Yes, it’s one of those ‘do your research’ posts, because I haven’t written one of those in a whole ten seconds. Wouldn’t want you to be deprived of a favorite subject or anything.
But this isn’t just, ‘do your research’. Research can be boring; you have to sift through a lot of junk to get the information you need, and yes, the internet makes that process faster, but there’s also more junk to have to sift through.
It occurred to me as I was chatting with some writer friends, that some of my weird interests can substitute for formal research. Knowing a little about horses is useful, of course, but less obvious is my interest in gardening and cooking, which helps me avoid errors like the characters eating fresh strawberries (not forced in a greenhouse, which would have been possible) in December, which is an error I’ve seen before.
Most people aren’t going to look up, ‘when are strawberries in season?’ before writing in a detail like that; it’s usually not important enough to be worth the effort. But if you, the writer, knows something about gardening and the seasonality of food, you can avoid the question altogether. If you really want to include strawberries in December, that’s when you do the formal research and find whether wealthy people had glasshouses at that point in history, or that strawberries can be dried and reconstituted.
Reading in your genre, watching documentaries about that particular place and time, listening to what other readers and writers gripe about- there are lots of ways to pick up information by osmosis, information that you don’t need at the moment, but it’s there, waiting for you to find a use for it.
Please, people, if you want to write historical fiction and have people take it seriously, cultivate an interest in relevant subjects. Not just the history and politics of the time, but simpler things can make or break your world building- what people ate at various times of year, what types of fabrics and other materials were available to them, how they heated and lit their homes.
(She said, having a story sitting on her computer that combines characters living in medieval castles with having carriages and going to Regency-type balls. It’s a retelling of Cinderella; bite me. And, see below)
And of course, the necessary degree of accuracy depends on your genre and audience. If you’re writing a costume romance, where the characters are basically modern Americans but wear pretty dresses and go to balls, historical/world-building accuracy is not a priority. That’s not what the story is for. On the flip side, if you’re writing futuristic space opera, you can handwave changes in food and materials. I don’t recommend doing that with hard sci-fi; those readers are tough, and they’ll hit you with sticks if they think you’re trying to handwave something they think is Important.
But it’s good to know the relevant information even if you don’t need it for that particular story. And who knows?- you might discover a new hobby. Because I’m sure, like me, you all need more hobbies to take up your copious spare time.
On another subject, in preparation for my next post in a couple of weeks, tell me about your experiences with Substack, specifically, and other writing and blogging platforms. I’m thinking of branching out a bit, trying to find ways to get my fiction in front of an audience that don’t involve Amazon, but aren’t quite as complicated as setting up my own printing press. So if you’ve used other platforms, as a reader or writer, sing out; I’m curious about your experiences.
Mad Genius Club 
16 responses to “Strawberries in December”
Yeah. Research. Sometimes it can bite you, in unexpected ways.
I was Beta checking a friends novel. One of the continuity checks I did was pointing out thta a planned sea voyage he proposed went against ocean currents. It would have cost much in energy, whereas, taking a northern route would have reduced the energy costs to a fraction.
I had it written out, along with other corrections, and sent it off.
Later, when the book came out I read it with abandon — until I realized that all of my proposed changes were missing.
Apparently, the corrected file I sent back was the original, not the fixed.
Well, it was a good story anyhow, but I chaffed at the omissions. And I was to blame.
Hotbeds! Even the Romans used them, to grow things out of season. It’s basically a raised bed surrounded by banked-up manure. The heat from decomposition keeps the cold at bay. Doesn’t work for everything. Strawberries come in two varieties: day-length dependent, or June-Bearing, and day-length neutral, or everbearing, which depend more on the temperatures. So theoretically your everbearing could be forced out of season.
You are correct that this needs to be clarified in a book, though. However, a hotbed was accessible even to the lower middle-class if they had land and access to manure (neither of those are cheap and easy in a city).
Hotbeds are the other method I was thinking of, and couldn’t bring to mind.
A 5-minute search seems to suggest that everbearing and day neutral varieties were developed in the United States starting in the 19th century. One could probably fudge things a little for a Regency story.
Substack . . . is an on going learning experience.
I find it awkward and difficult, and how the heck do you lure people in who are not already aware of your stuff? I currently have a whole $385 a year pledged, so I don’t think It’s going to be worth the effort of trying to post stuff regularly.
A few months in and I’ve already had huge gaps in posting, Sarah’s regularly apologizing about gaps . . . and I’m starting to really worry about John Ringo . . . I’m already thinking I’d be better off writing, and just shut it down.
Now, more popular writers–like Sarah and John–probably make enough money for it to be worth their while. Maybe. If it doesn’t take time away from writing, if it doesn’t increase stress.
Our main thing is writing stories. Does this particular method of making money help or hinder? I think it’s going to be different for each of us.
Thanks- this is the kind of information I was looking for. I’ve been struggling to finish even short stories these past few years, and the theory was that a quick, fairly easy method of getting them out to an audience and their feedback would motivate me to write ‘the end’ more frequently. But it’s not a cure-all or an instant fix.
It’s going to be individual. I’m a bit passive aggressive, and a deadline just . . . anti-motivates me, even the self imposed ones.
It wasn’t a problem when I was young and working, until I got a micromanager for a boss. It made quitting to be a full time Mom an easy decision.
I guess I’m my own worst boss . . . there’s an ugly thought . . .
My recently-published novel is set in Youngstown, Ohio in 1977. Since I happened to have grown up in Youngstown, and was living there in 1977, there was a lot I already knew about the setting. However, I still double-checked things and so avoided making some bone-headed mistakes like having the DJ at a school dance playing music that wasn’t released for another two years.
TXRed as Mod: The novel’s title is The Mobster’s Daughter.
Strawberries in December!
Oh, that’s easy. You have a wicked stepmother, and then she sends you out to find them. You met up with three little men in a cottage, or with twelve men. You are very polite to them. In particular, when the twelve men ask you about the months, you praise each one in turn.
Then they give you strawberries. (With the twelve men, June gives you strawberries.)
Partly because we’re now used to being able to get them in grocery stores all the time, and many people can’t remember not seeing them for half the year
At least around here, winter strawberries have no flavor. I tend to avoid them until April, then load up in May – early July. Now the quality is tapering off again, and the prices are going up. Cherries are peaking, though, and almost-ripe peaches are starting to come in. Here, near the end of the supply chain, high quality produce is still seasonal.
When my wife was carrying our oldest son, she was craving strawberries. In December. Wal-Mart had them, but they were a bit on the expensive side.
I have a weakness for cheesy VR fiction, and have for a while.
I saw a rather nice rant on topic of unrealism in some of the stuff that I have enjoyed more recently.
Today I started thinking about what the implications would be, of a world where the computer science in one of last night’s rereads would have seemed plausible.
(I understand analog computers a little, and the standard digital computers, a little. These have aspects which are inconsistent with many VR novels. I don’t understand quantum computers, but all this talk of qubits, and needing the helium cooled RF electronics implies some limitations on the sorts of state machines that one could build. I think. I could be completely mistaken, none of that is a speciality for me. But, a hypothetical state machine with very rapid propagation, certain sorts of irreversible change and stores data well without noise, or the effects of quantized error correction…)
I found myself with a homework problem of understanding quantum computers more, so that I could have a university lecturer talk about what the different was between the conventional quantum stuff, and whatever bog awful bit of physics explains things in universe.
(I’m not sure I really believe in quantum computing, or even in quantum electrodynamics. I halfway follow some of the basic ideas, but I am still am unfamiliar with the basic experimental evidence. Classical electromagnetics, I buy, and it almost makes sense to me. (Today I have been reminded that I find photons a bit troubling, and that I really don’t retain the small scale explanations for electrical properties, or for magnetic properties. (Okay, I remember the electron sea for conduction in metals, and the ionic solution model for conduction. But, permittivity and permeability don’t make sense to me. This stuff of relaxation times is a connection I have not made yet.)))
I remember with affection a bit from Agatha Christie’s “Cards on the Table,” in which a friend of one of the suspects visits Ariadne Oliver, a stand-in for Christie herself (Oliver writes mysteries and sometimes detects with Hercule Poirot). The visitor arrives at a crucial moment: Ms. Oliver has just realized that a clever bit of deduction on the part of her detective, involving French beans (green beans?), can’t be used because the beans will be out of season (the book is set in early February, at Michaelmas).
After agonizing over this dilemma, Ariadne Oliver decides to go ahead with the scene because, as she states, readers aren’t going to notice anyway and the few who do write her letters of complaint can be ignored. I think this was Ms. Christie’s way of letting off steam.
A trick for finding out what’s plausible– don’t search for “when are strawberries in season.”
Search for something like “out of season strawberries in Victorian England.”
One, you’re more likely to get a result that isn’t selling you strawberries with overnight shipping.
Two, you’re more likely to run into a bit of color you can add, or just find out “oh ok I’d want a strawberry jam or something instead.”
(I did not do the search. I am debating doing it just for fun.)