The hard part is knowing how to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers.

By Charles H. Bush

They say “write about what you know.” Unfortunately, if you’re like me and don’t know much, you have to find a way know what you need to know. The method I use is “research.”

For years, before advent of the internet, I found research to be a daunting task, certainly not for the homebound or for the lazy like me. But now most needed research is rather easy. The hard part is knowing how to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers. I’ll give you several case studies a bit later to demonstrate what I do. There are several tools I now use to do my research, so I’ll just jump right in.

Tools of Research

There are several principal research tools I use. They are:

• The internet
• The telephone
• Books on special subjects (like modern-day quick-draw gun fighting techniques) that I buy and download or have shipped to me from Amazon or get from the bookstore. I might use the library if it weren’t too far from my house, but our local library is aimed at kids. Not much there for me.
• My own 7000 volume library of classic e-books and other data that I search using a software package called dtSearch. dtSearch allows me to index my entire computer and instantly find any data stored on it, so whenever I see something I need now or might need in the future, I save it to my disk. I have a huge reserve of odds and ends of data now on my computer.

For storage I have three 300 gigabyte hard drives, one for data, one for backup and one for softwarepplications.

Microsoft OneNote, which is an incredibly useful note taking software package for about $75. If you can afford it, this is the best note taking and data retrieval tool out there.

The Internet

Let’s talk about the internet as a research tool for a moment. Most people know about Google, but there are other search tools also. Ever heard of www.ask.com? Or www.dogpile.com? Or AltaVista at http://www.altavista.com? Or www.search.com ? How about www.metacrawler.com” Or www.scoofers.com ? These are all search engines. When I don’t find what I need on Ask.com, I check the others. The Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/homepage/lchp.html is great, especially for historical data.

Subject Gateways

There are other internet research sites available. Like Owl at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/internet/tools/research.html.  Owl is a subject gateway that serves as a jumping-off place to find almost anything you need to know. I strongly recommend you check it out.   Ditto for another subject gateway found at http://bubl.ac.uk/

What is a subject gateway? It’s just what the name implies. Pick a subject and there will be a link to take you out to specific research locations. Or the Librarians Index at http://lii.org/ Try them, you’ll love them. There really are too many search capabilities to name them all here, so I suggest you run a MetaCrawler.com search on the subject of Internet Research. You’ll be amazed at what pops up. The bottom line for me is that I seldom have to leave home to find anything I need. Let me give some examples of things I’ve researched.

My Current Book:

In my prologue, I have a killer breaking into an old home, so I needed to find out how to pick a lock. Since I’m a crawler in of windows rather than a lock picker, I had to do a Metacrawler search, and almost instantly I found not just the lock picking tools, but how to make them and how to use them. It’s only a line or two in my novel, but it is authentic, which is important to me.

Since the book is set in Washington D.C., I decided that the first scene would take place at the Jefferson Memorial. Only one problem. I had no idea where or how the memorial was laid out or what kind of foliage was around it or where the parking is located. I had no idea how the National Park Service Rangers dressed. So what the hell was I to do? Too expensive to hop a plane to DC just to solve the problem. My solution turned out to be simple.

I used GoogleEarth to get a 3D view of the Jefferson Memorial. With GoogleEarth, a free software package available from Google, I can go in for a close up, I can fly over, I even can go inside the memorial. I can change directions  and look at the memorial from any angle. GoogleEarth showed me the location of the trees. I even decided where my characters would be standing for their meeting and measured how far from the memorial they were.

GoogleEarth solved a lot but not all. What kind of trees were those. I used the phone and called the Jefferson memorial. The Ranger told me Cherry trees. I asked what kind of Cherry trees. He didn’t know, so, I did a Google search for Jefferson Memorial trees. That led me to a pdf document which showed the history of the trees at the Jefferson Memorial and had a map showing where the different types of Cherry trees were located. The document was a free download.

I ran another search for those individual types of trees to see when they lost their leaves. The trees were quite different. My meeting was to take place under a stand of Sargent Cherry trees, which are hardy and keep their leaves until mid-November. So now I knew there would be red and orange leaves on those trees. So that let me know what kind of foliage would be there in  November.

I  still didn’t know about the ranger uniform. So I ran a search for ranger hats. I decided I wanted a cute female ranger, so that led me to a 30-page history of women’s park ranger uniforms.

It had all the photos of the various stages throughout history since 1912. I kept saying “Damn it, what do they wear today?” My patience was rewarded. I finally found color photos on the last page of what the gals wear today. To verify, I called the Jefferson Memorial Ranger again, and asked about the clothes. I gave him a description of what I had found, and he laughed. “Yep, that’s it,” he said.

I had one last thing to learn. What is the weather like in DC in early November. I ran an Ask.com search and found a site with “seasonal weather” right at the top. Here’s what I learned.

• Average High 58 ºF.
• Average Morning Rel Humidity 76.0%.
• Average Low 40 ºF.
• Average Afternoon Rel Humidity 53.0%.
• Mean Temperature 49 ºF.
• Typical Sky Cover: Overcast.
• Average Dew Point 36 ºF.
• Average Precipitation 3 inches
• Average Windspeed 9.18 mph
• Average Snowfall 0.98 inch
• Average Wind Direction S

Now I could accurately write in any plausible weather as needed, as long as I stayed within those parameter. I happen to like moody weather so I picked November. The time of year is irrelevant to the story, but not to me, so November it is.

One last thought. GoogleEarth allows me to fly low through the streets of DC, so when I combine GoogleEarth with my Microsoft Streets and Trips map software, I’m able to navigate easily through the streets as if I know what the hell I’m doing.

One Last Sample

In my last book, I had the bad guy wanting to use a helicopter to hover over a mansion in the Ozark mountains. He was going to build a bomb himself using C4 explosive and drop it on the mansion.

Only two big problems.

One, I didn’t know crap about building a bomb out of C4 or even what C4  looked like. But once again, the internet coughed up what I needed. I got pictures, dimensions and weight for the C4 sticks. They’re wrapped in oily plastic skins. I learned how to make an impact fuse. I got everything I needed for the bomb building and later the dropping scene.

Next, I didn’t know how low his helicopter could fly and escape safely. I needed to know how fast a Bell JetRanger helicopter could accelerate and get away before the bomb blew up. So, I looked up Bell Helicopter. I called them and I told them what I needed. They put me in touch with a designer pilot. I gave him the problem. He was great. He calculated how fast the suitcase bomb would fall, which gave him the amount of time available to get away. He then explained the acceleration of a Jetranger and told me that my characters had to drop the bomb from 500 feet up in order to have time to get away, etc. He included how the pilot should dive away at first in order to gain speed quickly, etc. The result was that scene was not only accurate, it was credible.

What I have learned over the years is, if you’re pleasant and not too pushy, people are very helpful. The rangers thought it was fun to help a novelist who was interested in them.  So, the thing is, don’t be bashful, but know what you’re going to ask ahead of time, and don’t be lazy. Do your homework before you make the calls.

What’s the worse thing that can happen to you when you call? They say, “Sorry, I don’t have time right now.” I’ve never been turned down.

My son works at a huge prop house that services the movie industry. He told me about one of their guys researching bomb making on the internet for a movie. They wanted a prop that looked accurate. The guy spent several days doing the research. Then suddenly there came a knock on his door and two FBI agents were there. They took him to their office and questioned him for two days before they let him go. So it’s probably a good idea to have your excuses handy if that happens to you.

My female romance character in the new book is a self-employed expert internet and other-type researcher, so I needed to know all this stuff I presented tonight to make her credible.

Oh, yes, almost forgot. I have a 14-page or so Word document on the subject of using the internet for research. Anyone who wants a copy of it can email me and I’ll send it along.

Charles Hampton Bush Biography

Raised in rural Arkansas and Louisiana, I wrote my first story (about Thor and his mighty hammer) using crayons on brown paper bags. Since then I have published more than two million words, including numerous popular-science articles for major international aviation magazines, describing aerospace technology fallout.

My professional experience includes a stint as news and sports editor for The Eunice News, a weekly newspaper in cajun country. “Lots of great characters there.”

I was a PR agent for Lockheed California Company, which was a wonderful job. I got to interview and write about many famous test pilots.

I founded and for 9 years ran Marketscience, Inc., a successful industrial advertising agency, where I was both concept man and chief copywriter. I had eleven full-time employees.

During the past twelve years I have been editor and principal photo-journalist for CNC West Magazine, a successful trade publication reaching more than 30,000 users of computer numerical controlled (CNC) manufacturing equipment. I travel, do story interviews with business people west of the Rockies, and then write 3 or 4 articles per issue. We publish every 2 months.

In my youngest days, growing up in New Orleans, I had my own dixieland jazz band and spent three years on tour in Japan, giving big-band jazz concerts over NHK broadcasting and at universities and festivals. I speak Japanese with decent fluency.

I was an oil-field roughneck ’til I busted my wrist. Was a math major in college for a couple of years. Did a bit as an engineering cost estimator for a large shipyard. Though I had no undergraduate degree, I tested my way into the Pepperdyne MBA program. Dropped out after two trimesters, ‘cause it bored the hell out of me.

My novel Brothers of the Light, a mainstream paranormal thriller, is finished, and a new novel, Novus Schola is outlined. I have two more books in the works outlining.

Copyright 2009, Charles Hampton Bush.