THE LARGEST RESEARCH LIBRARY IN THE WORLD

One night last week I was editing my next book, "Layers of Deceit," a crime novel. I had written a scene where detectives have been called in because a body had been discovered in an apartment fire under suspicious circumstances. The first draft had the detectives questioning a man as the body was being brought out on a stretcher.  

Then I wondered if I had made a mistake. I had.

If a body is found and foul play is suspected a special arson investigator is called to the scene. I ended up adding a scene where the arson investigator along with the homicide detective examine the charred body in a burned out bedroom.

What happened? It enriched the story even though it was a grizzly couple of paragraphs. It enriched the dialog and the story because one of the detectives immediately suspected the boyfriend who denied the accusation. The other detective wasn't so sure. HENCE: Conflict

What did I do? I went on The Web via the Internet and typed; "What is procedure if a body is found in an arson?" The results led me to an online Forensics Magazine and gave me the information I needed to enhance the scene, the characters, improve the dialog, and the story.

For those of us who are still Neanderthal's as I am with regards to the information highway let me help those people specifically. There is The Internet and then there is The World Wide Web. 

​The Internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.

The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the the Web to share information. The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, to access Web documents called Web pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks. Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.

Every writer I know is constantly going through " a process," in which they are growing and improving their craft. For me, this is book number six. Personally, an improvement over my first book published eighteen months ago.

I wrote the outline of this upcoming book first and left it alone for several months. When I revisited the story I wrote the story, 51,000 words in two months. Walked away and now after publishing two other books I have begun editing and refining the story.

Any question I have I turn to my research library, The Web, and usually find the answers I need. If you are not using it, please do so. It is a massive amount of information at your fingertips. As a writer it is invaluable.

I would not be exaggerating when I say you could write a whole novel with just ten questions. Go ahead, think of a story and ask ten questions and then go to the Web. (Examples: Settings, names of characters, time periods, personality traits, procedures, weapons and tools, clothing styles, weather, inventions, science fiction.) The list, as we all know, could easily  be five times that number.

I write fiction not "How To," books. That means my audience wants to be entertained, which means I am a constant work in progress attempting to deliver the best stories I can write. I think of myself as entertainer working the small clubs. This is where we learn the most.

​The beginning while we are struggling.

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