Round 5 Hour 7

[studyofrunning.livejournal.com]

This is usually the quiet time when everyone is asleep, but this time we have two or three people still around writing. That's pretty cool. How's it going this hour?


This may or may not be my last post tonight.

Comments

[myev.livejournal.com]

*Nods* Background work is a necessary evil at points, as well as a well wished-for procrastination tool. ^_^
Luck to you in the next few hours, then!

[primsong.livejournal.com]

Boy, isn't that true! Sometimes I've put more hours into research on some minor plot points than a person would ever guess from looking at the brevity of the scene - but I personally hate it when a writer is lazy about basic facts that can be looked up (of course if it's sci-fi you can have the bonus of resorting to technobabble and alien technology when needed, but it still needs *some* research).

[myev.livejournal.com]

'Tis all about suspension of disbelief; you could be the best writer in the world and still fail to draw in readers by dodgy research. Every part of the process needs to be done with equal care to get good results.
One of the reasons I've been blocked on my LoD fic before, methinks.

[lolmac]

At its best, the research forms the heart of inspiration for me -- with MacGyver, I'm tied to the more-or-less real world, and I've voluntarily tied myself even tighter to reality than the show actually did. But the funny thing is that once I've got the research down, instead of finding it a limitation, it tells me what's possible, and everything just blooms out from that seed. It's really cool.

I think of it as an iceberg effect -- maybe 10% of what I've researched gets onto the page, at the most. But the page wouldn't look like that without the other 90% lurking under the surface. None of it is ever wasted.