Hi Tracy. I'm a huge fan of your work, and I would like to ask you a question: When you got into writing Lackadaisy, how much time did you spend on research? I'm trying to develop a series about World War 2 espionage, and even before putting pen to paper, I was hit with all sorts of information and nowhere to start. How do you cope with this?
Thank you! That’s very kind.Writing in a historical context can be tricky. Here are a few thoughts on dealing with that based on the approach I’ve taken:
Research is ongoing. It doesn’t stop when you start writing/drawing. Keep reading, find pertinent museum exhibits, buy cheap old out of print books on Amazon, watch documentaries, and if possible, talk to people who lived it. (You might not find a bonafide WWII spy, but you can probably find some grandparent type folks who can tell you what wartime life was like).
Narrow down your focus a bit. It’s good to learn as much as you can in a general sense about your historical subject, but at some point you have to start picking your battles. Remember you’re telling a story about a specific set of characters and circumstances. You’re not writing an encyclopedia.
Find the parts that interest you the most - the parts you’re wildly, rabidly interested in, because you’re about to spend ludicrous amounts of time immersed in this, dumping time and energy into it.
Don’t get overwhelmed by the details - you can’t front load the knowledge intake and know everything about everything from the onset. If important plot points don’t hinge on it, a lot of it can be tackled one bit of story at a time. (For each new page I work on, I end up digging around for things like era specific slang and turns of phrase, dated fashion and uniforms, decor styles, architecture examples, specific firearms, laws and court proceedings, how phone calls were placed, how cars without electric ignitions were started, how to drive and stall such a car, period medical knowledge, what paper currency looked like, and myriad other things I didn’t have thorough knowledge about ahead of time.)
Double or Triple check your references when possible. There’s a lot of great information on the internet. There’s also a lot of crap information on the internet (and on TV and in films).
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with creative license or asking an audience to suspend disbelief a little bit. It’s up to you to decide whether you’re working in shades of outlandish or realistic or something in-between. Just understand what type of story you’re telling in that regard and respect the audience. If you’re making shit up, do it knowingly and with intent, and not because you were too lazy to look something up.
You’ll screw up sometimes. There are scads of internet dwellers ready to leap on you the moment you get something wrong about their pet interests - sometimes with polite tact, sometimes with indignant nerd rage - but don’t get hung up on it. Just acknowledge errors, fix them if and when you can, and move on.
izzy806
andulkaphoto
baratheonpilled
amandla
germansingergirl
origamiaround
gummygunk
blakekathryn
areudirty
