Boy, I had this comment section opened, then left it for a while (as I am apt to do) and came back to it to find Virginia stole my points!
Great minds and all that....
Anywho, a couple more things that I was going to emphasize:
RESEARCH! It is your best friend. (Well, maybe not yours personally, but it's one of mine. Along with Google. And my imaginary friends.
) I have done more research than anything else for a project, no matter what the end goal is. My character and object design teacher had us actually log all the things we did for research each week and had to put in at least four hours of research per week. Which at first seemed
daunting, but when you think about it, research is everywhere: movies can give you inspiration (it's the sole reason I went to see "Pacific Rim," which I was pleasantly surprised by), books, tv, internet, talking with people... A lot of things you do can be considered research if you always have that end project in mind. That being said...
NOTES! NOTES! NOTES! I've got folders of bookmarked pages for particular projects/stories/what-have-you, along with pages of links to websites and brief write ups in between. Keep track of what you read, and keep track of where you read it. Nothing's more frustrating than remembering a fact and wanting to read more details on it and having to click through fifty websites before you find the right one. I keep a separate file specifically for "working out the kinks" of my idea or story, along with any snippets of story, pieces of information, songs to listen to or working titles (usually do this on Google Docs so that it's editable, easy to access from anywhere and can be worked on by a beta at the same time
thanks, Angela!). I've found this very convenient especially because of how many different computers I work on. An alternative is evernote.com, which is a great site for taking notes and making checklists and whatnot.
Fun Fact!!!
Google Earth is currently in progress of being revamped, and now not only can you see street level and buildings in 3D, but you can do other cool stuff like follow tagged sea animals (LIKE SHARKS!!!
) as they swim through the ocean! Fun resource to play around with. Can also give you a better look at the area in relation to space where it's all mapped out instead of working from memory or trying to put the names of shops in order down a street (of course, *I'm* not going to know the difference if you swap the names of two pizza places by accident, but if you want to go that deep into accuracy, have at it). :p
Short of using any actual quotations, you are fine. Anything strict information you can find on the internet is essentially public domain. (i.e. you can look up Superman's powers on Wikipedia, but you might say somewhere near the end of your paper that "Superman is property of DC comics etc etc etc..." as long as you don't pull quotes directly from Wikipedia. That's just paraphrasing and that's common knowledge.)
And just as a side note, I think it's a good thing that you are writing about a place you've been to before. Always better to write what you know.
Can't wait to read your story!
