Blogumentary: Step 1 – Research

Research has never been so much fun!  I have never enjoyed doing research unless it’s for a consumer product that I am considering purchasing.  More-so, I have never enjoyed what research goes hand-in-hand with…writing a boring, pointless research paper.  (Instead, I’ll be writing a boring, pointless zombie novel!)  However, after talking with a couple of authors, I have come to realize how important and necessary research actually is.  As a writer, it is imperative to know what you’re writing about in order to portray it accurately and vividly so the reader can picture the scene in their mind’s eye.

I fully expected to have to do a minimal amount of research for this project, considering that I pride myself on being pretty informed on the subject (zombies).  The little research that I did anticipate though, which is based on geography that the plot will travel along, was bound to be tedious and mind-numbing. 

The good news is that I got an excellent jump-start on that research with the help of a little friend I refer to as “the intrawebz.”  In no time flat, I had some very useful points of reference, distances, travel times, etc.

Even before that though, my luck was on full display.  As I logged on to my computer one day, a news article related to a key part of my plot-line was staring me right in the face.  I clicked on the link, skimmed the article and was elated with how some of the details seamlessly matched up with some of my ideas!

A second issue that I was confronted with, was how I would address the initial outbreak of the zombie plague.  The thing about the zombie genre is that it is consistently unoriginal…it almost always starts from some unexplainable strain of a virus.  Luckily, after taking a couple of days to think about it, I remembered some news articles that I could lean on and draw heavily from.  I ran a quick search relying on my good pal the intrawebz again, and I had more information than I knew what to do with!  I printed several pages and bookmarked the search results in case I need to draw more information down the line.

I also looked up some unexplainable historical events while I was at it.  I hope that this will add a little credibility to my story, since it’s based on actual scientific and historic events, and maybe even bump up the uniqueness a little bit as well.

Fortunately, I also have several friends who work in the medical field who can hopefully add valuable first-hand knowledge of diseases and the immune system.  I guess only time will tell how much, if any, of this is even usable.

I still haven’t fully committed myself to this project for fear that I will burnout and never finish it, or that I’ll get it completed only to realize that it is a massive, steaming pile of garbage and enormous waste of my time.  From the looks and sounds of things though, it appears I’m diving in head first.

Thank you, that is all.