quite a few writers. I was wondering if a few of you could help me out. We all know lkh uses *shudder* calendars and her own sex life as research, which is teh lame. I was wondering what you writers here use when writing about a place you've never been and are not familiar with? to give it a real authentic feeling, ya know?


any help appreciated!

Comments

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

What place are you talking about? Researching Ancient Rome is a hell of a lot different than researching St. Louis, after all.

The absolutele best thing to do for modern cities is find someone who lives in this place. If you can't, then look in multiple different guide books (both just guide books for the city and travel guides). If the place is famous it probably even has some modern day non-fiction books set in it that I'd check out. It usually takes at least a few days of intensive research in a library, for me, if I use books and don't want to buy them. For spacial questions, Google Earth is wonderful.

For places that no one alive would have lived in, it's a bit more difficult. But, at the same time, if it's a place like Rome, Carthage, or wherever, you can easily find academic sources that will list certain books as the best and may even say what they're the best for. Like, some would be better for architecture, some for daily life, etc. They'll also tell you what are considered the best translations for books that aren't originally in a language you speak. If you still have questions, that's when you look for specific livejournal groups, which there are for practically everything and ask, very politely, with as much detail about what exactly you're looking for as possible to save the person time.

::pants:: Yeah, that's a very, very basic rundown of what I'd suggest for a person to do who's not used to lots of research.