Shouts From Down Under

Throwing out the garbage

Seeing LinnAnn -Book writer 's quest for alternatives to the term "time travel" brought to mind something I'm doing right now as I write this novel for NanoWriMo.

I don't know how other people do their research, how they manage to brighten up their story into something resembling real life, how they go about getting all those terms, jargon, euphemisms, street names and all the rest of what you need to trick the reader (con the reader ) into thinking you know a lot about something you know nothing.

What I know about Berlin Germany, for example, you could write on the back of an Aspro (or Valium) with a jackhammer.

At present I have a dozen different minor characters who all hail from different countries, cultures, situations and backgrounds. They are all victims one way and another. So. how the heck to bring them to life without sounding like a dictionary or a shopping list?

Well, one of the things I did was to have a list. A computer prints out a list of them and some pertinent brief details, and yes, it does have vital relevance to the story. The computer printout idea was a lazy way out, but now I'm building up lives for each one.
During this development of these new "people" I'm also excavating underneath their lives and plumbing the whole lot with reasons, strong motivation for them to carry out stuff, to do things in my story that they normally wouldnt dream of doing in real life.
This is 2014-15 remember? not post WW2. These aren't characters (unless it's in Russia or Ukraine perhaps) who would normally know how to operate an AK47 Kalashnikova or other amazing deeds.
These people would more likely need to be careful what they do with their recycling. Yes. This is a modern era. People's underlying causes matter a lot. The detail isn't as difficult to find as you'd think.

Whether its accurate I don't know, but with my lack of resources, I'll just have to take their word for some things and have a broad disclaimer in the novel.

http://www.aliadventures.com/2013/02/how-to-throw-out-your-garbage-in-germany/

I also searched for some other stuff to do with a young person living in Berlin.

The following is a short excerpt from my Nano novel: The Children Cloud.

Their burgoise property in Charlottenburg, the neighborhood around Savignyplatz, in Kurfürstendamm Boulevard was a convenient walk, through the square, for Arno, close to her current private school. They changed Arna's schools at whim, if she so much as sneezed or bleated a complaint. She hated travelling on public transport but enjoyed walking through the park, with it's overgrown grassy gullies concealing barricaded brick leftovers from the war. Sometimes she risked exploring these lonely damaged buildings on her own, houses and bunkers of which no one seemed to claim ownership. She liked the unplanned dirtiness of tresspassing and searching for underground tunnel entrances.

Her mother and father would have been disgusted and outraged. They were clinical people, always spotlessly clean, and always obeyed every law, were even fastidious with recycling [E] http://www.aliadventures.com/2013/02/how-to-throw-out-your-garbage-in-germany/ .
They oozed wealth, the ones who didn't have to pretend, but were careful of their appearance and worried what people thought of them. Their clothing, furniture, vehicles, accessories, home, even their luggage was the best and most expensive available.

As i said, I don't know what others do, but apart from watching out I don't copy and paste other people's writing, so far this has worked for me.

Nothing, however, beats first hand experience being there and living the life of your character.

I suppose it's like some advice I read once in a how to book on writing, write what you know, at least for a start.

Maybe I should have just stuck to Tasmanian characters. I'm sure they'd be oh so international and metropolitan. (Yeah right.)

Sparky