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pygmi-cygni-deactivated20250312

writing tip - research

research is one of the pillars of writing. a poorly researched fic, essay, short story, novel, etc is immediately apparent because of several things:

lack of depth

stagnant plot or development

confusing or inconsistent setting

it doesn't matter what genre you write, if it's original or fiction, whatever. you need to research. depending on the relevance of your writing, the depth of research may vary, but it needs to happen. you do not know everything.

Fantasy

I see a lot of writers and authors use fantasy as an excuse to avoid research. Shut the fuck up. Every good fantasy is based on a real ocurrence or social dilemma. That's why we like it so much.

'but pygmi, fantasy is made up! it isn't real!'

SHUT UP. Even if you don't realize it, your story will have elements that readers are intimately familiar with. If you flub something, it will be noticed.

Besides, just because you make stuff up doesn't mean you can be inconsistent. You'll just have to fill in the cracks with made up stuff, which will even out to being about the same amount of effort. Pick your poison, either way you're gonna feel it.

Research is not everybody's favorite. I like it, personally, I think it's like going on little side quests for knowledge. But I understand if you wanna skip all the business and get to writing your baby. No shame.

Let me give you some pointers to make sure the time you spend researching is relevant and well spend.

Lists! God I love lists. after you have outlined your story and your characters and everything, make a list of all the things you need to have a deeper understanding of. This means determining priorities. - How important is The Thing? Will it majorly affect plot or character development? Is it a focal point of the setting? If the answer is yes to any of those questions, it's important. research.

Big picture, little picture. How important is The Thing (again)?. How much detail do you need to know? Especially when it comes to royalty or a hierarchal system, I see research being misguided. There are so many nuances to royal interactions that I could give a rat's ass. Big picture, general outline. I don't need to know everything, just basic courtesy, terms of address, appropriate convo. done. but if your MC is a coroner? might wanna put more detail into that; you'll be talking about the job a lot. determine how much the element will affect your story and go from there.

Don't fudge it for the plot. You'll have a preconceived notion of a certain job description, and then research it and think 'oh that's actually boring.' Don't muddle up the rules just to fit the aesthetic. It's sloppy, and your readers will notice.

To practice researching, pick your topic and after learning a bit about it, try teaching a powerpoint to your parents or friends. if you feel comfortable enough with that knowledge to do it successfully, I'd say you have a good enough understanding.

Setting

researching location is a big one that often gets overlooked. You don't always need to memorize maps, but get a general idea of the city/country layout so when you say "they drove 20 minutes from A to B" it makes sense, rather than having a reader think "Uh, A to B is closer to four hours, wtf?"

if you are making up your city, make a list of important streets and locations in relation to each other. This will help you keep it straight and organized in your head.

Get a feel for flora and fauna. Palm trees don't grow in Alaska. Don't write an Alaskan city with palm trees.

Weather? what's it like? Let me tell you, Portland doesn't get higher than 102F. rainy, cloudy, all that stuff.

Atmospheric details really add a lot, especially if your audience is from that location. It adds another layer of relatability. Also, use weather/plants/animals to your advantage! symbolism, possible curse, all that stuff.

Eras

Oh my god stop fucking this up. Baroque, Elizabethan, Edwardian, Middle Ages ARE DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER. STOP SLAPPING FANCY CLOTHES ON PEOPLE AND CALLING IT THE OLDEN DAYS.

get an idea of when electricity was widespread in homes. when was the refrigerator invented? did they use the word 'hella' in 1950? this kinda stuff is important for not breaking the illusion of a time difference. If you are writing a period piece and someone is chatting with a neighbor like it's 2015, we'll have some questions.

Unless it's doctor who. you guys can do literally whatever.

Plot and Character Development

If plot and characters are poorly researched, you are limiting the opportunities for growth. In researching your MC's occupation, you may discover a cool side effect that connects to a plot device. Stagnant, stale characters can be spruced up with a more developed backstory.

All in all, research is really important for your story. regardless of how professional it is, tumblr or the new york times. Do your research. As a writer, you are representing the community in your own way. Do us proud.

xox love you

were--ralph

you ever get tired of living but in a non-suicidal way

were--ralph

like everything is bad everywhere and no one has money and im tired of this cycle

anderswasrightt

i tried to explain how i was feeling like this to my drug counselor and she was like "yeah that still sounds kinda suicidal" and i could not figure out how to explain that i don't wanna die, i just like. am so so so tired of the way life is for me and all my friends and family. i'm tired of living like this but i'm gonna keep doing it bc i guess there's no other choice

prof-grace-aspen

I don't wanna die, I wanna go lay on a warm field under the sun and watch the clouds go by. How is this hard to understand?

vaspider

I just want to spend a few days in the dim twilight between sleep and waking, but specifically the dim twilight of a Saturday morning in April.

crazy-pages

Burnout. The word is burnout, but not because of an unusual state of overwork or an overly demanding position, but because the bare minimum being demanded is beyond capacity.

jackalgirl

How is it that Tumblr consistently puts the posts that talk about what I am feeling at the top of my feed every. single. time?

thesaltofcarthage

oh, tumblr, we're really in it now

20mbiez

"I don't wanna die, I just don't wanna live like this" is very real and valid and I feel it every day.

were--ralph

you ever get tired of living but in a non-suicidal way

were--ralph

like everything is bad everywhere and no one has money and im tired of this cycle

anderswasrightt

prof-grace-aspen

I don't wanna die, I wanna go lay on a warm field under the sun and watch the clouds go by. How is this hard to understand?

vaspider

I just want to spend a few days in the dim twilight between sleep and waking, but specifically the dim twilight of a Saturday morning in April.

crazy-pages

Burnout. The word is burnout, but not because of an unusual state of overwork or an overly demanding position, but because the bare minimum being demanded is beyond capacity.

jackalgirl

How is it that Tumblr consistently puts the posts that talk about what I am feeling at the top of my feed every. single. time?

thesaltofcarthage

oh, tumblr, we're really in it now

20mbiez

"I don't wanna die, I just don't wanna live like this" is very real and valid and I feel it every day.

nemfrog

Running with torches. William Morris to Whistler : papers and addresses on art and craft and the commonweal. 1911. Header,

Internet Archive

one-time-i-dreamt

Law & Order: SVU

Created by: Dick Wolf

Co-Produced by: Speed Weed

moving far away to a sunny place.

lesbian-disaster-academic

i used to be so good at writing strong, thoroughly-researched, thoroughly-edited essays.

as a kid in hs, my teacher literally came up to me, holding my 40 page essay on the intersection of the European witch hunts and capitalism/exploitation/gender roles (it was supposed to be 7 pages...whoops) and went like "this is literally a master's-degree level thesis. what are you doing?? you could literally use this as your final dissertation in a master's program, what the fuck."

NOW??? NOW?? you'd think I'd be oh so skilled. but alas. i can barely piece together two ideas. adhd skill-regression is so so real. im SOBBING

animentality

micewithknives

I let myself rest and now I'm daydreaming about academia and academic research and writing again

penny-anna

Ppl on the other hellsite losing their minds over this in every imaginable direction lmao

penny-anna

some further thoughts on this:

I do think that a factor here willl be that (for whatever reason) this guy's students have become less likely to lie about their favourite book.

there's some kind of major irony in the fact that the majority of people responding to this haven't read the entire article BUT also that a lot of them couldn't if they wanted to bcos its fucking paywalled. here it is:

To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.

the TL DR is that the article is primarily about the fact that increasingly college students are struggling w the reading material they've been given, w longer books, and with 'challenging' books that used to be normal assigned reading. the above excerpt is just a closing anecdote.

important to note here that the issue is not that Percy Jackson is fantasy or that it's 'lowbrow' literature, it's specifically that it's a book for children.

unlike with other categories like genre, there are actual mechanical differences between children's literature and adult literature. books for children use simpler prose & vocabulary because children are generally still learning to read. there's a whole technical side to it that i don't fully understand! but it's that 'easy read' aspect of them which is relevant, not anything to do w their relative quality.

$fractally blog's avatar$

fractally

(Just noting that I did read the article, and I read it two days ago when it was published because this is an issue I am deeply concerned about.)

I am definitely going to be waaay out of step with the average tumblrina on this one but I do think this fucking sucks. There's nothing wrong with Rick Riordan, I think his books are great. For children. And adults who enjoy the occasional easy reader sanitized mythology romp.

But this is not a contextless question. We're talking about literature students at an elite university. Being asked about their favorite literature. By a professor. In a classroom. Generally, one would expect in that setting for a student to identify that "favorite" in this context does not necessarily mean "most fun to read on a lazy Saturday" and rather means something like "inspired me to study literature." And one would presume that such a student, having clearly worked quite hard to get into an elite university and dedicated enough time to the written word to chose literature as a major, would have an answer to that question that isn't a children's book.

I'm an academic. Specifically a mathematical physicist. And if I asked a fully adult student what theorem or physical model they found most inspiring and they told me they loved the way Bill Nye says "inertia is a property of matter" I would have some concerns. I would wonder whether that student actually had any comprehension of the topic they'd chosen to study. Which is not necessarily a failure on their part (they may have been failed) but it is concerning.

poorshadowspaintedqueens

So. There are several things going on here. One thing--and I noticed this a decade ago when I was still teaching undergraduates, so it's only worsened in the intervening years--is that the way students (in the US at least) are being taught how to read is as a purely transactional exercise. You read a paragraph and you answer a very specific question that has ONE very specific answer. This is how standardized tests work, and since public schools in the US have their funding tied to test scores, they are always pushing higher test scores, which means teaching to the test.

As such, kids are trying to read for answers. They can't handle open-ended questions. At least my students ten years ago couldn't. Every time I asked them to analyze a poem or propose a possible interpretation, they'd panic because they weren't confident they had the "right" answer.

It's literature. There isn't a single right answer, more often than not. There can be wrong answers, certainly. But I'd be hard-pressed to claim any one interpretation of a literary text to be 100% correct. And that is what kids are being asked to do for "reading comprehension."

Obviously they do not test books on a standardized test; reading comprehension there is based on out-of-context excerpts. So students across the US are being taught how to suck a single answer out of a single out-of-context excerpt. If they do read novels, it's on their own time.

My kids are in the school system now. Thankfully they're in a school where they're being encouraged to read entire books, but it is us (their parents) who are doing the heavy lifting at home. And we're hoping that sticks, because we don't have faith in the school system overall to keep encouraging them, unless the policies change significantly.

So, yes, it's true that kids are reading less now, and that is a problem. But it is not their fault; they aren't lazy or stupid. They're unmotivated because nobody is giving them a reason to be motivated. Reading has become associated with input-output instead of imagination, and unless that changes, the problem isn't going away.

iminthetunnels

ur future nurse is using chapgpt to glide thru school u better take care of urself

lucyaudley

Yep. This is terrifying. I’ve caught nursing majors, engineering majors, architecture majors relying on ChatGPT to do their homework. These are people who need to know their field well to ensure people don’t die and they’re letting a glorified algorithm cheat them through school. It’s so dangerous

redwinterroses

hey. hi. I work in academia. and there are a lot of student-age folks on this site.

don't do this. don't use genAI. even if your professors give you permission. even if they ask for it or suggest it. if they do anything short of directly requiring it (and I weep, because I've already seen assignments that require it) don't touch that crap. if they do require it, stick it to them. be as maliciously compliant as possible. be a nightmare.

I know it might sound easier right now -- just plug in your assignment and get the answers. you don't care about this class anyway, it's not for your major, you don't see the value of the assignment.

but for your own sake, for the sake of your education and mind, and for the sake of the future world we want to have: learn the stuff. you are not as stupid as the corporate bizzaro kings who want to rule the world think you are, so don't give them reasons to believe it.

and odds are good genAI is gonna give you corrupted info anyway -- more and moreso as the machines cannibalize themselves.

just don't do it. not even "I just do it for XYZ--" no. stop. there is no valid use of generative AI, and even using it for memes or lolz feeds the system and directly feeds the pockets of the people who want to replace you anyway.

aaaaaadhd

Rage reblogging this. Yesterday i got into an argument with one of my college friends who is using chatGPT to do all her work. We're psychology students. The whole group chat laughed my arguments off as if they didn't matter because "she's an artist, of course she's anti-AI" and i had to deal with it. This is a warning. If your therapist graduated in 2023/2024, ask about their opinions on chatGPT. They might lie to you if you ask "did you use it to graduate" directly, but try to make jokes about it and play it cool. If they're into it, DROP OFF. FIND A NEW ONE. Do not trust your brain to someone who didn't bother to use theirs.

fixomnia-scribble

As a grad student myself, and a TA, I am begging you: be incredibly critical and judicious in your use of AI if you absolutely must use it. It is NOT your friend and will NOT make you a better student or user of the skills you are paying top dollar to gain. You WILL make a grievious error based on your lack of understanding of the material.

justalillesbean

ok so hear me out…as a grad student i agree that AI is seriously damaging students (and especially young students) abilities to consume/analyze/engage with material independently and critically as well as in any truly meaningful capacity. i agree with y’all’s points but i think there are non-harmful and even helpful ways to engage with AI for educational purposes/to keep up to date with developments in digital information literacy. the truth is that it isn’t going anywhere so shaming or demonizing the use of it effectively makes folks more likely to be secretive about using it and/or not use it correctly (as an assistive device for education) opposed to a way to fake an education (which is ofc v bad and has very real and scary consequences for everyone) so if we want to minimize harmful use of AI we should instead discuss legitimately useful and ethical ways to integrate it into one’s educational toolkit if they choose to, as well as the ways it is being used that are morally and ethically wrong with an emphasis on the impacts that its misuse will have for the individual AI user and the collective both short and long term. i love this discussion about generative AI in academic, it’s MUCH needed!! but i personally think going to the extreme of demonizing it and saying that it should/cannot be used as an academic tool is gonna have more of a negative effect on the larger discussion and use of AI moving forward than intended.

pseudomantis

Scientific fraud is the most baffling thing ever to me like do they think they're just going to make a huge breakthrough and no one will notice that it's fake by trying to replicate their results

pseudomantis

Yeah actually I just discovered how to turn plastic into gold. Oh you want to know how I did it

Starts running away cutely

jonnywaistcoat

hasellia

At the moment, my academic idol is having beef with the homo neledi guy ( Lee Burger ). He did it because he got a Netflix documentary out of it, thus fame & money.

academicssay

fivebifivesunnydaleavenue

The unnecessarily inaccessible humor is the joke here, obviously, but it's also 100 percent true.

I once gave someone a ride home in the wee hours of the morning. (It's a long story, but I met her again about a year later and learned that she'd been at the height of her struggles with addiction that morning that she flagged me down and asked me for a ride) While I was driving her the couple of miles to her house, she asked me what I did for a living, and I told her that among other things I was researching the effects of gun violence. She listened politely and then said something about how I must be smart because I use fancy words like "gun violence."

It wasn't until that moment that I realized just how far removed I had become from the people in my own community. What the hell is the point of doing all this high-brow research if the people it's meant to help can't understand a word of it?

valtsv

i keep thinking about digital ghosts. or maybe digital hauntings would be a better term. the final messages shared between you and someone you no longer speak to, for whatever reason. a webpage, or blog post, or inactive profile on a social media forum that you still return to sometimes, no longer even hoping for something to have changed, just to remember, like returning to a grave year after year. video and audio recordings of people who've left your life that you play back over and over until the tape wears out. in the realm of the more fantastical, maybe a hologram that bears their likeness but only a pale, shallow imitation of their complexity, their personality, or an AI or other imperfect replica built on a lifetime of data collected from them that only reinforces their absence but is all you have left to remember (or replace until you forget the difference) them by. all these records that they existed that will inevitably only last as long as the technology that supports them takes to become obsolete, or the data corrupts and begins to break down, or the archives storing it are no longer hosted anywhere. you haven't cheated death, or the grief that comes with losing someone. you've just prolonged it.

apocalypse-polakiewicz

tozozozo

tojisno1bbg

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