Research

I think people often wonder about the writing process. Some might think no research goes into the writing of a fantasy novel. Afterall, this is a fantasy world and the author can make up anything that goes into it.

To some extent, this is true. As long as a writer is consistent in the rules of the world they create, everything works seamlessly and the reader doesn’t notice, or care, how the structure was arrived at. But overlooking the research process robs a writer of valuable opportunities to add depth to their world.

While researching The Color of Lightning, I used dozens of combinations including the word lightning to find information about lightning. Lightning is so common, I thought stories about it would be all over. I was wrong. As a meteorological event, there’s lots of articles about lightning. Finding historic references on how lightning affected people’s lives was another matter.

I tried lightning in mythology. That should be easy, right? Nope. Zeus threw lightning bolts galore, but those bolts weren’t essential to the story. They were just a novel thing that Zeus did. Sure, I could use it, but I wanted something more.

I hit pay dirt, slightly, when I found a reference to Alexander the Great being struck by lightning while young. A historical fact that I could work into the story in such a way it validated the powers of strikers within the story. I wanted the possibility of strikers to have historic weight. To have a reader consider what powers bestowed by lightning in the story would have allowed people throughout history to do.

Lichtenberg figures were a lucky find. Fractal scars are a real result of lightning. Giving them to my heroine, Eleanor, made her unique in a way that was completely believable because it was completely possible.

I will continue to use historical references to lightning in The Color of Time. In the second novel in the series, I move into the real of saints and religious figures and the strange abilities some of them had to expand the world of striker powers while grounding then in history.

Research allows me the possibility to get that “Aha” moment when the reader goes, “This stuff really could have happened that way.”