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The limitations of research

This was sparked by looking at a bit of art I’d genned up for a cover. Well, technically it’s not, and never will be, a real book cover. It’s part of the monthly art challenge in my Discord server, where we have been practicing making covers for fun and entertainment. Given a title, daily, we mock up art and layout, then talk about what we did and why. It’s a good learning opportunity. Yesterday I put one up, and the comment was ‘I’d read that book’ which is complimentary, and I agree. I think the colors are pretty and the scene evocative of a peaceful setting with potential for drama inherent in the ship.

As I was looking at it, I was thinking, I could write that story. No, I couldn’t. I have never spent enough time in that setting to do more than guess at what it would be like to be there. The fine sand which gets everywhere, I can understand. I’ve encountered that elsewhere. Ocean beaches, I know. The rest of it? Palm trees, ships? No. As an author, the second thing to go through my head was a laughing whim to write off a tropical vacation as research, which is legit. It’s still superficial, but there are ways to expand my understanding of the setting without ever visiting it. Read books by people who’d been there, compare it to knowing about places similar.

If I did have the chance to go absorb the sights, sounds, and smells I would approach it differently than I might as a mere tourist trying to get away and relax. It would be a working trip, and any walks on the beach would see me have my handy-dandy rite-in-rain notebook in hand. Nods sagely, yep, I’d be working hard.

When writing, I do have the advantage, as I quipped to a friend recently, of having gardened from sea to shining sea. From my earliest years as a military brat, settling in Alaska, to the family dragging me to New England, and my adult peregrinations since then, I’ve been some places. I’ve seen things, and they can and do make it into my books. Mind you, my memories have some age on them. The corners of reality have been rubbed down with time into a smooth warmth of nostalgia. That’s natural. That also means I should either set the story in the era I knew, or carry out my research as if I’d not been there before. Places change, just as people do. Put a few decades of distance between you, and both will have changed.

Ultimately, like so many other things in our writing, the author’s settings are filtered through their perceptions and understanding. Which is why I can imagine and describe things like the Tanager (a wholly unreal cargo ship/tramp freighter in a galaxy unlike our own), using my known experiences of various places to insert small details to add verisimilitude. You can, and should! write about settings where you haven’t been, things you haven’t done. You should do your due diligence, and research well enough to not insert silly mistakes into them. Also, remember that the tropics have mosquitoes, and probably ‘sand fleas’ to bite you in the behind!

Also, if you can physically go there, do it. I want to travel more before I can’t, and I’m very glad I’ve been able to do as much as I have. Nothing quite like being there.