dragonlady7

via http://ift.tt/2a5YRpD:
hansbekhart:

maybe-its-mabeling:

Does anyone else get really caught up on the small details in their writing? Like you can be really good at writing situations and feelings and characters, but you get to a point when you’re writing something small like what they’re making for dinner and before you know it, you’re googling recipes with tomatoes because you think the scene won’t be convincing unless you know the cooking time and temp??

**looks shifty, closes ten tabs**

Sometimes it really affects the story, though. I spend for goddamn ever on this kind of shit, and I cannot tell you how much good it has done me. I have had invaluable character moments and even plot points revealed to me by finding out, say, how many rounds a certain gun holds, or how long it takes to prepare the food most common to this setting, or whether the average citizen could read and if so, what kind of books they’d have. And this works in fantasy, historical, futuristic settings too, even if you have to make up the facts yourself; working out consistency gives the setting a luminous depth of its own. Yeah I waste a lot of time but I know things now, and I refuse to consider it a waste. Not all my writing time is spent writing, and that’s important.