Your main character—let’s call him Archie—has a problem. He’s trying to find something lost in the woods (a criminal’s hideout, perhaps, or a missing child, or a jungle-covered Mayan ruin). Suddenly, Archie knows what he needs: a drone! Now you, the author, have a problem. You’ve never flown a drone. What does it feel like…
Tag: research
Researching a Genre
If there’s one thing I never want to hear about my stories it’s that they’re “hard to finish.”
How real is your fiction?
I’ve now published three novels in my Four Corners Mystery Series. Book One is The Road to Lavender and Book Two is A Lavender Wedding. Both novels take place in the mythical village of Lavender on the wild Western Slope of Colorado. And both works chronicle the adventures of my handsome detective/lavender farmer, Trinidad Sands,…
Down the Research Rabbit Hole: Writing the Historical Mystery – by Charlene Bell Dietz
My plunge down the twisted passages of research started with a simple genealogical discovery. “Giles Brent, a thirty-some-year-old man, married a nine-year-old Indian Princess.” My writer brain wondered if there was a story here. Everyone from genealogists to historical writers branded Giles Brent as an opportunist set on acquiring land through his marriage. In 1643,…
Enrich Your Fiction by Interviewing Real People in the Real World
This weekend, at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference in the Denver area, I’ll be sharing all my hard-won wisdom (?!) about how to interview anyone about anything to enrich your fiction. Many people may think of interviewing as something that writers only do for nonfiction, like articles, history books, or podcasts. Or you may…