⟢ The youngest member of the group gets sick and tries to hide it because they’re scared of being left behind, so everyone quietly adjusts the travel plan and pretends it was already decided.
⟢ The leader always eats last, and one day the newest member notices and puts food directly into their hands before anyone can argue.
⟢ The quiet one remembers everyone’s tiny preferences: who hates bitter tea, who needs silence after a fight, who sleeps badly near windows, who says they’re fine when they absolutely are not.
⟢ Someone gets injured and expects to be yelled at for slowing the group down, but instead the others start arguing over who gets to carry their bag. T
⟢ he group finds a safe place for one night, and nobody knows how to act because surviving together is easier than resting together.
⟢ The most reckless one gets grounded by the entire group like a misbehaving child, even though they are technically a full adult with weapons.
⟢ Someone accidentally calls the group “home” and immediately tries to correct themselves, but everyone heard it and nobody lets them forget.
⟢ A character who has always been replaceable realizes they are not when the whole group turns around to go back for them without even discussing it.
I feel like I get asked a lot (in person anyways) how I research for the stuff I write. If you've seen my other posts you'll know that my current WIP required a lot of research for me to flesh it out. I'm Canadian, but it's set in Jamaica. I wasn't ALIVE in the 80s/90's, but that's when most of the story takes place. My two main characters are Oromo & Chinese, but I'm neither of those things. Sooooo how do I do it?
This isn't gonna be super in depth, but here is a little list of tips from yours truly (but you can probably find these anywhere lol):
Find first-hand accounts from real people. Especially for niche topics. For instance, while I was researching stuff about life & conditions in Somalia/Ogaden, and specifically in the 70's and during wartimes, there weren't a lot of sources, let alone reliable ones. But some of the best sources I found were shared on blog posts, usually posts by actual Somali folks, OR the blog posts WERE the sources. First-hand accounts should be taken with a grain of salt, and seen as a SINGULAR view of things, but they can be really helpful as they share details that a lot of sources, like news articles, leave out.
On the topic of first-hand accounts: go IN DEPTH with it. I read a memoir (How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair, incredible read) that covered the entire life of someone who's life was... coincidentally, extremely similar to my main character's. But I'm not just taking her whole life story and putting it into my fictional one: instead I took notes on the book, and asked myself what I learned from it, how I could apply it to my story, etc. Very helpful to do a little novel study here and there.
Have DIVERSE SOURCES. My sources come from all kinds of places, from memoirs and blogs to guides written by the US federal gov't in the 70's, that were for gov't workers to help Somali immigrants integrate into American society, that so happened to be chock-full of information about life in Somalia (as viewed by outsiders in the 70's, however, which I considered of course.) I even read the entire unofficial Patwa dictionary. Just cuz, lol. Plus lots and lots and lots of other random things! You never know what you could learn!
CASE IN POINT: research everything. Go down RABBIT HOLES and find RANDOM SOURCES. It's easy to start: just search up whatever you want to know and start looking through the random results and click on what interests you. Even if the first source you find isn't the most reliable: keep digging, because you'll find good ones, and you'll find random ones, and those will be the most helpful.
And, always, check your source's sources. Just because a source exists doesn't mean it's automatically a good one. Who is the author? Do they seem reliable? What else have they worked on? Does the source even list IT'S sources? (Sometimes they don't... yikes!) If so, what are the sources? Are those sources reliable? Or are they wikipedia and other random articles? hmmm...... lots to consider
Oh and this should go without saying, but. Never use AI. Like, I'm morally against using generative AI in any sense, but even if YOU aren't, (for some god-forsaken reason??) at least consider that AI is often very much incorrect and is the DEFINITION of an unreliable source.
The serotonin boost I get from seeing and of even only *thinking* about Raymond Reddington is positively crucial to my mental health and well being ✨️💖🥰
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