Have you ever flopped around on the floor with an empty, corked bottle and a plastic toy dagger between your toes? If you have, you may have written “Chronicles of the Roc Rider”.
During a recent interview with the local paper at a book signing, I was asked a question about research. I actually get questions about this surprisingly a lot, but Sierra, the young woman conducting the interview, took a somewhat different spin on it and asked me about what form my research takes. Not everyone realizes that there are many types of research so this was an interesting question to tackle.
We all have that image in our heads of the researching writer, either buried neck deep in Google searches or bent over a pile of non-fiction books with a highlighter and a packet of sticky notes. Sometimes when working on a book, though, research is primarily mental in nature. You’re doing one of the above or researching your own character’s backstory by sifting through the ideas you have on file in your head.
Other times, as you may have guessed from the opening of this blog, research can be a tad more physical in nature.
*Spoiler Alert for Chronicles of the Roc Rider*
I am, of course, referring to the scene in Roc Rider where Tanin has been paralyzed on three out of four limbs and must try to free himself of the paralytic agent using only a few bottles of herbs, a rain puddle, and his right leg.
Since Tanin doesn’t have the foot dexterity of a chimpanzee, getting the bottles of herbs uncorked was going to be no small task and I knew I needed to come up with a way to do it believably. My first thought was to simply have him crush the bottles by picking up a rock with his foot and smashing them. Having no other recourse to determine the realism of that plan, I decided to get on the ground and try it myself.
For those of you who have never attempted it, allow me to assure you that picking up a rock with one’s toes, much less then wielding it with enough force to smash a glass bottle, is next to impossible.
I had a few other thoughts that went through a similar trial and error phase before finally settling on a solution. Having Tanin grab his knife between his toes and use it to impale the corks and pry them out of the bottles. While certainly not an easy task, this was the only method of getting the corks out of the bottles that I had even the remotest success with in my personal field testing, and so originally this was the solution I wrote into the book.
Every single beta reader, save one, felt that was totally unrealistic and suggested that I instead have Tanin… wait for it… pick up a rock with his toes and smash the bottles.
Sigh.
So the most realistic solution was not, apparently the most believable one. Strange how that happens in fiction sometimes, but it’s the truth.
After several days wracking of my brain and trying some increasingly hairbrained methods of extracting the corks, I finally remembered once opening a bottle of wine for my mom and having the cork break apart on me with a portion getting caught in the neck of the bottle. I realized that the far simpler solution was to simply have Tanin push the corks into the bottles with his toes.
This answer was almost foiled, when a fellow author pointed out that many corks are tapered so they can’t fall inside, but thankfully straight-sided corks aren’t uncommon at all and it was a simple matter of mentioning that the corks in the story were straight to address the issue. I did, just to be safe, conduct a brief research session on the abbreviated history of corks to be sure that straight-sided corks would fit within the time period.
They did, thank goodness, and a solution was finally achieved. I find it interesting how sometimes one type of research can lead you to another, and at times in unexpected ways.
Do you have any other questions for me about research? Ask them in the comments below, I love answering questions!
