Ramblings about using the internet for writing research

Sometimes it sure is difficult to pay attention to the water you are swimming in, or the air you are breathing, particularly if there’s nothing wrong with either of these two sine qua non substances. It’s a bit like this with the internet, particular if you are writing on a computer device and maybe on the internet itself (eg on google docs); I sometimes think how much more difficult it must have been to write before the WWW.

Everytime I’ve embarked on a novel it has screwed my search history for the advert algorithms, they really don’t know what to throw my way (bizarrely they’ve settled largely with women’s fashion (I’m Male) and my current novel is nothing to do with that subject at all.) But if I was going to a bookshop or library everytime I wanted to know something, not only would progress be slower, but I simply would not think of certain plot developments (getting characters out of holes particularly).

And then there are those vicarious place visitors, google (or Apple) maps and google streetview. So many times have I got setting descriptions, or worked out character routes, chase routes, from these two websites. Google images is good for this too, as is YouTube - I’ve got a couple of chapters on a fishing boat informed by a few hours on youtube looking at boats, and fish processing at sea. At the moment I’ve been travelling around Canterbury (England) on streetview, for a chapter, and it feels like I’ve actually been there (when I never have) - writing about somewhere gives a sense of being somewhere, but add in streetview and the combination gives pretty intense feeling of there-ness. (I feel like I’ve visited Milan too, despite never having been there either) Obviously it would be better to actually visit Canterbury, or take a trip on a fishing boat or visit any real place that features in more than a fairly cursory way in a novel, but this was the only option before the internet, or online maps etc were available. I suppose paper maps could have been used, and travel programmes on tv, or scenes in films, along with second hand descriptions of places in travel books. Again though increased time and effort needed.

Admittedly I am writing an adventure book which has scenes in ten different countries, and multiple places in many of those countries and varies between deep sea trenches, high alpine snowy passes and tropical rainforest (what does a tropical rain forest sound like? That was a YouTube search I did) If you just set your novel in the place you live, or places you know well, hardly any research is necessary.

And then there is informed imagination of course - eg I described a small Portuguese port, with a nearby rocky cliff, and next to that a beach surrounded by cliffs, for a particular scene, without using the internet at all. I then thought it would be better if I adapt my description to a real Portuguese port, to give it a real name (even though my book is Alt universe) so I surveyed the Portuguese coast on google maps, images, YouTube etc, and I found somewhere which matched my (admittedly more than slightly generic) description almost perfectly. I’ve never even been to Portugal.