Getting Off Track

Being the Flip Side of Yesterday's Post...

I love research. I love digging into a subject and finding that the more I deeply I delve, the most it seems to "fit" my project. There is a strange synergy to research. How often have you found, while reading up on a topic, that some aspect of it already fits the fiction you are making up?

Not to get all woo-woo and mystical about it, but it's as if this information is out in the ether, being soaked up by the muse. In actuality, it's probably more like the things we imagine just rationally (and imaginably!) follow from the same cause, so it's little wonder that the real life counterparts unfold the same way. That, and we just choose to ignore the parts that don't fit into the fiction.

But I'd intended to write about getting off track, before I, um, got off track. The flip side of this research is that occasionally I get so hung up on the research, sometimes I have so much great info that FITS, that I forget that the only purpose of research is to serve the purpose of the story. No matter how cool it is that I dug up little factoids, no matter how fascinating the factoids are, the story isn't ehre for factoids. The story is here for story.

It's a battle. I spent most of the morning trying to concoct a ritual scene and convincing myself that there had to be more information available to help me before I realized that I already had all the material I needed for the story.

The story, the story, the story. I should have it put in big, blinking neon lights above my computer.