RESEARCH is often the go-to solution for many writing problems, but it may not always be clear for many beginners how that works in practice. I’m sharing details of my own writing process in relation to world-building and character development in hopes that it might illuminate.
The main POV character in the story I am currently writing is a former ballet dancer trying to move on with her life and basically figure out who she is. In one scene I’ve written, she goes to this party with a boy she likes and his friends, and I had the idea of her listening to whatever music was playing and disliking it. As a former ballet dancer, it made sense that she would perhaps be snobbish about music, but as I wrote the scene I realized that I had never really thought about what kind of music she would like. After all, a snob is a snob because they have high standards, and to really understand a snob, you should probably know what their standards are. It then occurred to me that this would be even more important for a character with this kind of relationship to music. Since her particular tastes had never been primary concern to the story, I never explored that.
You might say that a little detail like this doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme, but my sense is that if you need to know the character further, ignoring these details is a wasted opportunity.
I could simply patch in whatever, but when developing any character context matters, and here’s where the broader context of the setting becomes important.
She lives in a future city on another planet whose founders broadly speaking were adherents to a body of cultural aesthetic theory called Re-Creationism. The basic idea is that something of value was lost to humanity as the world rebuilt itself after the wars of the 21st century, that what was valuable should be re-created. The founders of the city wanted it to be a model for that, and these ideas generally are influential on the city’s culture. Some people take the idea of Re-creation more loosely, combining the new with the old and creating something more timeless in the process, while others following it more literally, in essence replicating the past. Many of the wealthy elites in the city tend toward the latter and the dominant trend in the arts at that level in the era/context the story is situating follows that tendency. The kind of ballet that this character, born into relative privilege, would know fits into that.
All of this I knew quite a ways back, it comes out of years of world-building and helped guide the direction my research took. Music for ballet would be the obvious starting point for her favorite music. I thought about the sacred cows that people who don’t know ballet too well (like me) would know, which would mostly the kind of Classical and Romantic ballet people in her era/context would gravitate toward, and decided she would be the sort of person who would deviate from that. This helped me cross out particular pieces/composers. Russians are big, so what about French? Ravel’s Bolero would be too obvious. Even I knew that one. Daphnis et Chloé, perhaps? The story here is very intriguing in relation to the character and story. I listened to the piece and discovered it was exactly the kind of music I was looking for. Ravel is perfect, close to the period I wanted to evoke, Modern and Impressionistic while still Romantic. I had my benchmark and from that could built a standard for the character.
The process here is more associative and organic. The problem that compelled the research wasn’t much of a problem, but it did give me an opportunity to think about something that should’ve been fundamental to this character yet never really thought about.
Thinking about what sort of music the main POV character liked got me thinking more about how she relates to music not only in this scene but within the broader framework of the story. It also got me thinking of the main non-POV character and how the music could be a bridge between them. I’d already had the sense that he would enjoy classical music within a certain period, so it made sense that their tastes here would coincide. When it comes time to revise my draft, I plan to build in these correspondences.
A few days ago, I started thinking more about the motifs within the story and how that might be further related to music. Fire as an element and its relation to the Wands suite in tarot and meaning/use in Magick in particular is a major motif repeated throughout the story. I remembered Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, but somehow it did not occur to me that it was originally written for ballet. I got on Wikipedia and read more about the conception of the piece and story. I read more about the Russian folklore pertaining to the Firebird and was frankly surprised by how well it fit into the themes/motifs of the story. Serendipitous, to say the least.
So there you go. One little piece of research can lead you down all sorts of interesting rabbit-holes that might wind up being of use in your story. Where it goes might surprise you, if you give yourself the freedom to explore.
It’s important here to note that I am not recommending any particular method, more just showing my process in this particular instance. I’m also hoping that the context I’ve provided, of thinking about the context of whatever world you’ve built, a character’s back story, and any important themes or motifs in the story, shows how to direct research in a way that’s not completely haphazard. The story’s always the thing!
This piece originally appeared on a certain website-that-shall-not-be-named, updated slightly for blog purposes. Featured image: Drawing: Set design for Act I from Daphnis and Chloe, 1912. Scanned from original. Watercolor on paper; 19 x 27 centimeters. Inscription on verso: “Daphnis et Chloe, décor du 1er acte, par Leon Bakst.” MS Thr 414.4 (9), Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University