Research is way too fun.
Posted by: Finch in Worldbuilding, Writing, tags: development, research, TGL, timeI obsess over research.
I mentioned this in passing a while ago, but I really didn’t get into how much I really obsess over it; just that I like to do it. The example I gave then was about researching suspension bridges so I could extrapolate to make a magical one; what I didn’t mention was that I researched for two days solid, and then a bunch of hours stolen from work (er, I mean while I was having lunch) rounding out the details. Now I can tell you about the oldest suspension bridges, about contests that were held to develop creative means of making them, about components of a suspension bridge, variants, and all sorts of things that, trust me, you probably don’t want to know.
Anyway, I’ve got a new bit of research going on now, inspired by the growing prominence of the Fey in the second book. Casnodyn was the sole representative of the Courts in the first book (and, as he repeatedly insisted, he was never there in his official capacity at any rate), but their influence is going to be felt much more strongly in the second and thereafter. Since I’d already used the name ‘Casnodyn’ as a prototype name, and since I know Casnodyn is Welsh, I figured, what the heck, I’d get some more Welsh names to cover the other Fey.
That’s when I found the Enwogion Cymru.
By Monday I’ll most likely have launched right past simply grabbing some Welsh names, sped at top speed through the obsessive loop and crash-landed in a place where I know enough about Welsh historical figures to teach a class. This, of course, was not my intention, but I’m too caught up in it now to care.
That’s why I love research.
(Yes, I did the above pixelart as a mind break from the research. I shamelessly stole the pattern from here, so if you want to make a more real-world version than mine, go for it.)
