posted
As a new member, I thought I'd share one of my favorite writing tools to use for research into things I'm totally clueless on. I've only recently found it, about six months ago, and I wish I had known about it all along. The site is a part of yahoo, called yahoo answers. found at www.answers.yahoo.com
This is how it works:
you ask a question about anything! and within minutes no more than a couple of hours, you have a list of answers and some of the answerers give their sources.
This may sound a little too simple to be useful, but its pretty amazing how quickly intelligent answers are posted.
Some of my questions have been:
What kind of gun would a salon gal carry? what would it look like and what would it feel like to shoot?
How would a petite woman best pin a sleeping man who outweighs her by about one hundred pounds?
The answers help with brainstorming and the people answering have ideas that I would never have thought to think of. For the first I had instructors, collectors, retired police, and historians answer for the second, martial art instructors, trainers, black belts, and surprisingly no lewd remarks. Most provided sites that a mere Googling would not have turned up. If any of you like to know obscure things for your writing that you can't possibly know, like what it feels like to be bitten by a shark (so you can post a really smart sounding answer to an online Jaws discussion) or what kind of blood splatter a particular wound would make, I've found this site is an asset!\
Now, to turn this into a topic, what do you all use as a favorite research tool? Where do you turn for the hard ones?
posted
Knowing what question to ask (or what search string to use) really helps.
I haven't tried your tool yet, but I certainly will if I can't get Google to help me.
By the way, I've heard if you are looking for something on ebay, first spell it correctly, then try looking with an incorrect spelling--people don't always spell correctly when they list items.
posted
In most cases, I'd like access to the references that contain these nuggets of information---simply so I can examine them for myself and see what else might be revealed, that might be useful and interesting.
This, however, is an ideal situation, and chances are I wouldn't be able to obtain, say, a lot of reference books. If I need to know something, and Google proves unrevealing, it might be worth a look.
posted
as a little afterthought, I just wanted to add that one of my questions was something along the lines of "Is there a big brother type site for writers?" in hopes of finding something that offered creative exorcises and a way for writers to talk to one another without having to wade through the blatant advertising ploys.
posted
A thought: I'm reluctant to bother people for the information I want or need. If the data happen to be online, I'll look at it. I always figure people are busy living their own lives, and I don't want to interfere with that---and, besides, I might have to indulge in a quid pro quo and be available to help somebody else.
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posted
I think that's the neat part, the annonymity. I don't feel like I'm bothering people. It's also helpful when you get stuck with simple things, --where something is on the tip of your brain-- trying to remember a particular quote, once I asked for things that were "L" shaped. (It's lazy, but you know how you get writing and you don't want to stop for too long but you can't remember the word you are looking for?)
You start out with 100 points, I think, and each question you ask subtracts 5 points, while each question you answer adds 2-3 points. So, in order to keep asking, every now and then you have to answer, too. So you do get to help other people out.
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