Writer as Researcher

Published on 29 May 2024 at 12:21

One of my favorite things about being a writer is the many hats I get to wear; there's not many professions (or passions) where you get to be a researcher, a philosopher, an editor, a biologist, a costume designer, a psychologist, an interior decorator, and a mathematician all wrapped into a single project. In many ways, writing is an exercise in holding an entire world inside one's head. In this series I'll explore a few of my favorite roles as a writer and the place they played in my most recent novel. Enjoy! 


Researcher

One of my favorite things to research for The Engineer's Craft were the many era-specific engineering advancements that Bartus is aware of and/or researching during his journey. When writing secondary world fantasy (stories that take place on an imagined world besides Earth), I try to choose a relative time period to base the technological advancements of my society around. It helps create coherence and consistency in an imagined world, or at least the illusion of such. If your characters are still relying on watermills to turn grain to flour but also have flying cars, it will be a lot harder for your readers to suspend their disbelief (or let themselves get lost in the story). 

For The Engineer's Craft, I put Bartus in a world with 14th century technology so I could keep the limited feel of a medieval world while also including some "recent" developments that would inspire a young engineer to try and change the world. One of the hardest tasks for this story was finding a relatively small invention that I could let Bartus create in this world's history. I didn't want him to invent anything big, since one of the themes of his journey is that small, simple acts can be powerful in an individual's life. Let me tell you, Googling "small but meaningful inventions in the 1300s" is practically useless. In the end, it was providence that solved this problem for me—while I was revising the last 2 acts of The Engineer's Craft, a friend texted me an Instagram post about deck prisms on the Endurance. It was the perfect sort of "small" invention that connected well with Bartus' journey aboard a ship, the inspiration I was pulling from the story of Ernest Shackleton, and thematic relevance (a small object making a large yet unnoticed difference in many people's lives). While this element fell into my lap, there have been many instances where I found something just right after hours of searching across the internet. 

Other things I got to research for The Engineer's Craft

Archimedes. One thing I wanted to introduce readers to in this story was the idea that people in "Dark Ages" type societies weren't really living in the dark, and that complex understandings of mathematics have been around for longer than we often think. In exploring medieval knowledge of engineering, I decided to give Bartus a book called Cylinder and Sphere—a direct reference to Archimedes On the Sphere and Cylinder. I read quite a bit on his life for inspiration of my fictional "Archenan" who Bartus reveres as an ancient scholar who has indirectly given him many engineering insights. 

Merchant Ship Hierarchies. From the start, I didn't want to base Bartus' experience on a medieval ship on popular media and what I thought I knew about ships. I did a lot of research into the organization of a ship's crew, the social dynamics that might exist around them, and what roles a young man might be able to fulfill on them. As with all things, I didn't get to use everything I learned but it did inform the characters and gave them internal motivations that makes the story feel more three dimensional. 

The History of Communal Bathing. Okay, maybe a rabbit-hole research topic. But there's a communal bath scene during the second act of this story, and I was curious how societal attitudes about public nudity develop (when and where it becomes appropriate) and what sorts of rituals or expectations are put in place. It's really interesting how we often look on the past with a puritanical lens ("they used to be such prudes") when modern (United States) conceptions of privacy are much more strict. 

The Antarctic. How to survive. How fast can a polar bear run? Does anything grow in the antarctic? What do different seasons look like there? Body heat in freezing temperatures. Do wounds heal faster or slower in freezing environments? And on and on. There are some beautiful time lapses on YouTube where you can see what it looks like to live in an environment where the sun never sets. 

Farming Cycles. Bartus grew up as the son of a farmer in a small village; I wanted his recollection of those times to feel knowledgeable and lived. For this reason, he doesn't just mention a single crop his family grew, but a rotation of crops for different seasons as well as some livestock. I did quite a bit of research into what crops grow in what environments, when to plant and harvest, and the day to day lives of medieval farmers and other village professions that Bartus might interact with. 

For a funny story, ask me sometime about my disastrous research experience on Reddit.