Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Things I learned writing Anachronism

With my first novella finished, as polished as it's ever going to get, and starting to be sent off into the void of the few publishers who want sci-fi novellas, I thought I'd make a list of things I learned writing it, if only for my own reference.


    • According to my search history, I Googled "List of fictional time travelers." As opposed to, you know, the non-fictional ones, which is a surprisingly short list.
    • You can go inside the Gateway Arch (I mean, technically I learned this on the SyFy show Defiance, but I learned the logistics of doing so in a non-post-apocalyptic world. I guess I thought it was just a giant statue or something?).
    • How to drive a car. Specifically, which pedal is the accelerator. I am 25. Even if I don't drive, that seems like something I should have known by now.
    • What it feels like to get shot. Because, while clever, I wasn't sure if calling it a "shooting pain" was accurate.
    • How to treat a bullet wound without medical care. I found much more information than I expected, wanted, or needed, including one page that included such gems as "Don’t get shot again," "Don’t insert things into the bullet hole," and " Constantly check the wound for new maggots and remove as you see them." I love the Internet.
    • What to call the flashing lights atop a police cruiser. Because I was pretty sure they were not, as I referred to them in my first draft, "bloop-bloop lights" (when I don't know a word, I put in a placeholder, usually a silly one to amuse myself during editing). They're called "lightbars," apparently.
    • How to outrun the cops.
    • Bank vaults, and breaking into them.
    • Satellite pictures of the White House and surrounding areas. Am I on a watch list yet?
    • Basically everything about every museum in the DC area, their collections, and their hours. And then I ended up creating a fictional one instead.
    • There is more than one Gutenberg Bible, and they're ridiculously heavy.
    • What museum display cases are made of and how much it would hurt/kill someone who happened to be standing near one if it happened to go boom.
    • I've been spelling "provoke" and "succumb" wrong for my entire life. I honestly thought I had my spellcheck set to British English or something when it put red lines under "prevoke" and "succomb."

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