Craft questions for the writers and readers out there
Titles. God I hate giving books titles. What makes a good one?
Background: my agent like Plain Kate Carver better than Plain Kate, which she thinks is too much like Sarah, Plain and Tall. I am not crazy about either title, and worry that Plain Kate Carver sounds way too English for a book that was written under the spell of Russian fairy tales. And, yes, I know the marketing department, should there ever be one, will change it anyway.
And besides titles, there's research. Research is driving me crazy.
I've got this new writing project, which I've mentioned here before, The Teleportation of Gilbert Perez. It's based on a real incident that took place in 1593: a young Filipino solider showed up mysteriously in Mexico City, claiming that he had just been on duty in Manila, and what's more the governor had just been murdered. They tossed him in jail, natch, but sure enough doesn't a ship from the Philippines show up a few months later: Oh, yes, that's Gilbert, he was on duty with me the night the governor died.
Anyway. In a single chapter, I've managed to create two main characters, who are from two different cultures (Filipino and Aztec) about which I know nothing, who between them speak three languages (one Filipino, one Aztec, and Spanish) which I don't speak.
And unlike Plain Kate, which is set on something resembling hand-wavy hand-wavy Baltic Sea, in something resembling the hand-wavy hand-wavy 16th century, during an entirely fictional witch craze, Gilbert Perez is set very definitely in Mexico City, during the very real Conquista.
Now, I love this book. I love poor Gilbert, bouncing backward through the 16th century, falling in love and losing his mind. But, man, did I paint myself into a research corner, and then dig myself into a research pit, and then set my hair on research fire.
Right now I'm fighting my instincts and just writing the story, leaving notes for myself (check this, do that), like a Star Trek script writer: "Captain, we have a [tech] problem." Because trying to do the research up front just left me paralyzed.
But I don't think it's going to work. Because unlike the [tech], the [history] means something; it's real and it's important to the story. One bit is not interchangeable for other bits. But I also don't know what I need to know until I get there. So researching first doesn't work either. The only thing I've come up with is to research in parallel and hope it inspires and informs rather than makes me go back and throw everything out.
Share wisdom, writer friends.