When writing on or using a complex, multi-faceted subject for your story it is critical to perform extensive research for developing your story. One example of a complex, multi-faceted subject is war including stories that feature war as a plot device to build your story around. No matter if your a published author with decades of history writing best sellers or just starting your writing journey, details and facts that you include in your story matter. Your credibility and following can be built or destroyed depending upon the accuracy of the details you incorporate into your story.
When writing, ALWAYS sweat the small stuff. With deep research you will write with authority because you truly understand the topic you are covering.
On the subject of war, combat, and conflict there are multiple areas that are ripe for deep dive research. Your story may involve a conflict among nations or it may be conflict among rival factions. There are however several universal truths that are evident in all war and conflict scenarios – they all involve people. People are outfitted with uniforms of their nation or tactical gear enhancing their street clothes. Conflict warriors and soldiers need to be equipped with weapons to wage battle as well as protective gear to defend. Stories that feature extensive dialog in combat may have remote support facilities for resupply so there would need to be methods of communication, resupply, and support that all fit within the context of your story.
Authors today have access to limitless sources for research from the comfort of their own writing spaces thanks to the innovations that have come from the Internet. There is no longer a need to travel to a reading room at an archive facility to review reference materials, nearly all important archives have been digitzed and indexed allowing for near-instant retrieveal from simple queries on a website. We are going to cover some deep dive research ideas that are all available online, but do not involve any sort of official archives department of any agency or organization.
Harness the power and community of the Internet to create your own research team, develop new ideas, and see visualizations of subject matter using streaming media
One of the deep dive research portals that allows you to both research through reading past documents as well as ask questions would be a Reddit community that has a focus on the subject matter you are looking to do a deep dive into. Reddit refers to their communities as sub-Reddits, and there are communities for virtually every subject you’d need to do a deep dive on. For instance if your story involved partisans fighting who would need to be equipped using their own materials you could research availability on the /r/tacticalgear sub-reddit which has over 164,000 members with posts going back to December 14, 2012. You can follow this sub-reddit for trends, interests, and equipment being used in conflict zones and by those prepping for possible urban combat scenarios around the world.
For research on gear availability that includes both new and military issue, an excellent source for deep dive style research is to visit some of the online shops and stockists who carry these types of goods. You can find some of these stores by reading /r/tacticalgear or you can submit questions about gear you find to the community at /r/tacticalgear for more information or background. As we are in a global world when searching for stockists for this type of equipment you should review what is available within Europe and the United States. For European availability a great place to start is Varusteleka which has both military issue gear and equipment as well as commercial specialist brands that would be more appropriate for a European location in your story. When looking at gear available in the United States a good stockist website for research is Keep Shooting which in addition to military surplus and tactical gear has a good amount of firearms and firearms components which would be an essential component for any USA based story.
Next posting we will discuss more research ideas and then follow up with how to storyboard the flow of your project.