Do Mini Research & Add Pizzazz to Your Fiction
Spice Up Your Stories ~ Add Some Foreign Flare
As writers, it is our job to wow our readers and to offer them a respite from their everyday, often very drab, lives by providing them with a new world or moment to explore through our fiction. Novel writing aside (and yes, I've put it aside again to embrace writing more short fiction), it is even more important for us short fiction writers to hone our skills in creating scenarios where our readers can glean a glimpse of what it would be like to live or work someplace else or to be someone else. This means we have to be consciously aware of creating characters outside the norm or the average person. We have to move away from the average setting, the average accouterments of the stereotypical livelihood, residence, family life, etc., and offer readers a new experience.
For instance, if I'm writing for a publication that is mainly sold in the US, I might set my story in Europe, Russia, the Mediterranean, South Africa, Australia. I might write about a character with a profession or problem unique to that local, and I would sprinkle in terminology of that location, to enhance my reader's experience. I'm sure you get the picture.
Unfortunately, as a reader, I most often encounter short stories that might possess a unique plot but feature mundane locales and a typical main character that could be even me.
While these stories are indeed getting published, they lack the wow power for me as a reader. So as a writer, now one who is delving into short works, I've challenged myself to stretch my story ideas into new directions. I spice things up as I mentioned above. While this is proving fun, it is also proving to have its own unique challenge because one can not just fall back on settings and information I've gained from watching movies, TV, or my travel experience to make my 'new settings and characters' come alive to my readers. Nor can I, or any other writer I know, jet right over to the location we want to write about. And there's where the mini research comes in.
being a natural-born and quite avid procrastinator, I've spend not hours but months honing my skill at snooping around the Web for pictures and information on the places or things I want to write about. I've also obtain quite a few Writer's Digest books on Places, Careers, and Lingo.
What's also nice about this compilation of resources I now have at my fingertips and in my 'Favorites' folder is that they are also useful in my novel writing.
For short stories though, you don't need much. You don't want to inundate readers with too much mumbo-jumbo and foreign words, names or places. They'll get distracted from the story and you'll failed to maintain their interest ~ as well as the interest of an editor.
Great References Books Must Haves:
Writer's Guide to Places by Don Prues and Jack Heffron, features places in North America & Canada
Eyewitness Travel Guide to Europe by Dan Colwell, a marvelous inside look at cities and provinces in 20 European countries, with color and aerial photos, maps, etc.
Careers for your Characters by Raymond Obstfeld, features information and jargon of 101 professions from Architecture to Zookeeper.
