What interesting research have you carried out relating to recent stories you have written, or are writing?

[NaughteeDragon]

I googled “my sister-wife is in love with me but I’m not a lesbian” just so I could include it in a scene.
AI gave the best answer about establishing boundaries and good communication. most of the links were to magazine articles about men falling in love with their wife’s sister.

 

[Writer61]

Public transport in Sydney
Coastal towns in Croatia

 

[Kumquatqueen]

length of effect of injected morphine on terminal pain, and similar.

Cheerful.

 

[Rob_Royale]

A host of details concerning Newton, Kansas circa 1872, and life in the area during the time period. Train routes, firearms, diseases, horse-drawn carts, alcohol consumption, period ladies undergarments, and the like.

 

[MelissaBaby]

A host of details concerning Newton, Kansas circa 1872, and life in the area during the time period. Train routes, firearms, diseases, horse-drawn carts, alcohol consumption, period ladies undergarments, and the like.

I think one of my greatest triumphs of research was finding out that in 1945, if you wanted to take a train from Philadelphia to Chicago, you had to leave from North Station, not the bigger and more well known Broad Street Station. Would anyone else have known that? Nope. But still...

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I think one of my greatest triumphs of research was finding out that in 1945, if you wanted to take a train from Philadelphia to Chicago, you had to leave from North Station, not the bigger and more well known Broad Street Station. Would anyone else have known that? Nope. But still...

@gunhilltrain would have. But he'd have been the only one.

 

[gunhilltrain]

@gunhilltrain would have. But he'd have been the only one.

Off the top of my head, the two main passenger stations in Philly at that time were 30th Street Station and Market Street. The latter closed in the early 1950s. The interior of 30th Street is still there, and it is amazing.

https://www.vantagegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Philadelphia-Rendering-Great-Hall.jpg

North Station is in Boston. I think there have been several Broad Street stations in the U.S., as in Richmond, VA.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Off the top of my head, the two main passenger stations in Philly at that time were 30th Street Station and Market Street. The latter closed in the early 1950s. The interior of 30th Street is still there, and it is amazing.

https://www.vantagegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Philadelphia-Rendering-Great-Hall.jpg

North Station is in Boston. I think there have been several Broad Street stations in the U.S., as in Richmond, VA.

North Philadelphia Station

 

[DeMont]

For me, I spent some time looking into paths from college into the army and what types of roles graduates might fill. This also involved looking at officer training programs versus enlisting. I wanted to make sure my story was at least reasonably accurate and to avoid any potential disrespect to people serving or to veterans. I also researched Arlington National Cemetery, which was a sobering thing to do. Again I didn’t want some gaffe to cause offense.

Update: I also looked into the deployment schedules of soldiers going to Afghanistan and the timeline for withdrawal. All rather difficult subjects.

@FrancesScott,
I have been deeply involved in Welsh and English contemporary (1930's) history and society for a longer, possibly novel length, work I am working on. Not, obviously, as all encompassing as your work but the exacting of idioms and social mores, in my mind, are no less deserving of such attention.
Respectfully,
D.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

My current NaNo got me today into learning a little about the history of our emotions. What were the first emotions to originate? How did they originate? How do they work in our body? The chemistry behind them, all of that... I saw some crossing overs that have left me to conclusions that felt very justified in my project because it's two emotions that seem opposites, but they really overlap with each other a lot.

I didn't know fear was one of the first emotions we could feel as newborns. It makes a lot of sense considering fear is the survival mechanism.

 

[ICantLeafYou]

Had to read up on nude beaches lately.

 

[User43210abc]

Had to read up on nude beaches lately.

Why?

 

[Rustyoznail]

A lot of research on a failed farming district in New South Wales and Australian army nurses in WW1 for my https://literotica.com/s/the-ghost-of-benanee story.

Fascinating, but heart breaking on both counts.

 

[PennyThompson]

So this is a brief case study of story idea that led to research that led to story idea, completely serendipitously, by two people on opposite sides of the world.

@Actingup asked if I'd be interested in partnering on.... (I'm going to try and write this out in a way that doesn't give away too many extremely important things, but if you think you might want to read this with absolutely zero possible spoilers then maybe don't look at this)

...what may end up being a Winter Holiday story, about an estranged couple whose adult daughter tries to push them back together. It's about how people change, and misunderstand each other, and drift apart.

Acting asked me to help decide on location, and I picked a few likely places in the US. While I was doing that, he came up with a list of songs that might be played during a particular scene. (probably not a spoiler that Acting likes to have song playlists in his stories )

One was an Oasis song that would have significant emotional resonance to the plot. Acting looked at my suggested locations and figured out that one of my potential cities hosted an Oasis concert in 1995, he even found the set list, some concert notes, and a first-person account of an incident that happened at the concert!

I did some research on the venue of the concert and found that it had closed in 2018 and then the building was demolished in 2022. You could even see it on google streetview history, the boarded up building and then the empty lot where it used to stand.

It's just a perfect bit of thematically resonant coincidence that made me actually physically tear up when I found it

Assuming the story eventually sees the light of day, I don't think anyone will ever know or notice, or will assume that we picked the location because of the emotional resonance... but in fact, the emotional resonance picked us.

 

[iwatchus]

I don't think anyone will ever know or notice, or will assume that we picked the location because of the emotional resonance... but in fact, the emotional resonance picked us

I love when you investigate an idea for a loose thread in a story and it ends up becoming part of the fabric for the story. It's happened only a couple of times fo rme, but t feels special. I think it is a good omen for a story. So which one of you will officially get the W for this one?

 

[hugh_jarce69]

Just written my first story on crossdressing. That’s been an eye opener. A fascinating chat with another wonderful LIT user helped immensely. Especially as they gave me a shaving idea to add & I’d never considered it before.

I now consider myself educated

 

[Actingup]

I love when you investigate an idea for a loose thread in a story and it ends up becoming part of the fabric for the story. It's happened only a couple of times fo rme, but t feels special. I think it is a good omen for a story. So which one of you will officially get the W for this one?

We’re writing it for Loving Wives, so neither

I don’t think I’d mentioned to Penny that I’ve learned to look at concert set lists and reviews after realising that AC/DC had played a small hall in the beachside town of Rosebud, Victoria, Australia in the 70s, and that was where I set my ‘Memories of Sandy’ story. So naturally the fictional MCs lied about their age and got to see the real Bon Scott sing before he died. I’m not young enough to have done that (and word has it that Penny is barely legal even now), but we can live through our stories, right?

 

[gunhilltrain]

North Philadelphia Station

Oh, North Philadelphia, that's something different, although I get why you used it. When the railroad built an extension up to New York, a route veered west a couple of miles north of 30th Street and bypassed it. I'm not sure why, perhaps because the land up there was cheaper in the 19th Century (this was a long time ago, before the Civil War). A station called North Philadelphia was built for trains going to and from New York, and passengers to Chicago could use it.

Rather than give a mass of detail, this map shows where a line branches off to the west - at Zoo Junction it's called now.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...500px-Map_of_ZOO_junction_in_Philadelphia.png

So you were right, although everybody called it North Philadelphia.

 

[PennyThompson]

word has it that Penny is barely legal even now

I'll have you know that I know what a mixtape is, even when the character I'm writing does not!

 

[ChloeTzang]

I did a lot of research into "one percenter" motorcycle gangs for Raoul's Eighteenth Birthday, Ch. 04 and the Raoul's First Murders stories. Once upon a time I had a big plan....

Sounds like we should compare notes. I did something similar for Chinese Takeout, except I had two or three bikers helping me out - "Keith" ("Round Out") in Chinese Takeout is based on the guy who sparked the whole story off and edited all the way thru, and "Djävul" in The Temptation of Sammi Woo is based on another. All the details were fascinating and there's a lot of real life biker stuff worked into those stories.

And for my Chinese Hegemony stories there was some truly weird reasearch
- For "I Married a Heptapod" I spent a couple of days reading up on how octopusses had sex. It's hard to believe we share the same planet.
- "Draft Deferment" (thats on Amazon) I spent quite a bit of time researching horse's cock's size, dimensions, amount of ejaculate, and, well, it IS possible, if the centaur is very careful LOL
- for "Penetration Testing" (another Amazon one) it was Chinese naval warships and rank structures
- for the two I'm working on now ("Social Services" and "PLANS 122 Tangshan Will Dock to Station") a lot of it is Chinese politics. political organizations - esp the Red Guard - and culture and behavioral patterns.

For Huginn's Yule, I must have read thirty or forty books on the period, including Beowulf and some of the early sagas, as well as histories of the Silk Road, the steppe tribe migrations and wars and invasions, and China around 500AD - I'd never heard of Northern Wei before). I LOVE Beowulf. The language is beautiful! And I learnt all about kennings. (the title of the story, "Huginn's Yule" is itself a kenning).

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!​

 

[Statius]

So this is a brief case study of story idea that lead to research that lead to story idea, completely serendipitously, by two people on opposite sides of the world.

@Actingup asked if I'd be interested in partnering on.... (I'm going to try and write this out in a way that doesn't give away too many extremely important things, but if you think you might want to read this with absolutely zero possible spoilers then maybe don't look at this)

...what may end up being a Winter Holiday story, about an estranged couple whose adult daughter tries to push them back together. It's about how people change, and misunderstand each other, and drift apart.

Acting asked me to help decide on location, and I picked a few likely places in the US. While I was doing that, he came up with a list of songs that might be played during a particular scene. (probably not a spoiler that Acting likes to have song playlists in his stories )

One was an Oasis song that would have significant emotional resonance to the plot. Acting looked at my suggested locations and figured out that one of my potential cities hosted an Oasis concert in 1995, he even found the set list, some concert notes, and a first-person account of an incident that happened at the concert!

I did some research on the venue of the concert and found that it had closed in 2018 and then the building was demolished in 2022. You could even see it on google streetview history, the boarded up building and then the empty lot where it used to stand.

It's just a perfect bit of thematically resonant coincidence that made me actually physically tear up when I found it

Assuming the story eventually sees the light of day, I don't think anyone will ever know or notice, or will assume that we picked the location because of the emotional resonance... but in fact, the emotional resonance picked us.

That's quite stunningly fantastic, and since my 2 cents means nothing, I'll still say it; seems the two of you MUST write this story! I may be biased, huge Oasis/ Noel Gallagher fan!

 

[NaughteeDragon]

A host of details concerning Newton, Kansas circa 1872, and life in the area during the time period. Train routes, firearms, diseases, horse-drawn carts, alcohol consumption, period ladies undergarments, and the like.

My dad is from Newton, been there MANY times in my life. Nice town. Interesting history.

 

[YmaOHyd]

In the pre-Disney Star Wars canon, the planet Fengrine has "a relatively low population, numbering between a few million and half a trillion." Now I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how that could be true rather than assuming it's not. How could a well surveyed, well trafficked planet on major trade lanes have such massive error bars on its population estimates? The easy answer is seasonal migrations for agriculture, but all the agriculture is hydroponic and wouldn't necessarily be seasonal. What kind of agricultural cycle would be worth importing five hundred billion people, and what are the logistics of that process?

 

[MelissaBaby]

Oh, North Philadelphia, that's something different, although I get why you used it. When the railroad built an extension up to New York, a route veered west a couple of miles north of 30th Street and bypassed it. I'm not sure why, perhaps because the land up there was cheaper in the 19th Century (this was a long time ago, before the Civil War). A station called North Philadelphia was built for trains going to and from New York, and passengers to Chicago could use it.

Rather than give a mass of detail, this map shows where a line branches off to the west - at Zoo Junction it's called now.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...500px-Map_of_ZOO_junction_in_Philadelphia.png

So you were right, although everybody called it North Philadelphia.

I said North Station in my post, but the first line of the story is, "The olive drab bus squealed to a stop in front of North Philadelphia Station."

I stuck closely to the actual schedule of the Broadway Limited.

I also learned how they converted the cars from regular seating into sleepers.

 

[BearNextDoor]

Let's see. Most recently, Baba Yaga, and details about who Ladies-in-waiting were, what they did, and their hierarchy throughout the courts of Europe.