Research....Or Not?

by Laura Crum

I hear a lot of authors talking about research. How they love research. How a trip to Europe can be called research and written off on one’s taxes. (That sounds very glamorous.) Sometimes research seems to mean looking things up on the internet…endlessly. (That doesn’t sound so exciting.) I have heard a well-known author say that she never writes about a country that she has not at least flown over in an airplane. (Amusing. But it left a funny taste in my mouth.)

Most recently a book was recommended to me (no, I’m not going to tell you what it was) as being a great story and “meticulously researched”. I bought the book. The underlying story was good, I’ll agree, but the book, which was exceedingly well-padded with all that meticulous research, was a very slow read and I ended up skimming it, thinking all the while, “get back to the story, dammit.” In my view the book was crammed with researched details in order to make it long enough to be a “best seller”. The actual storyline would have been much better served if the book had totaled between 100-200 pages, rather than the 300 the author relentlessly stuffed into it.

The truth is I do not care for obviously researched details in novels. I like a story to flow and not to bog down while the author shows off his/her knowledge of the subject at hand. Particularly a mystery novel.

Don’t get me wrong. I love description. I love detail. I just don’t love the stilted, wordy passages that are simply meant to convey some sort of authenticity. The ones that announce “I looked this up somewhere.” I delight in reading description that comes from the heart and reflects an author’s intimate knowledge of something he/she loves.

People often ask me what sort of research I do for my novels featuring equine veterinarian Gail McCarthy. My answer is that I don’t do research. My life is my research. This isn’t strictly true, of course, and I always have to admit that I do call my childhood friend who is deputy chief of police and pick her brain about what the cops would do under certain circumstances. And I call my old boyfriend who is now a vet and ask about the dosages for certain drugs and whether some concept I have regarding veterinary medicine is really plausible. I also ask him to tell me any interesting veterinary emergencies he’s been on lately. And this information is critical when it comes to writing realistic mystery novels. I’ve been tickled when former cops emailed to congratulate me on describing police procedure correctly, and expressed their irritation at the number of mystery novelists who apparently fail in this respect. And I have been asked numerous times if I’m a vet, quite frequently by veterinarians. So yes, I know research has it place.

But…I object, I actively object, to the notion of an author selecting a subject, or a country, he/she knows nothing about, and using it as a background/locale for a novel. The proverbial country the author has at least “flown over in an airplane” approach. A little internet research and hey presto, said author is an expert on the place or activity. That’s not the sort of novel I want to read. I’m interested in reading “been there, done that” stories written by people who really know the subject/place they are writing about (and are ideally quite passionate about it). I think the difference in the two styles of writing shines as brightly as the difference between night and day.

For me, this means writing about landscapes I know intimately, such as the central California coast and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, rather than setting a novel in Europe (which I visited once for two months and loved—but that’s not a very deep sort of knowledge). It means writing about aspects of the horse biz that I’ve actually participated in (such as cutting and roping and horse packing in the mountains) rather than setting my stories in the hunter/jumper world, say, or on the polo field. Yes, those are interesting and glamorous venues, but I really don’t know much of anything about them. My lifelong passion has been western cowhorses, and I can speak with authority and in accurate detail on this subject, having trained such horses for many years, and been a competitor in several different cowhorse events. Nowadays I mostly trail ride through the local hills, an activity I find fascinating, and these trails provide the backdrop for my latest novel, “Barnstorming”, due out this coming spring.

I’ve ridden the trails in all kinds of weather, in every season of the year. I know them as if they were my backyard, which, in a sense, they are. The steep and tricky switchbacks, the big views over Monterey Bay, the narrow singletracks through the towering redwoods—I’ve ridden them hundreds of times. I’ve met all kinds of strange and interesting things on the trails, from assorted wildlife to scary looking guys with machete in hand, and I’ve incorporated my trail adventures into my novel. So there you go, life as research.

What about the veterinary stuff, people ask me. The sad truth is that if you’ve owned horses non-stop for almost forty years, as I have, you’ve acquired a vast amount of veterinary knowledge. Horses are always having some problem or other, be it lameness or colic, or some odd injury. My husband calls it the “five horse” rule. Something is wrong with a horse at least 20% of the time, and if you have five horses or more, that means something is wrong 100% of the time. This is, unfortunately, more true than humorous. In forty years of horse ownership I have amassed enough veterinary detail to fill out my twelve mystery novels quite nicely, not even counting the things that have happened to my friends and been recounted to me. Once again, life as research.

Ok, I know many of you write—certainly my fellow authors on this blog do plenty of writing. And I'm guessing most of you who read this blog read fiction at least occasionally. What’s your opinion on research, and carefully and obviously “researched” details in novels? I love a good discussion.

Women and their Love of Horses

by Linda Benson

Picking up on the post "Smitten" by Francesca Prescott, 7/4/2010, which touched a chord in many of you, I'd like to expand a bit on the research project I did in my senior year of college - a social research project called A Passion for Horses: American Women and their Love Affair with the Horse. I dropped out of college at age 20, went back at age 48 to finish, and finally graduated at age 52. So this research was done after many decades of being a horsewoman myself, and I have always been fascinated by what it is that draws women and girls to horses.

My research consisted of interviewing women from ages 12 to 66, all who described themselves as horse-crazy. I asked them all a series of questions, from when they first became interested in horses - to what it was about the connection with horses that so appealed to them, and lots more.

One hundred years ago, women were expected to wear long skirts and ride side saddle.

I originally had thought that perhaps media influences (the Westerns on television in the 1950's and 60's) or more recent books and movies celebrating horses (The Black Stallion series, etc.) had shed some influence.

But the most common thread I found through all these varying ages of horse women was that they had loved horses for "as long as they could remember" or that they thought "they were born with" their love for horses. Interesting, huh?

Cultural factors have definitely made our ability to own and love horses more easily obtainable today. Note the picture above. Up until about the 1930's, it was unseemly for a woman to be seen mounted astride in trousers. A 1912 book called Riding and Driving for Women stated "the whole idea of women riding astride was an outrage . . . women's thighs were too round and too weak to grip riding that way." And from a medical manual from the same era "riding is dangerous to female anatomy: it produces and unnatural consolidation of the bones of the lower body, ensuring a frightful impediment to future functions which need not here be dwelt upon."

Still, horse lovers have survived. As attitudes towards women were redefined in the 1940's and beyond, the horse's role in society also changed - from primarily a work animal to a recreational one. And conditions were ripe for a woman's love of horses to finally take flight, and finally enjoy the sport of riding in all its glory.

Most all of the women in my study agreed that there had been some older member of the family (if not a parent, maybe a grandparent, aunt, or someone) who first introduced them to horses.

And the other thing they all agreed upon was that it is not just the sport of riding that appealed to them. It is the whole connection with the horse, the bonding with their animal, taking care of the horse, just being around them in general. Horses were described as stress relievers, therapy, companions, and just beautiful to look at. All of these things were important to the love of horses discussed by the subjects in my research.

How about you? What things are important to you in your love of horses? Riding, or what else? Do you think you were born with these feelings? Can you remember anyone of a past generation that might have passed this love down to you?