Unexpected Research Topics

So I feel like every time I think that my research is done (or at least at a stopping place) the next sentence I write will bring that fateful question into my head: "Is that accurate?"

This is something that's probably more unique to our genre than any other, so I thought I'd open up a thread for us to come and lament over the unexpected research topics that pop up in our writing sessions each day as NaNo progresses, threatening to distract us for hours, or derail our word counts.

I'll go first. This week, I found myself looking up:

-piano tuning techniques from the 1780's
-piano MOVING techniques from the same decade
-the process of becoming taking your vows to become a nun
-the Feast of St. Martin and Christmas traditions in the Rhineland prior to 1800
-18th century tailoring, and more specifically pattern making.
-Immanuel Kant (boy, was this one a can of worms I should not have opened during NaNo)

How about you? What popped up in your google searches this week?

Great topic! If we're going for authenticity, almost any genre can suddenly become the demanding research primadonna you describe here. You can see why historical novelists frequently end up choosing one era and write a number of books in that period -- it saves research time! I have a historical novel set in Etruria in Roman times, and found myself needing to know a great deal -- enough that I've collected a decent library of materials just on those topics, but haven't yet finished the novel!

Though for this year's Nano I'm doing a fantasy/supernatural/erotic novel, I still can't escape the research demon. I've investigated scientific beliefs of the medieval papacy of Silvester I, the salvation of non-human beings in the Qur'an, the electromagnetic nature of human sexual arousal, the geography and geology of Santa Fe, Catholic churches built in NYC in the 1890s which later burnt down, the Testament of Solomon (included in the Hebrew Bible apocrypha), and so on. A plot well-grounded in history and fact will keep demanding more details equally well-grounded. Sigh!

Good luck!

Initial search being the french countryside, leading to:

-Hardwood forests
-All species of european hardwood trees
-European forest wildlife
-Dissapearance of wolves in Europe
-All species of wolves
-South American wolves
-Maned wolf in Peru
-National parks in the highland steppes
-Wolves in the pet trade in Lima
-Foxes in the pet trade in Lima

Then when I got to trade in exotic animals I stopped and wondered... how the hell did I get here??? There's a reason why my brain is so filled with useless information....

I thought I had already most of what I needed but when I started writing I found out that there were things that I simply didn't think about.

- Winter birds in the Caucasus
- The size of the Black Sea and knowledge of it during the early Sumerian period
- Active volcanoes in Anatolia (or rather which ones were active 7 to 5,000 years ago)
- Ancient Sumerian measurements of time
- Do crocodiles live in the Euphrates? (surprising answer: no)
- Taming of foxes
- The late 'green Sahara' period in Egypt
- What did the original head of the Sphynx actually look like?

I don't think that I will get much further than that this year but if I really write the sequel next year I'll have to do A LOT of research on ancient climate and all things Ancient Egypt (I mean, what *did* they eat but meat, wheat and onions?) and further north (were there any lions in Crete 6,000 years ago? I know there were in mainland Greece but the islands? NO IDEA!). Good thing it's an AU so I've got a lot of wiggle space but still...

How 19th century cotton mills work
How the industial revoltion altered clothing
How farm wives spun their own cloth pre-mills
The abolitionist movement in Vermont
Farm girl fashions, circa 1840
The suffragist movement
the mill labor movement in Lowell, MA

I've been researching the lifespans and growing seasons of flowers, all for the setting. Not the plot whatsoever. This is how research derails me every time!

Roman vessels, european coast lines in the 5th century and the method of brocade tablet weaving. I failed at researching the naming of all parts of a roman chariot.

Historical pornography. I needed something that could bring my two MMCs together, and it turned out to be that. I have been reading up on the Earl of Rochester, Rabbie Burns, and more obscure pornographic books that a very well to-do Victorian collector might get his hands on in the late 19th century. And yes, before you ask! I have only seen the BBC adaptation of Fingersmith and attended a lecture about it around 6 months ago, but my novel only refers to Henry Spencer Ashbee in one irrelevant line, and the plot is not about bibliographers in the least.

-Dogs common to Regency England
-The entire timeline of the Napoleonic Wars, and British military activity in the few years before and after them.

- sweet vs. bitter orange varieties
- the history of the Holy Roman Empire
- the geography of Saxony
- eighteenth century Poland and its leadership
- carpentry, especially a type that has a name in French that doesn't exist in English
- the pre-20th century spelling of a city in modern-day Belgium
- the difference between a viscomte, a earl, a baron, and a comte
- the entire life story of Louis XV's mistress
- the correct spelling of the name of the future King of Sweden's wife
- whether a French lady would wear something underneath a corset or not
- Marie Leszczyńska, Marie goddamn Leszczyńska; this woman came up over and over again
- the French practice of embalming royal hearts

- hunting of buffalo to near-extinction in the 19th century
- Union Pacific train timetables
- maps of the Union Pacific in Wyoming
- the symptoms of cholera
- the economic vitality of Cairo, Illinois after the Civil War
- what percentage of soldiers in Tennessee fought for the North (a surprising amount)
- the length of a corset in late 1860s
- visible changes to a woman's body in the fourth month of pregnancy
- how to alter garments for pregnant women
- the distance between North Platte, NE and Chimney Rock
- the date of Nebraska's statehood
- how to cook bread over a fire

And this is restrained research. Oh dear.

- villages in and around medieval Prague
- map of Prague
- Jewish ghetto of Prague
- Jewish synagogue of Prague
- 1389 Easter massacre of the Jews of Prague
- medieval Bohemian names
- modern Czech names (when I ran out of medieval names)
- diminutives of Czech names (nicknames)
- late 14th/early 15th century Bohemian political history
- Jan Hus, the reformation in Bohemia, and the Hussite Wars
- forests surrounding Prague
- the Rosenberg family and their castle
- currency and income in medieval Bohemia
- conversos and Cyrpto-Jews
- Bohemian 14th and 15th century clothing
- do swords spark when they clash? (no)
- medieval knighting ceremonies

@onlyobsess: "- what percentage of soldiers in Tennessee fought for the North (a surprising amount) "
One of my ancestors included (the 8th Cavalry, I believe). People from East Tennessee were the most pro-Union, while Middle and West Tennessee was usually pro-Southern.

- bruises, stab wounds and bullet wounds
- Russian and Austrian Napoleonic uniforms
- ruined castles in Austria
- crypts and cemetaries around Vienna
- sewers in Vienna
- Czech names
- the nine Muses
- tried to gag myself to find out how much a gagged person can actually speak and be understood

- trees local to Italy
- medical response, or the lack of one, for a concussion during the late 16th century

-the bad English harvest of 1800
-the British abolitionist movement of the late eighteenth/ early nineteenth century
-how old children were when they learned how to ride ponies
-the East India Company
-Bath, England

- the invention of croquet
- the layout of a race track in 1870 (where do they keep the horses and so forth)
- ridiculous slang for an empty-headed 1870's aristocrat (he's Bertie Wooster, just a little earlier)
- jinn, the naming of
- begging laws in Scotland
- pawn shops in London

- rum running from Nova Scotia Canada to Eastern US later 1800's to1940's
- "banana boats" low in the water Schooner's from NS used to avoid US law
- murder's in NS in 19th Century over land settlements
- Dutch Protestent Settlements in NS
- Ship building
- Lunenburg NS Ghost stories
- blessings hidden behind beams in barns
- tradition/superstition of placing a shoe on a rafter of a barn for good luck
- Anchors in Schooner's 19th century

- Catholic rites (especially anointing of the sick) and the various items in a church/cathedral
- the first Afghan war
- Irish folk songs
- Young Ireland
- Mackinac Island
- slaves in Louisiana

And the number of words I've looked up to see if they were in use yet is a little embarrassing.

My best friend/writing buddy and I trade "weirdest research" stories. My contenders:

-History of pajamas
-History of the towel
-How to harvest wild honey

Some great tangential research topics here! Several times I have hit a certain point, usually just an offhand line in dialogue, and then had to jump straight into some research just to complete the scene. In most cases this was proasic stuff like which ship was where in roughly the right year. I had planned to just throw in random ship names for cases where ships were mentioned in passing, but I ended up thinking that I would hate for someone to read the book and think 'hang on, HMS Amphion was never on the Cape Station and besides, it was scrapped ten years before that.' I would't normally worry but I plan on giving the manuscript to my uncle to read and he knows far too much about this stuff for me to bluff.

What's most pleasing is when a bit of research to find out a particular fact actually creates further inspiration and leads to a development in plot or character that otherwise wouldn't have occurred to you... but that's a whole new can of worms.