Things you discovered you know a lot about while writing.

[RuralDimwit]

I never realised how much I know about horses until I started writing the story I'm currently working on. I'd write a first draft of a scene, come back to edit and think 'Hang on, surely that's not the word for that, that's silly.' Then I'd look it up, and lo; it is called a dandy brush. I've never had a horse of my own, nor have I ever really read anything about horses, so it's all stuff I picked up from my Nan when she told me stories from her childhood.

I'm definitely not an expert, but I was under the impression I knew nothing, so this feels like a lot. I think mostly when I write it goes in the reverse - I try to write about something I think I know stuff about, realise I know absolutely nothing, and then have to do a whole bunch of extra research. This was refreshing.

Are there things you discovered you knew quite a bit about while writing?

 

[RepresentingEnvy]

There are a few things I discovered I knew about, but I am pretty ignorant about a lot of things. I remember a while ago for a story I had to look up the average speed of a horse drawn carriage.

 

[Bartun]

Exactly the same feeling. I thought I knew a lot about armor and medieval warfare. But I wanted to be as accurate as possible and after some research, it turns out there was a lot that I didn't know.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

I never realised how much I know about horses until I started writing the story I'm currently working on. I'd write a first draft of a scene, come back to edit and think 'Hang on, surely that's not the word for that, that's silly.' Then I'd look it up, and lo; it is called a dandy brush. I've never had a horse of my own, nor have I ever really read anything about horses, so it's all stuff I picked up from my Nan when she told me stories from her childhood.

I'm definitely not an expert, but I was under the impression I knew nothing, so this feels like a lot. I think mostly when I write it goes in the reverse - I try to write about something I think I know stuff about, realise I know absolutely nothing, and then have to do a whole bunch of extra research. This was refreshing.

Are there things you discovered you knew quite a bit about while writing?

I haven't really discovered that I have known something more than I already thought I did, but I have discovered that more often than not, I'll put the British spelling for something. Which, given that I live in America, is kind of weird and has brought me no end of annoyance from mother dearest and my spelling check program.
And for some things I have had to research: how embalming and certain things about coffins and their burial; how it feels to bite, cut, and choke yourself (not at the same time of course); military hierarchies; etc.

 

[ArcadiaBlade]

Considering that I mostly tend to study psychology, I should be able to understand human interactions which easily solve my main problem to my writing.

Turns out that it isn't psychology but me having social anxiety to a point where even writing dialogue seems unnatural.

Its also weird for me, who lives in a country where talking is basically summed up to breathing, has a social anxiety. Like a person who loves sweets, having diabeties.

 

[ShrimpShady]

About music and instruments. I didn't know I could get so much mileage out of a character playing a song on the guitar. Although I guess writing about music is like dancing about architecture

 

[Aader]

Let's see: I know a strange amount about South Korean business law.
I am well verse in Forensic Science as I helped my older sister study.
I have a absurd amount of knowledge in clinical, abstract and criminal psychology.
I know way too much about guns.
I am too familiar about getting rid of bodies, something that'll be in SoL's rewritten first chapter.

There is more but I'm not gonna jerk myself on this forum.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

I discovered that I'm bad at typing and writing stories after all, despite 50$ I spent on keyboard and 47$ on the modifications.

 

[Rhaps]

I discovered how much of a nihilist I truly am. Writing is like having a conversation with your inner self, and my inner self is very bleak with the depression of an edge lord.

 

[Redemit]

Torture

 

[Jemini]

It's a little meta, but I discovered I know quite a bit about mythologies across various cultures, and of course as I was writing I wound up accumulating even more knowledge on exactly this subject.

I guess I've just been exposed to a lot of ancient lore as it's referenced in a whole heck of a lot of modern fantasy stories, and then I got the bright idea to write stories that skipped on the whole post-tolkein era approach to fantasy racial aspects and got as close as I could get to the original lore of various things like the fey, dragons, and elemental entities. (For instance, there's not a lot of people who know that the dragon of the 4 guardians in Chinese lore is actually green and strongly themed toward nature in the original lore. The reason modern media portrays him as blue and tends to give him ice powers is because the Chinese words for "green" and "blue" used to be the same word, until they invented a new word for "blue" and the Japanese invented a new word for "green..." And, of course, it's the Japanese that started portraying him as blue in the first place, since his lore in the Japanese texts used the old word which was now just "blue" instead of a single word that meant both blue and green.)

One thing I found particularly fun is the original lore behind gnomes. Unlike the post-D&D image of gnomes that essentially portrays them as some kind of sad mix of hobbit and dwarf, the original gnomes were CRAZY powerful earth elemental spirits... that somehow got their lore mixed together with guardian spirit totems that people would put on their front lawns to ward off evil... it's actually kinda weird. (even weirder when you research that and realize lawn gnomes are a completely culturally and historically accurate use of gnome figures as they were intended to be used... well, assuming you put them in your front lawn at least. Not so much if they're in your back yard.)

That said, I decided to dedicate an entire series toward portraying gnomes in their full proper glory... and kinda made them magical tyrants. Yeah, my Hell's Underworld series is essentially the gnome Jannisaries, and I decided to run their training camp like a standard Xianxia world sect.

...Err... yeah, on the subject of Jannisaries, I know an uncomfortably large amount about historical slavery too... and history in general I suppose.

So, that would be mythologies, linguistics, and a lot of interesting little minutia in history that I actually know quite a bit about.

 

[miyoga]

It's a little meta, but I discovered I know quite a bit about mythologies across various cultures, and of course as I was writing I wound up accumulating even more knowledge on exactly this subject.

I guess I've just been exposed to a lot of ancient lore as it's referenced in a whole heck of a lot of modern fantasy stories, and then I got the bright idea to write stories that skipped on the whole post-tolkein era approach to fantasy racial aspects and got as close as I could get to the original lore of various things like the fey, dragons, and elemental entities. (For instance, there's not a lot of people who know that the dragon of the 4 guardians in Chinese lore is actually green and strongly themed toward nature in the original lore. The reason modern media portrays him as blue and tends to give him ice powers is because the Chinese words for "green" and "blue" used to be the same word, until they invented a new word for "blue" and the Japanese invented a new word for "green..." And, of course, it's the Japanese that started portraying him as blue in the first place, since his lore in the Japanese texts used the old word which was now just "blue" instead of a single word that meant both blue and green.)

One thing I found particularly fun is the original lore behind gnomes. Unlike the post-D&D image of gnomes that essentially portrays them as some kind of sad mix of hobbit and dwarf, the original gnomes were CRAZY powerful earth elemental spirits... that somehow got their lore mixed together with guardian spirit totems that people would put on their front lawns to ward off evil... it's actually kinda weird.

That said, I decided to dedicate an entire series toward portraying gnomes in their full proper glory... and kinda made them magical tyrants. Yeah, my Hell's Underworld series is essentially the gnome Jannisaries, and I decided to run their training camp like a standard Xianxia world sect.

...Err... yeah, on the subject of Jannisaries, I know an uncomfortably large amount about historical slavery too... and history in general I suppose.

So, that would be mythologies, linguistics, and a lot of interesting little minutia in history that I actually know quite a bit about.

Don't forget that there's 2 types of dragon in Chinese mythology. The dragon of the royal family is always portrayed as having 4 talons on each claw while all others (the ones for the people) have 3. There's reasons for this that I don't remember off the top of my head, but it's largely to deal with being more intelligent and stronger than all the others.
This is all in spite of the fact that the Chinese word for "four" also sounds like the word for "death".

 

[Fox-Trot-9]

The thing I've realized after writing a lot is how much I obsess with the details to the point of going down more rabbit hole researches than is healthy. Hence, I know a crap ton about architectural details, the names of historical pieces of clothing, guns, swords, armaments, and armors, historical modes of European marital arts, military terms, fight scenes, and making things go boom, etc., etc., etc.

 

[Jemini]

Don't forget that there's 2 types of dragon in Chinese mythology. The dragon of the royal family is always portrayed as having 4 talons on each claw while all others (the ones for the people) have 3. There's reasons for this that I don't remember off the top of my head, but it's largely to deal with being more intelligent and stronger than all the others.
This is all in spite of the fact that the Chinese word for "four" also sounds like the word for "death".

I will admit to not being as up on Chinese linguistics as I am on the Japanese. (I just kinda found out about the Chinese going the opposite direction for the word for the color blue from Japan when I was specifically looking up Qinglong/Shenryu (difficult to figure out what to call him other than just his name due to knowing about the issues with the color there in the language.))

At any rate, I was quite aware of the "Shi" matter in the Japanese language. I was not aware that was a thing in Chinese as well, although I suppose it shouldn't be that much of a surprise since Japanese was basically split off from Chinese and uses the same kanji with identical meanings (but very different pronunciations).

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

It's a little meta, but I discovered I know quite a bit about mythologies across various cultures, and of course as I was writing I wound up accumulating even more knowledge on exactly this subject.

I guess I've just been exposed to a lot of ancient lore as it's referenced in a whole heck of a lot of modern fantasy stories, and then I got the bright idea to write stories that skipped on the whole post-tolkein era approach to fantasy racial aspects and got as close as I could get to the original lore of various things like the fey, dragons, and elemental entities. (For instance, there's not a lot of people who know that the dragon of the 4 guardians in Chinese lore is actually green and strongly themed toward nature in the original lore. The reason modern media portrays him as blue and tends to give him ice powers is because the Chinese words for "green" and "blue" used to be the same word, until they invented a new word for "blue" and the Japanese invented a new word for "green..." And, of course, it's the Japanese that started portraying him as blue in the first place, since his lore in the Japanese texts used the old word which was now just "blue" instead of a single word that meant both blue and green.)

One thing I found particularly fun is the original lore behind gnomes. Unlike the post-D&D image of gnomes that essentially portrays them as some kind of sad mix of hobbit and dwarf, the original gnomes were CRAZY powerful earth elemental spirits... that somehow got their lore mixed together with guardian spirit totems that people would put on their front lawns to ward off evil... it's actually kinda weird. (even weirder when you research that and realize lawn gnomes are a completely culturally and historically accurate use of gnome figures as they were intended to be used... well, assuming you put them in your front lawn at least. Not so much if they're in your back yard.)

That said, I decided to dedicate an entire series toward portraying gnomes in their full proper glory... and kinda made them magical tyrants. Yeah, my Hell's Underworld series is essentially the gnome Jannisaries, and I decided to run their training camp like a standard Xianxia world sect.

...Err... yeah, on the subject of Jannisaries, I know an uncomfortably large amount about historical slavery too... and history in general I suppose.

So, that would be mythologies, linguistics, and a lot of interesting little minutia in history that I actually know quite a bit about.

What about goblins and kobolds?

 

[Jemini]

What about goblins and kobolds?

Kobolds are strange. They are basically mischivious spirits in German folklore, but stories in regards to them are quite varied. In most versions though, they are entirely like small humans, not the monster-like portrayals that D&D ingrained into everyone's heads. There are, however, a few points where there's some confusion between gnomes and kobolds, basically making it out as though a kobold is just a particularly ill-natured gnome.

Goblins though, they are from English lore and their pre-goblin slayer portrayal in most media is pretty darn accurate to their historical lore. (This concept of making them an all-male race that rapes and impregnates females of other species to have them bare goblin babies is entirely an invention of recent webnovels within the past 10 years or so... actually, the past 15 years are an era of immense shake-ups in terms of A LOT of fiction and how fantasy in general is written, and I think this can be blamed entirely on the fact that webnovels as a medium came into prominence around 2010.)

Actually, that's a pattern I've noticed. Almost everything that comes from English folk-lore tends to be portrayed very accurate to the original lore even in today's fiction, even to the point of English dragons, the ones that look like winged lizards, being held as something of the standard for dragons. In reality, those lizard-like dragons were the EXTREME minority in terms of dragon portrayals. The OVERWHELMING majority of dragons portrayed in all cultures everywhere have had them as serpent-like, similar to what's now commonly thought of as an "eastern dragon."

I suppose you COULD call those eastern dragons, if you draw the line that divides east and west on the east side of France. Germany is the farthest west territory that portrays dragons as serpent-like, and most areas farther east from modern day Germany also have this model of their dragons. Lindwurm is probably the most famous serpentine dragon in Germanic lore.

 

[DataNerdX]

I realized I had been exposed to Irish mythology/folklore from The Fionavar Tapestry and The Wheel of Time.

 

[Paul_Tromba]

Too much about mythology, philosophy, and pagan European cultures apparently.

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

Kobolds are strange. They are basically mischivious spirits in German folklore, but stories in regards to them are quite varied. In most versions though, they are entirely like small humans, not the monster-like portrayals that D&D ingrained into everyone's heads. There are, however, a few points where there's some confusion between gnomes and kobolds, basically making it out as though a kobold is just a particularly ill-natured gnome.

Goblins though, they are from English lore and their pre-goblin slayer portrayal in most media is pretty darn accurate to their historical lore. (This concept of making them an all-male race that rapes and impregnates females of other species to have them bare goblin babies is entirely an invention of recent webnovels within the past 10 years or so... actually, the past 15 years are an era of immense shake-ups in terms of A LOT of fiction and how fantasy in general is written, and I think this can be blamed entirely on the fact that webnovels as a medium came into prominence around 2010.)

Actually, that's a pattern I've noticed. Almost everything that comes from English folk-lore tends to be portrayed very accurate to the original lore even in today's fiction, even to the point of English dragons, the ones that look like winged lizards, being held as something of the standard for dragons. In reality, those lizard-like dragons were the EXTREME minority in terms of dragon portrayals. The OVERWHELMING majority of dragons portrayed in all cultures everywhere have had them as serpent-like, similar to what's now commonly thought of as an "eastern dragon."

I suppose you COULD call those eastern dragons, if you draw the line that divides east and west on the east side of France. Germany is the farthest west territory that portrays dragons as serpent-like, and most areas farther east from modern day Germany also have this model of their dragons. Lindwurm is probably the most famous serpentine dragon in Germanic lore.

Hmm, I was under the impression that Goblins came from kobolds. The word kobold stems back to greek times. Theres also the element cobalt named after them.

And yeah, I've always refered to dragons as serpents instead of lizard.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

Torture

My kind of person right here.

I discovered how much of a nihilist I truly am. Writing is like having a conversation with your inner self, and my inner self is very bleak with the depression of an edge lord.

Scratch that, my kind of people here.