Post #236 November 23 2020 “Og, Grog and the Origins of Story” Over a number of posts in the past, I’ve had a lot of fun with our prehistoric guys Og and Grog and speculating how storytelling might have begun. Recently, I read an excerpt from a book called Ancient Bones (authors: Madaleine Bohm, Rudiger Braun and Florian Breier) that seems to shed light on this interesting subject. The gist of their analysis is that speech, and thus language, may have started with gestures, like our primate friends the chimps, bonobos and orangutans. From gestures, they theorize, speech and later language evolved. Abstractions and concepts came after that. It’s not too hard to imagine storytelling evolving from these humble beginnings. We seem to be hardwired to tell each other stories. Perhaps story evolved from Og and Grog relating to their tribemates how a recent hunt went down: We detected the game, we stalked it for days, we surrounded the game, we killed it and now we share the spoils. Look at the structure: you’ve got a hero and a problem, complications, rising action, an apotheosis or high point and a wrap up with a moral and lessons learned. Sounds like a story, right? Here’s what the authors of Ancient Bones have to say: There is some indication that the evolution of the hand had a significant influence on the development of speech. You can deduce this indirectly by observing our closest relatives, the great apes or by watching children as they acquire language, using hand gestures to indicate what they want long before they say their first words. For humans, gestures are an important component of expression. They both precede and accompany speech. Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans are also capable of communicating with gestures. The vast majority are just simple orders, such as “Give me that!” “Come closer!” “Groom my fur!” “I want sex!” or “Stop that!” All these gestures serve to start or stop a specific behavior. Michael Tomasello from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig have been searching for the origins of language for the past two decades. It seems that it all started with gestures, centered around self-interest and then, sometime in the story of becoming human, gestures were added to share experiences, intentions, interests and rules. Communication originated when early humans started pointing to things to show them to others. For example, an early hominin may have pointed to a vulture that was circling overhead, over a recently killed animal. At first, pointing gestures would have helped coordinate communal activities such as hunting or child rearing. Later they evolved into more complex signs for concepts, such as a fluttering movement to indicate a bird or cradling the arms to indicate a baby. According to Tomasello, sounds were then added to augment and expand this language of gestures. This corresponds with American psycholinguist David McNeill’s idea that gestures are basically nothing more than thoughts or mental images translated into movement. Having the hands free was a necessary part of the evolution of speech—and integral to communication as we know it today. And I would add to the origins of story itself. Think about that next time you read a story. It all may have begun with Og and Grog gesturing and grunting at their tribemates about how the hunt went down, so many millions of years ago. The next post to The Word Shed comes on December 7. I’ll be skipping a week for the Thanksgiving holiday. Have a great Thanksgiving and I’ll see you then. Phil B.

Post #235 November 16 2020 “The Eureka Gambit is Now Underway!” Starting the first draft of a new novel is always a time of great anticipation, some anxiety and, for me, a good bit of determination to just plow ahead and get the job done. Toward that end, I have started The Eureka Gambit as planned on 2 November 2020. Below is an excerpt from the opening scene: Chapter 1 Wolf’s Lair Rastenburg, Germany September 23, 1943 (from the diary of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Reichsminister of Propaganda) “I asked the Fuehrer whether he would be ready to negotiate with Churchill…He does not believe that negotiations with Churchill would lead to any result as he is too deeply wedded to his hostile views and, besides, is guided by hatred and not by reason. The Fuehrer would prefer negotiations with Stalin, but he does not believe they would be successful…whatever may be the situation, I told the Fuehrer that we must come to an arrangement with one side or the other. The Reich has never yet won a two-front war. We must therefore see how we can somehow or other get out of a two-front war.” Dasht-i-Kavir Desert, Iran Lat. 35 North, Long 53 East November 26, 1943 0235 hours It was past midnight in the Iranian desert, some one hundred and fifty kilometers from Tehran. A convoy of trucks waited patiently alongside a cleared landing strip in the desert hardpan. There was a sound of distant aircraft. Suddenly, landing lights blazed on, outlining the crude runway. Then, one after another, three Junkers Ju-290 transports bearing no markings made bumpy landings on the strip, a location their maps called Alpen-Eins. The landing lights went out immediately and the scene was then illuminated by lights from the trucks. The aircraft taxied one after another in swirling dust and freezing cold to a stop alongside the convoy. The lead aircraft, part of the Luftwaffe Special Operations squadron, opened its forward doors and a steady stream of soldiers emerged, making their way carefully down the portable ladders to the ground. The flight of the KG200 squadron had taken nearly ten hours, from a secret airfield in the Crimean Peninsula, near Simferopol. The aircraft were loaded with squads of Einsatzgruppen soldiers from SS Battalion Friedenthal, as well as ample supplies of clothing, weapons, ammunition and rations. SS Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny hopped down from the ladder and stood to one side, lighting up his favorite Turkish-brand Sulima cigarettes, while the men and their equipment were offloaded from the transports and placed carefully but hurriedly aboard the trucks. Skorzeny watched the operation, rehearsed scores of times before, with a critical eye. The night air was freezing cold and a stiff wind had fetched up. He fingered the fencing scar along his chin; dry air always made it itch terribly. It had been a long, cramped, bumpy trip from the KG200 airfield, but it had come off without incident. Skorzeny felt a strange mixture of pride, anxiety, and grim determination as he watched. He knew he’d received a great honor from the Fuhrer in being selected again for such a mission, a mission so the Fuhrer had said, that was critical to the Reich. Coming on the heels of his daring rescue of the Duce, Benito Mussolini, at the Gran Sasso hotel in Italy, the Fuhrer’s decision to mount Operation Long Jump, with he, Skorzeny, as commander was a singular honor and a sobering responsibility. In the privacy of his own thoughts, Skorzeny had given the mission less than a fifty percent chance of being successful. But so much was at stake and he had always been a dedicated soldat, determined to carry out his orders to the end. The operation involved nearly a hundred men in all, organized into three detachments. Their targets: Josef Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, all meeting in two days in Tehran for the Eureka Conference. Abwehr intelligence had only confirmed the details two days ago, giving Skorzeny the final green light to depart from Simferopol less than twelve hours before. A husky lieutenant came up. It was Hans Eisler, White Detachment commander. Eisler was huddling with his back to the wind to light up a cigarette of his own. He was tall, solidly built, with a blond crew cut and a deep scar along his left chin, the result of a parachuting accident only last year. The SS Obersturmfuhrer had unusually big hands and feet, which often came in handy in field operations. His men called him Der Bar…the Bear. “Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, we’re getting the uniforms out now…see, they’re in those crates.” Eisler indicated with his cigarette several wooden crates now being laboriously slid down a loading ramp. Skorzeny nodded approvingly, knowing how many operatives had died obtaining the Soviet Red Army uniforms and insignia. “Have your men get into them right away. And hurry—” Skorzeny looked around their makeshift desert landing site. “We’re exposed as hell around here. The sooner we get underway, the better.” Eisler acknowledged the orders. “At once, Sturmbannfuhrer. It’s still hard to believe, isn’t it, that we were able to obtain this gear on such short notice. Gymnastyorka, I think the Russians call them. Scratchy, ill-fitting rags, if you ask me. Most of the tunics are too tight.” “A lot of brave men died to get those, Eisler. They may look ragged and fit poorly, but with any luck, they’ll get us past the checkpoints. That’s all that matters.” Eisler said, “Yes, sir. I’ll see to it immediately.” The commander of White Detachment hustled off to hurry his men up. Skorzeny appraised the operation with an analytical eye, missing no detail. He had trained these men hard, for weeks, after the Fuhrer’s orders. First at the old hunting lodge at Friedenthal, near Oranienburg. Then later at special training camps in the occupied Crimea. Infantry and engineer training had come first, but each man had to be familiar with the handling of mortars, light field artillery and tank guns. It was essential that each man be able to ride a motorcycle and drive a car and a lorry as well as troubleshoot problems with a variety of specialized vehicles. Even these stolen American Lend-Lease ‘Deuce and a Half” Jimmy trucks, Skorzeny chuckled. Other training included days of sports like football, riding, parachutes jumps by the dozen, special courses in languages and surveying, tactics…the training had gone on for weeks, stretching into months. Skorzeny was proud of his men, volunteers all. Only a few had washed out of the training, most of them due to injuries and disease. He knew he could count on their devotion and maximum effort in Operation Long Jump…the riskiest and most complicated special mission the SS or the Wehrmacht had ever undertaken…and one vital to the war and the future of the Reich. Okay, so that’s the excerpt. Tell me what you think. I have an extensive 40-page outline that I am writing from and after six days of work, I’m at page 30 of what will probably be a 200-250- page story. So, a pretty good start. And I’ve already altered some scenes in my outline, to accommodate my storyteller’s sense that these changes are needed. I use the outline to keep me on track as far as the general flow of the story goes, but I’m okay with deviations if the story seems to need it. This story is a bit of a departure for me, as I have been working in the world of science fiction for the last few years. I have done this type of what-if? historical novel before, in fact three times, with The Eyeball Conspiracy, The Peking Incident, and Final Victory. This is not a new type of story for me, and it’s kind of refreshing to do something different. That said, I have probably another 4-5 months of writing ahead to complete the first draft. I expect this to occur in March 2021. After that, comes editing, re-writing, moving scenes around and general cleanup to complete the book. I’m tentatively targeting to have The Eureka Gambit available for upload by Memorial Day, next year, which means 31 May 2021. We’ll see. The next post to The Word Shed comes on November 23. See you then. Phil B.

Post #234 October 26 2020 “Ideation: Where Do You Get Those Crazy Ideas? Part II” In answer to the question above, I have a one-word answer: everywhere. Ideas are the lifeblood of any storyteller and memorable ideas are particularly valuable. Even a cursory look at the mechanics of storytelling should convince you that the basics haven’t changed since Og and Grog grunted at each other across a campfire in 1 million BC. Have a memorable hero, give him a problem or put him in danger, twist the screws so that the danger gets worse, then our hero either overcomes the problem with heroic efforts or fails magnificently. That hasn’t changed since humans became humans and started talking to each other. What has changed are the ideas, the subject matter and some tweaks to technique. Oh, and the media have changed as well, what with printing, radio, movies, TV, Facebook, Twitter, the coming of the ebook, etc. But the basics of good storytelling really haven’t changed. Why? ‘Cause people haven’t changed that much. Culture and technology change. People…not so much. The dictionary calls ‘ideation’ the process of forming and relating ideas. I gave the title question some thought recently and came up with these answers to where do I get my crazy ideas. 1. Ideas come from life. By this, I mean life as it is experienced or lived. Say, you develop a close relationship with the bag guy at the grocery store. You know he wants to get into the Army and you both have a great interest in military history. Pretty soon, some of his life becomes material for a story. Or he becomes a character in a story. It’s happened to me. All you need to gather ideas and material for a story from life is something that anyone has: curiosity and the ability to ask questions. More specifically, you need the ability to look at a situation or a person and see the story possibilities in it. Not every incident has story potential but many do and some can be expanded into a story. I know someone in my Sunday school class who was born in Prague at the start of WWII and whose first memory as a child was being snatched off the cobblestone streets of Prague right in front of a Nazi tank. Tell me there’s no story possibilities in that. Be alert, be curious, and ask questions. 2. Ideas come from other writers and their stories. How many stories have the Star Trek and Star Wars universes spawned? Probably beyond count. It’s okay to read another writer’s story, and see additional story possibilities in it. Most writers don’t mind that, though some may be a little protective of their fictional universes. Two years ago, I had a game designer in California contact me about collaborating on a gamified version of my series Quantum Troopers. Nothing actually came of this but it was interesting. Often, you read a story you like and it gives you inspiration to take an off-ramp from that story to a world the writer left unexplored. Other stories can often spark your imagination into flights of fancy, asking what if this happened? What if so and so did this instead of that? What if Roosevelt and Churchill had been kidnapped by aliens collaborating with Nazis…I actually considered that as a story once…fortunately, not for long. Which leads me to… 3. Ideas can come from systematic imagination…extrapolation. This is a further case of asking what if? A good example is my series The Farpool Stories. Way back in the early 1980s. I wrote a story called The Shores of Seome. It had an oceanic world with a marine civilization of intelligent fish-like beings. I was never able to place it so it was shelved for several decades. But I was always intrigued with the setting and the question: how would intelligent fish live and what would their culture and technology be like? Then I asked what if: what if far-flung descendants of humanity operating a military weapon on this ocean world created a whirlpool deep enough to be a sort of wormhole? What if the fish people could use it to travel back and forth to Earth? What if two teenagers saw this whirlpool off the coast of Florida and wound up being sucked into it and catapulted across six thousand light years to this ocean world? What would happen? How would they react? Thus: The Farpool. And it ultimately evolved into five novels set in the same universe. Three more novels in this universe are coming over the next few years. That little two-word question what if? can be a powerful motivator for your imagination, if you pursue it far enough. The next post to The Word Shed comes on November 16, 2020. The Word Shed is taking a 2-week mid-autumn break. See you then. Phil B.

Post # 233 October 19 2020 “The New Farpool Stories Are Coming!” Any time I write a book-length work, you can be sure months and sometimes years of planning went into it. While I pin down final details of my upcoming novel The Eureka Gambit (which I start writing on 2 November and which should be available for download in late spring 2021), I’m already into planning for what comes next. In a few words…more Farpool stories. To date, there are 6 Farpool novels, which I’ve listed below; all are available for download from Smashwords.com or other fine ebook retailers: The Farpool The Farpool: Marauders of Seome The Farpool: Exodus The Farpool: Convergence The Farpool: Union As a series, I have previously described The Farpool Stories this way: Chase Meyer and Angie Gilliam seem like normal teenagers…until a waterspout catapults them across the Galaxy to an ocean world called Seome. It’s a world with an intelligent marine civilization, but riven by conflict, host to a Uman base fighting a menace from deep space. Now Chase and Angie find themselves in the midst of an existential crisis. Chase wants to stay behind to work with his new–found Seomish friends, to help the Umans fight off their enemy before the Coethi attack again. But the challenge is this: the Umans are losing against the Coethi and the star-sun Sigma Albeth B is doomed to supernova, obliterating Seome and its ancient civilization. The only hope for the Seomish is mass emigration, through the Farpool, to the oceans of Earth. The decision Chase and Angie make may send them safely back through time and space to their home world. But that same decision may well doom their Seomish friends to complete annihilation at the hands of the Coethi. It will be the hardest decision Chase and Angie have ever made. I have in mind to continue this series with three new novels. Here’s what’s coming: The Farpool: Plague (much of Humanity lost to plague; Amphibs infect Man but survive and inherit most of human civilization, including leadership roles in many fields)(story told by Seomish/human Amphib historian Likto klu kel:Om’t) 2195 AD The Farpool: Diaspora (Amphibs and a few humans expand and settle the solar system; major base at Europa) 2200-2285 AD The Farpool: Destiny (Amphibs expand to and explore nearer star systems; encounter and battle Coethi; eventually, enter into a treaty with Coethi to stop conflict; galactic spheres of influence created; first extra-galactic expeditions planned with Coethi alliance and assistance) 2290-2345 AD To keep details straight with each new project, I always create a file called “Next Steps.” For my upcoming novel The Eureka Gambit, here’s that file: 1. Complete all Research Needs 2. Review (Read) all relevant background materials 3. Write character bios 4. Operation Titan tactical plan 5. Make a schematic of Soviet embassy layout 6. Expand outline to Chapter and Scene Details 7. Projected start date: 2 November 2020 8. Finish first draft: 9. Projected upload date: 10. Review and edit final 11. Spellcheck 12. Book descriptions 13. Tag lines 14. Word 97 version 15. Verify cover format USE JPEG! It’s sort of a checklist to make sure all bases are covered. To accomplish this with my proposed new Farpool stories, I’ve started this checklist below. I show this to give you an idea of what’s involved when I initiate and plan a book-length project. 1. Re-read all 6 original Farpool stories, to get my head back into this imaginary universe. 2. Create Chapter and Scene details (a scene and chapter outline) for each new story 3. Do my character bios for new characters. These come from what I call my List of Major Players. Will there be any holdover characters from earlier stories…I’ll have to decide that? 4. Identify and develop details of any new settings. For The Farpool: Diaspora and The Farpool: Destiny, I am proposing to send my Amphib hybrid human/Seomish people into space, a sort of alternate history of solar system exploration. I will probably need new settings and details for that. 5. One of the main reasons for item (1) above is continuity, something that writers of TV series know a lot about. What aspects of the original stories should I retain? What will be new? How should I evolve the stories from the old to the new and be logical and consistent? 6. Develop a timeline for the stories. You see some of that in the table above and I’ll have to dovetail that with the earlier stories, so that the new guys grow organically from the old. 7. Develop my own writing timeline. You see that, for me, planning and executing a novel is a somewhat lengthy and detailed process. I don’t believe I’ll be ready to begin any first drafts until next summer of 2021 at the earliest. With that kind of timeline, you should be able to look for the first of the new stories, The Farpool: Plague, toward the end of 2021. The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 26. See you then. Phil B.

Post #232 October 12 2020 “Download Numbers, Current Projects and the Future” Every so often, I like to take a moment to get a breath from my whirlwind writing career. Step back and consider where I am. First, some numbers…. As of this writing, some 47,073 downloads have been made of my online work. This has all occurred over the last six years. It’s sobering for me to realize that my work has been downloaded by somebody this many times. Somebody out there must be reading my stuff. Here’s the cumulative breakdown by category, as of 9-28-29: Tales of the Quantum Corps (seven Johnny Winger novels): 10,035 Quantum Troopers (series formerly known as Nanotroopers; 22 episodes): 21,005 The Farpool Stories (6 novels): 6531 Time Jumpers (series of 10 novellas): 2737 Quantum Troopers Return (series of 10 novellas; eight uploaded to date): 361 Three alternate-history novels: 2857 Two horror novels: 1899 Two story collections: 1477 That’s where my career stands concerning numbers of readers and downloads. As to current projects, I mentioned above that Quantum Troopers Return still has two novella-length episodes to be uploaded. The next one comes on October 9, followed by Episode 10 on November 13. I have just finished a science fiction short story entitled ‘Proxima’, which I hope to start submitting to print markets this week. I currently have one other short story circulating around, entitled ‘Halo Jumpers.’ Here’s hoping it finds a home. By November 2 (if not earlier), I will be starting first draft work on my next novel The Eureka Gambit. This is my fourth alternate-history story (all of them unrelated), a kind of what-if? story set in 1943. Here’s a brief description: Major premise: Hitler approves a plot to abduct Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill as they arrive and assemble for the Teheran Conference in Nov 1943, to prevent an invasion of western Europe. The plot involves ransoming off the lives of the Big Three for a cessation of hostilities in Europe and recognition by the Allies of current borders and military gains by the Third Reich. Recognizing a new order in Europe. The operation succeeds and Roosevelt and Churchill are abducted. Stalin escapes the attempt with injuries. Roosevelt and Churchill are spirited away by low-flying aircraft to a remote site in Turkey, then taken by train through the Balkans to a mountain hideaway in the Austrian Alps. Now Hitler has a bargaining chip for dealing with the U.S. and U.K. He also knows about the proposed Operation Overlord and one of his conditions is that Overlord be scrapped. A rescue effort must be mounted. Vice President Henry A. Wallace must coordinate with King George VI of England to coordinate rescue operations. Look for this one to be published online sometime in late spring or early summer 2021. Further in the future, I plan to re-start my series The Farpool Stories, with three more titles as indicated below: The Farpool: Plague The Farpool: Diaspora The Farpool: Destiny I’ll have to do a lot of re-reading of my original stories to maintain continuity and carry the main themes forward in a logical and believable way. I do have the basic story ideas down already. Even further down the road, I may attempt to take my two stories ‘Cloudchasers’ (published in a collection called Elliptical Galaxies) and Quantum Troopers Return: Episode 5: HAVOC and make a novel out of them. Both deal with the planet Venus, which often doesn’t find its way into much science fiction, almost as if it were a forgotten world. With the recent real-life discovery of the chemical phosphine (PH3) in the Venusian atmosphere, there is some speculation that such a discovery may in fact be a molecular indicator of some kind of odd life forms in that planet’s atmosphere. We’ll see. So, that’s where I stand as of this date. The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 19. See you then. Phil B.

Post #231 October 5 2020 “Why I Write” This post is the 231st upload to The Word Shed so I thought I would take a step back and be a little more reflective than usual. The question of the title is one I don’t normally spend a lot of time thinking about but it does go to the very heart of why I engage in this crazy business at all. So why do I write? I can think of at least 5 reasons… 1. To scratch an itch. I’m not sure how common this is but many writers (as well as artists and musicians) exercise their art because they can’t not do it. It’s like breathing, or eating. I’m this way. If I don’t write words on paper or a screen fairly often, I feel wrong. Not ill, just that something’s missing. Reading is like that for me as well. At breakfast, I’ll read the nutrition contents of the cereal box, again and again. There’s just something about processing thoughts in my mind and having them shoot out of my fingers to a keypad that is satisfying. Maybe it’s some kind of innate storytelling sense. Human beings are story beings. We have been from the beginning (that could a blog post for another time). I think we’re hardwired for stories. And some of us are hardwired to tell stories. 2. To entertain myself (and others). At some level, every writer wants to entertain. I write stories at least as much to entertain myself as to entertain others. Think of kids and how they play. They concoct scenarios and make believe things and places. They immerse themselves in their make-believe worlds. That’s exactly what I do. Somehow, as adults this faculty of making believe is beaten out of us as we grow older. But the hardwiring is still there and for some of us, it’s alive and active. When I have an idea for a story, I am literally consumed by a desire to see how it turns out. I write the story to find out what happens. If other people are also entertained, so much the better. I think many writers would admit to having a child’s curiosity about the world and what happens “if I do this.” So do scientists and engineers, anyone who tinkers, in fact. This basic curiosity about what happens next drives a lot of what we humans achieve. I just happen to put my thoughts and findings down in story form. 3. For recognition. I have to be honest about this one. We all want to be appreciated and recognized for our talents. For some, like actors, the drive for applause and recognition may well be the main drive. For musicians, it’s the sound of a pleasant sequence of notes. For writers, the well-turned phrase or a sentence that makes you think and wonder: “Hmmm, maybe it could happen that way.” Recognition is just a form of validation. It’s a way of saying you’re doing something good and we appreciate what you’re doing. It’s a pat on the head. 4. To leave something behind. My wife and I have no children, just a frighteningly smart Pekingese dog. It’s a basic human impulse to leave something behind, whether it be a brood of good kids or just some good works. In nature, we call this evolutionary impulse procreation. Since I don’t have any kids to continue my name and family line, I want to leave the world aware that I was here by writing and selling stories. Let’s face it, when death comes, it’s a bit of a downer. We wonder if we ever made a difference. I want to be remembered as a teller of good stories. 5. To make a statement. Every writer has a point of view and a peculiar and personal way of seeing the world. Some writers have a proverbial axe to grind, or an agenda. Writers have a natural stage on which to make statements about love and life, politics and sports, religion and culture or whatever tickles their fancy. Especially in fiction, just by the art of writing (choosing how to describe a character and his or her motivation), you’re making a statement. And you may find a lot of people agreeing with you and saying something like, “You know, by God, he’s right!” You can’t not write without expressing an opinion. Journalistic objectivity is as likely as finding a unicorn in your shower. Your very act of choosing one word over another is a form of opinion…an opinion that this is a better way to say something. Some of us are just a little more explicit about this than others. So there you have my explanation of why I write. There are surely more reasons than this but these are the ones I could come up with. If you write anything, even blog posts or Facebook entries, let me know what motivates you to put words down. Anger, disgust, some primal urge to beat the drums, whatever it is, I’d like to hear it. The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 12, 2020. See you October 12th. Phil B.

Post #230 September 28 2020 “Researching a Story: How Much is Enough? Part II” Why do writers need to do research? After, it was Ernest Hemingway who said “Write what you know.” If you do that, you shouldn’t have to do research. Right? Wrong. Writers do research for a number of reasons, which I’ll detail below. Maybe the bigger question, which dovetails with the question of the title, is how much research to actually do? Writers should do their research homework for at least the following reasons: 1. Any story, fiction or nonfiction, is improved with at least some background detail. However, there’s a caveat. A little goes a long way. At this time, I’m doing background research for an alternate history novel called The Eureka Gambit. One of the key characters is a Nazi special forces commander. Call him Otto. In my research, I learned (from his own biography; he was a real person) what kind of cigarettes he preferred. I could put that little detail in the story. But should I? Does it advance the story? Does is illuminate character? I haven’t decided yet. But those are the questions you should ask before info-dumping all your research on the poor reader. Again, a little goes a long way. 2. Another reason to do your research is that it helps put you, the author, into the story mentally. For my series The Farpool Stories, I had to do a lot of research and background for an alien species that was marine in nature, basically intelligent fish. I read everything I could about fish biology, whales, dolphins, etc and even decided to put much of that info in an appendix at the end of the story, as in Dune. Steeping myself in all this marine and ocean stuff put me in the best frame of mind to carry a story about these people, who were so very different from human beings. 3. Doing your research helps you understand and portray your characters better. This is especially true in that characters always have some interaction with the physical settings of the story. When you know these details, and know that little Willie grew up with a deathly fear of caves and dark places, it becomes easier to explain why older Willie always left all the lights on in his house all night long. Details matter. Details add realism to a story. Details enhance verisimilitude…the resemblance to the truth that every storyteller relies on to capture his audience. 4. Properly using all that research in your story helps pace your plot. You can intersperse action scenes with narrative descriptions of setting, like James Michener, whose novels often read like encyclopedias or textbooks, at least in their beginnings. Using details from your research can help build tension, perhaps by delaying critical details to bring the reader along, or dropping a few details in at just the right moment, to reveal something essential to the story. I’ve been reading stories from Nigel Hamilton’s FDR at War series, about President Roosevelt as commander-in-chief during WWII. At one point in the middle volume of this trilogy, Hamilton tells the reader that FDR’s presidential train (known as the Ferdinand Magellan) was heavily armored and he provides the exact number of millimeters of armor used. Did I need to know that to enjoy the story? Probably not. But I found it fascinating and made me want to know even more details. Details like that capture my attention, if not overdone, and I suspect it does so for many readers. 5. Accuracy. This is especially important in nonfiction or biographies, histories, etc. But even in fiction, accurate details from diligent research are important. Let’s face it, readers love to find and point out discrepancies and factual errors. Egregious factual errors make a story less believable. They destroy verisimilitude. They loosen the implied ‘contract’ between the storyteller and his audience. What if Og is telling his cave-dweller friends about how he bagged the big woolly mammoth all by himself but his comrade Grog knows it didn’t happen that way and is around to provide counter-points to Og’s self-serving history of yesterday’s hunt? Do you think the cave-dweller audience from 1 million B.C. is likely to believe anything Og says from then on? Do your research thoroughly and carefully. Then ladle in the details as and when they help the story or capture your audience. Stir vigorously. Let simmer for awhile. Your audience will appreciate details that your research has uncovered more if you whet their appetites with a little dollop at a time, and allow them to use their own imaginations. The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 5. See you then. Phil B.