My Writing Process// Part Three: Research and Development

This post was supposed to go out yesterday, but I wasn't able to work on it much this week. Anyway, welcome to week three of my writing process series. Here are the links to my previous posts:

Growing the Idea
Outlining

We now come to my next stage in writing, research and development, which kind of goes along hand in hand with the outlining stage.

This is the part where I gather any necessary details that I need before I start drafting. Sometimes I might not need anything at all, but for most stories, I need at least a few details to go off of.

~Settings~

I usually like to have an idea of where the story is set. For the Herbalist's War, there were three major places where my story took place: New Zealand (but by a different name), Biltmore, and a cabin in the mountains. I needed to do some minor research about New Zealand (I've never been there, so I needed to make sure it was what I wanted). I then found maps and pictures of Biltmore, the grounds, and the village and converted them to my needs. So much fun. I love that place! And I picked out a cabin plan for my team. I love scouring house plans, so this was no big deal at all.

I wanted these details figured out before I started drafting because I wrote it during NaNo. The last thing I wanted was to scramble around looking for a map or basic geography while I'm trying to keep a high word count.

Note about fantasy worlds: obviously, you're going to want to develop your fantasy world at least a little before you start writing. This might mean just a few town names or whatever, but definitely get those sorted out in whatever fashion you need them. I also recommend getting an idea of how long it takes to travel from one town to the next (or from any point A to point B). I can't tell you how many times I've given different lengths of time for the same journey.

~Important outfits~

Sometimes I'll get an idea for an outfit that my characters wear. This doesn't necessarily happen before I begin drafting, but it helps a lot during the process. I can visualize exactly what I want to describe. Here are two that I designed for the celebratory ball. I also had two others for a later scene in the book, but I won't worry about posting them here. Please excuse the grease stains on the one on the right. I often draw while eating...

~Excerpts~

I don't always gather excerpts, but it helped a lot for THW (that really started off like a Dos Equis commercial). I wrote them down during the Growing the Idea phase. During this part, however, I sorted them according to my outline, so when I got to that scene, all I had to do was pull them out and find a creative way to insert them into the draft.

This is my excerpt box for THW.
Green cards are the beginning chapters;
Yellow the middle ones;
Red/pink are the ending ones.

~Job details~

One of my favorite parts! I had people with a wide range of jobs in this book. My MC is an herbalist, another character is a fashion designer, several were agents, and one was a bookstore owner. I needed to make sure that I get their job details straightened out beforehand, otherwise, it'll just be a confusing mess. This is probably one of the least important for me, but I still find it fun. Especially the fashion designer one and the herbalist.

~Character motivations~

I wanted to do one of those elaborate character sheets, but those never work for me. Jules wrote an amazing post about them, describing the process she uses instead. It's very similar to what I do.

Anyway, I instead came up with my characters' motivations. This is another new thing I tried for this novel and I loved it. I came up with what I called the Two-fold Motivation, where I discovered their internal and external motivations. Internal motivations were about themselves (self-preservation, career, revenge, power, etc.). External motivations were about something other than themselves (protecting others, God's glory, family, etc.).

I did this with each of my important characters. The one major takeaway for me was it helped make my characters realistic. My good guys had flaws (internal motivations) and my bad guys had likable/relatable traits (external motivations).

So there you have it! Those are some of the things I usually do before I start drafting. The amount of things I need varies from book to book, but you can get the idea. Obviously, you can modify this to whatever you need for your story. You might not like costumes, but love creating creatures. You might not care so much about the jobs, but need to know what sort of classes your character excels at. Whatever details you need to get writing, make sure you have those covered!

~Reminder~

You still have one day left to enter my drawing for my Final Friday Flash Fiction. You get the chance to inspire this month's FF, so hop on over there and sign up if you haven't already! I can't wait to see what prompt I get to work with!

I hope this post was helpful. What sorts of things do y'all do before you start writing? How extensive are you with your planning? Or do you go in with the bare minimum? Either way is awesome as long as it works for you!