Ericka Scott


Interesting Research
Friday, December 10th, 2010
Filed under A Writer's Life

I’m working on a very exciting novella. It’s paranormal with a mix of historical and contemporary (sorry, not steampunk) but more on par with a time travel adventure. Now, I will go on record saying that history was one of my least favorite subjects unless it was Greek Mythology. Simply love, love, love all the gods and goddesses, their egos, their foibles. So, when I set about writing this novella, I decided that not only would I use The Hero’s Journey interpreted by Carolyn Wheat in How to Write Killer Fiction, but that I would also mix in a bit of two of my favorite subjects…mythology and the sea.

As I’m still belting out the first draft, I don’t pause to do a lot of research. However, I thought it was quite amusing to give you an insight into the things I’ve been looking up:

Greek Women’s names

Greek Men’s names

When mirrors were invented (thank goodness for Wikipedia) but because I don’t always trust their information, I also took a look at The History of Mirrors as presented by Inviting Home

Deep sea fish….man, oh, man, I had to drag myself away from getting lost at sea. Wikipedia seems to be the place to start, I think they have information on just about anything or anyone. But I also wanted to find out a bit more about the most common (according to Wiki) deep sea fish, the lantern fish. Most of them just looked “glowy”, but one image I found was impressive and a bit scary! In other words, just perfect.

And what investigation of Greek mythology is complete with a search for information about the oracle of Delphi? Especially since my story has it’s own version of an oracle!

I’m back to writing…I’m about 200 words short of my goal today and only have minutes left until my kiddos arrive home from the bus. I hope to get the rest of the story written before Christmas so that I can polish it up and submit it in the New Year.

Which reminds me…goals…gotta think about goals for next year…. I wonder if Wikipedia has something listed for typical author’s writing goals?….

Til next time!

Ericka

One comment to “Interesting Research”

  1. Yolanda
    Comment