whether they’re literature, visual arts or other types of projects, many times these entail a lot more research than we’d originally thought. i’m curious about some of the interesting topics your projects have led you to research over time.

for me, i never expected to have to research so much about medieval battle formations, tactics and siege strategies, weaponry and so on. when we watch or read a good battle scene, we tend to not consider how much thought goes into making it as enjoyable as it (hopefully) ends up being. i want my plans to make militaristic sense, technology needs to fit relatively within the period to avoid anachronisms, and so on. maybe i’m being a perfectionist, but it doesn’t take much to take a reader out of a scene completely.

ive also researched a number of occupations so i can write characters with various jobs/life experiences more honestly. a few noteworthy from recent projects have been advanced dog training techniques for a kennelmaster character, and steelworking techniques for a blacksmith character.


how about you?

Saltuarium

i've researched so many random extremely specific topics but i think my favorite from recently was looking up potential foods for a fantasy society that lives underground, so i ended up learning about fried fish bones, seaweed sauce, and lichen bread. evidently iceland moss used to be pretty widespread in different traditional dishes but i'm having a hard time finding more information about that since shockingly nobody else seems particularly interested in how bad-tasting, slow-growing ingredients with little nutritional value were used in food...imagine that


ticklerust

I write a lot of extremely weird high fantasy stuff that isn't really meant to be taken seriously. A lot of it is legitimately problematic and could never work for various reasons.  I don't try to meddle over the details and justify things with common sense and humor instead. :)

mossyrocks

Poisons, surviving 1000 foot falls into water, Eastern dragons, city gates, Mongolian armor and culture, Norse armor and culture, Japanese culture and history, secret police, somewhat-modern Chinese history, katanas, magic systems...

These are all for a fantasy-adventure series, The Forgotten Legacy, or for another series The North Star. I can't imagine how much research a historical fiction writer would have to put into their books.

HistoryAddict

lord let me think-

these are all things i've searched for backstories and rp ideas lmao-

  • What countries in Africa did Spain colonize
  • Common Eye colors in the Mediterranean 
  • What would've happened had the CSA won the war
  • How long does it take for Radioactivity to kill someone
  • Spain history memes
  • Common Aries Sun Cancer Moon traits
  • Why tf didnt Europeans bathe pre colonization
  • Where did brown hair originate
  • What state has the most thrift stores (never found that one out)
  • What style clothing was popular during the 1730s
  • Painting of 19th century clothing
  • Most popular wine in 1687
RU-HX

Whilst I've been on hiatus I've done a whole lot of extremely intensive research for a WW2 project where the characters fly both Spitfires and Lancasters. It involved a lot of digging through RAF related research material in general that's taken about a year or so to get to a point where I can write the characters with confidence and make their stories feel "lived in" but I'm still tidying my notes in order to get my sources into a writer's notebook for on the go reference because apps just do not work for me. The main body of my research is done but I'm currently going through RAF Operational Records Books and WW1 Army intelligence reports now viewable to the public downloaded via National Archives for and transcribing/tidying them for an easier to look through writer's reference when I'm ready to begin writing.

For my WW2 project how Gee and Chain Home works was probably the most boring but also needed part of the research so far whilst the most obscure was was really specific radio patters used on raids for the latter part of the story where they're flying Lancasters.

For my WW1 projects the most obscure thing I've researched was trench whistle and artillery signals.

Looking back there's def a lot of stuff I went into way more detail than needed and some bits where I didn't take enough notes on so I lost a lot of time to sorting out the junk and adding on to what I needed more info for. The plus is now I know how to be smarter about researching for historical projects which is a good thing because I'm just getting to a point where I can start thinking about researching for my Age of Sail historical fiction and a few later projects may need a lot of research.

Remmys

As of recent, it's been a lot of stuff regarding really old common German sayings, superstitions, idioms, and other things of the sort. Additionally, just some stuff on the way the German language is structured sentence-wise. It's all really interesting, but a lot to have to shift through :') 

Also a lot of really nitty-gritty details about the bible and how the whole hierarchy of angels worked there. Additionally, a lotta stuff on prominent angels in the bible, what they did, etc. It is . . . a lot

HALLOWGEN

I've researched a lot onto different firearms, birth defects, different kinds of wounds and their recovery times, medical treatments, nanites, and most random, the hierarchy of the Catholic church. Needless to say, the peeps in my stories get messed up a lot. The church stuff was helpful to arrange a hierarchy and name positions for a big science firm in my story. 

IIDX

A lot about countriesssssss specifically stuff like history of when characters lived there are important about writing circumstances... along with other general stuff like language and culture
Shoutouts to my Brazilian friend who has been the one to translate memes to me and explain the usage and Lore of caralho
Have another friend who lives in Peru and I don't have a Peruvian character but all lore about life in South America helps we don't get taught a lot in the states!!

Also have looked up a lot of weird disjointed shit that no one would really notice like the prevalence of Oreos in South America and why the fuck there's so many knife wielding crabs in Brazil in particular. which i never found out LMAO but there's a bunch of little things. where do cows like being pet. saint valentine lore. katana parts. zodiac stuff. national holidays (definitely didnt use "national boss day" for the Boss). can you call a 39 year old a boomer and get away with it. all sorts of fun stuff

rattieberry

honestly its mostly culture, identity and disability I do real deep dives on for ocs so I can make sure I represent them properly, but there's definitely some obscurer content in there. off the top of my head heres what I looked into for a few kiddos:

-SOOOO much research into biomedical engineering, prosthesis, and amputee life for a mad scientist character. SO much. (tragically, he isn't even on my TH)

-how cat cafes work, modern witchcraft, pastry-making, and a WHOLE lot of info on lifestyles of low-vision folks for artemis 

-tons of research into kitsunes, ancient japanese culture, and the shinto religion for my lovely miko, which i still look into on the reg

-info on med school for iden

-cults through history (especially UFO cults) and how they function, for Rose

-....several serial killer related things for Tobi that probably have me on an fbi watchlist. (the joys of writing criminals!)

and then there's just a bunch of tiny things literally nobody would know I looked into like. what vegan products taste gross. popular filipino music in the 80's. how to say "get owned" in spanish. cookie recipies. the scientific name for corvids. what date was a full moon in october 1992. sexy witch costumes. the list goes on.

koen

recently, i’ve searched:

- religions practiced in Ireland

- Irish churches

- Irish town names

- Irish names in general LMAO

- what the youngest age to become a priest in Ireland

- emo teenage boy clothing

ChanteRyuutai

Lot's of ways to kill, drug and torture people and ways to destroy things by cutting, exploding, etc, probably are the most suspicious ones, but sometimes also some weirdly specific body type or part of the body, or how do animals do some weirdly specific stuff, how some chemicals work, lots about some specific periods and places on history, such as medieval, franch revolution, victorian era, shogun stuff, weapons, like, if someone look at my search history they'll think I wanna commit crimes and I'm a perv, but it's just my characters who wanna commit crimes and sometimes I just need to know how something weirdly specific works to draw something not as weird as the references 😔

Commodore

Sometimes I catch myself before I start looking something up like "Uhh maybe don't look that one up" lol. But, a collection of things I can remember off the top of my head.

- How hot does metal have to burn for it to melt?

- How hot does something have to be to cause third degree burns?

- Late 1800's Census.

- How to assemble and dissemble a long-range, precision rifle?

Among other things but I can't remember them atm.