Hey all,

I just thought of something, and I realize my asking this is more selfish than anything else: I just need a good laugh. I'm currently working on a semi-long story, one that I never ever thought I would write and that turned out more bizarre than I ever would have thought, which has all to do with the setting of the story, I guess.

So my question is: what's the craziest/wildest/dumbest/funniest thing you've ever done for the sake of researching something in your fanfic??

Mine is a strip bar. There, I said it. I landed an interview with a bartender, a bouncer, the manager and one of the, eh, strippers off duty. I felt like Julia Roberts hanging out with real hookers to prepare for Pretty Woman! It was by far one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, and I had trouble looking them in the eye. Yeah, I think they had a pretty good laugh at me

So,,.gimme yours?

Ghost

In helping someone (I was beta-reading her story) I went to a chocolatier's store and asked questions, like what size would a chocolate be in order to put an engagement ring inside, and how it might be possible to even put one in there without damaging the ring.

I'd been to that store a few times before, it's close to work and I kind of knew the guy who I spoke to, else I don't think I'd ever have had the courage to ask silly questions like that.

For my own stories, I've only ever looked up information on the internet. And maybe asked questions to a friend or two. I've read a Batman novel to be able to write a story, but I don't think that rates very high on the scale of strange or amusing.

Man, I wish I had a good story to tell! Unfortunately to date all I've done is internet research and watched a few movies dealing with the subject. But there's always the future...

As a beta, I researched design schematics for an atomic bomb and emailed the author with the details, including a parenthetical addressed to any federal agents who might have intercepted it based on interesting keywords. Something to the effect of, "This is for a story. Really."

The irony is that I try to write what I know. So when I started "Inside Out," it was going to be strictly B-plot, but then the dang thing got longer and longer and I needed an A-plot, so I pulled Trick Uno out of the ol' rabbit's hat, aka make the A-plot about journalism, since I don't need to research it, and then I wove in the actual story they were investigating, which was about organ donation.

So I did a lot of Internet resarch and read old stories in my paper's archive on the topic. (For the record, no one in Seattle was stealing them, at least not in anything I read.)

As for nfic, the best research method is simply to have a lot of ... err, never mind.

When I was researching Masques, I checked out everything from Stockholm Syndrome and mind control to how to drive your kidnap victim nuts with psychological torture to tazers to heavy armament weapons to high tech surveillance...

...I kept expecting the doorbell to go and the SWAT team to barrel through.

And, as it turned out I pretty much winged most of it anyway - especially the psychological stuff - and barely used anything I found.

My best friend and long-time beta once went above and beyond the call of duty when proofreading one of my stories. She decided to test my theory that my heroine could get free of her bonds and tied herself to her desk chair. It was only as she was struggling after about ten minutes that she realised to her horror she was being watched by the wide-eyed window cleaner. I don't think she was able to look him in the eye again after that...

LabRat

This thread is priceless!

James did a story once that involved a dirty bomb. He found all of these anarchist sites on the internet which showed him how to do nasty things in the comfort of your own compound. He found a site that would calculate the approximate rate of people dead and injured based on where a bomb landed and what the weather was like for a given day--spent weeks on all of this. I was so sure that was going to be the end of our nice happy family.

I tend to stick to happier websites for my research--as long as they don't start with wiki... Of course, his facts are usually straight and mine flub up every now and then.

Elisabeth

Not to mention the research I did on Cyanide and Arsenic, Cyanide salts and nickel based energy cycles.

I research such happy things...

James

Hmmm... Most of my research consists of Internet research. Some of the more interesting things I've done...

I've spoken with a former police officer I work with about what kinds of guns he used on duty... I bought a bottle of scotch (because it was my character's favorite drink) and got completely fall-down drunk so I could accurately describe how it feels, thankfully discovering along the way that I don't seem to get very hungover... I had an EMT talk to me about proper treatment for a gunshot wound...

I think getting drunk in the name of writing takes the cake though. The scotch tasted awful.

Here's one of my own, since the previous one was for someone else's story...

I use Google Earth a lot for stories. Makes me wish Metropolis, Gotham, Star City and such could be found on there, in fact.

When I was writing Reversal of Fortune, I used it to map out a route that my character would be likely to take through the desert. I also spent over 10 hours reading about Egypt and and neighboring countries -- all this for about 3 or 4 chapters in the story. Worse thing is that this was ~10 hours of research during NaNoWriMo, when time is very limited. *lol* I wanted it to be realistic since this was supposed to have been written by someone who'd been there...

I used it when I was writing Blizzard, too - to figure out where the cabin might be, which towns they might pass on the way there and how long it would take them to get from point A to point B.

And I used it while I was writing my latest NaNo novel because I needed to figure out which countries the character would go through in order to reach Nepal.

For a fanfic, well I've just done research online.

However, for work, I'm a photojournalist and live in a large city, Minneapolis, I've meet with all kinds of "interesting people". Have meet with strippers, prosititues, drug dealers, anarchists, transvistites, drag queens, political figures, celebrities, etc...I like to think I could make conversation with just about anyone.

I've had a bookstore put a John Norman book I wanted to use for research on hold for me. John Norman did a lot of science fiction about "Gorean Society" pretty much D/s related. When I went to pick up the book the guy tried to make me ask for the book in third person as a submissive would refer to herself. I had to tell him to either give me the book or he wouldn't be getting my money. Creepy jerk.....still gives me the willies.

TEEEEEEJ

Elizabeth

actually I find cites beginning with "Wiki" to be often very useful for certain types of information...

When MLT asked for help finding a "weapon" that Dr Klein and his Lab rats could use to incapacitate hostage takers without harming the hostages, I used 3 years of medical-science and pharmacology at university as a starting block to point me (and her) in the direction of volatile anaesthetics. A 2min search on wikipedia, followed by 15 min working on a summary as to how she could use it as a "weapon", turned into the critical information needed for Dr Klein to defeat the terrorists, get rid of the Kryptonite and save the day... see vindication

so you see,
for our purposes in fandom, wikipedia is quite adequate to explain to the author enough of the background behind technical points for them to further summarise wikipedia into 3 lines needed for the reader to understand...

this is after-all a Fiction Fan-club (whatever way you put it) and most of the readers would not care if the ingredients in a bomb are in the correct rations, nor would they care for whatever space-time continuum theory that is being explored during time-travel (I mean, I personally hate going into too much physics, mumbo-jumbo, whereas I love medical mumbo-jumbo... each to their own...)

So long as the author successfully uses the info to hatch out their plot... wiki is fine by me... whereas for a scientific article in even in a daily newspaper/other media, I would expect more research.... but for Fiction... I re-stress that that wiki is AOK

Okay, I have to use up a post and laugh at this because this is a total scream!

Truth be told, I try and write about things that actually happen to me, but I have a very vivid imagination, so while I've killed plenty of fish and gotten buzzed off cold medication among other things, I have yet to assault a nun, rob somebody, or what else, pose for Playboy...

JD

*digs up old thread* I played about 60 hands of 5 Card Draw against myself, including betting and stuff and documented the whole thing. All in the name of portraying an evening were game really did determine the action err B-plot.

Michael

Yeah, I remember, Michael. I also remember doing some online research for the very same story. It was about vibrators... It's a *very* good thing nobody was looking over my shoulder when I googled "Mr. Superman" combined with that, really.

For another story - again not quite mine, but I thought of using this idea anyway - I did quite some online research on birth control, ending with nearly splattering my monitor with Coke - and managing to get the author in question to actually do it. Although this was more like one of the funny side effects.

There was this other story - a hard-hitting rape fic - where I volunteered to beta. Anyway, I often sat in front of my computer (or even a public one at college) with tears running freely over my face. That sure was the hardest beta ever.

For a little one-shot, I asked my brother all sorts of awkward questions about tattoos when he had just gotten himself one. ("Does it hurt?" - "What do *you* think?") My, the look he gave me was murderous indeed!

That's so sweet

Always Coca Cola