When you
publish a book, the reactions you get from people can be one of the positive,
and sometimes surprising, benefits. After my first mystery novel, The McHenry Inheritance, came out, some of the remarks people made were a test of my well
known ability to maintain a poker face.
One of the
comments I got from a couple of people was something along the lines of “You
must have done a lot of research on this.” The first time I heard that, I had
the Tony Soprano reaction (WTF?) but I quickly realized that it was intended as
a compliment. It was a way of saying the book felt real to them as they were
reading it, and that’s high praise indeed.
The reason
for channeling my inner Tony when I first heard the remark was that I was
thinking of research as diligently looking into specific issues through
authoritative sources — something I did very little of. But there’s another
type of research, of which I had done quite a bit, and I suspect that’s what
people were responding to.
‘Everything’s Copy’
I’m
speaking of research through observation. Well before I wrote the book, I had
made many visits to the mountains, going to places similar to the fictitious
setting of the book. While there, I’d paid attention to, and mentally filed
away, details about those areas. To the extent that the small town, the cattle
ranch, the streams and meadows in the book seemed real, it was largely owing to
my recall of that prior observation.
Nora Ephron
once said that one of the great lessons her parents had taught her is that
everything’s copy. In other words, everything you see, everything you hear
contains details and information that can be put to some good use in future
creative work. A good writer creates a large storage locker within his or her
brain in which all that information is safely preserved until an occasion comes
up for using it. A great writer knows precisely when and where to use it.
In addition
to just looking, there’s a lot to be learned from casual conversations. In the
mountains I’ve talked to store clerks, bartenders, sheriff’s deputies,
campground hosts and many others. A brief exchange can yield a fine nugget, and
most people like being asked about what they do, which can yield multiple
nuggets.
Get Out of the Hotel
On a more
passive level, good old-fashioned eavesdropping can produce a bonanza, and the
best place to do it is in a local café. If you keep your eyes on your food or
your coffee cup, no one pays the least bit of attention to you, and you can
listen in on other conversations with total impunity.
Recently,
Linda and I were in the mountains, and one night we stayed at a chain motel.
Breakfast was included, but if you’re a writer, having breakfast in the motel
is like looking for gold in the dog food section of the supermarket. We went to
a local coffee shop, and as fate would have it, the people at the next table
were talking about a local character. In considerable lurid detail.
That local
character is going to end up in the next Quill Gordon novel, even if I have to
stop the forward progress of the story to get him in. The detour will be worth
it, and I could never have made up what I heard at the café that morning. We
spent $25 more on breakfast than if we’d eaten at the motel, but it was worth
every penny.
