{"id":1629,"date":"2014-10-28T10:02:52","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T15:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cecilesune.com\/?p=1629"},"modified":"2018-12-09T21:22:58","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T02:22:58","slug":"research-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/research-books\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Research My Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Douglas<\/a>
Douglas Phillip<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The following is a guest post by Douglas Phillip,\u00a0author of Spirit Made Smaller.<\/strong> If you would like to write a guest post on my blog, please send me an e-mail at contact@cecilesune.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Why do we read, blog, and tweet? We hunger for connection and meaning.\u00a0 We crave to make sense of the world \u2013 past, present, and future.\u00a0 We choose to research the meaning and meaninglessness of modern existence\u2026explore the dilemmas of our world and our place within it. \u00a0Although ever-changing, our collective knowledge and the languages that we use to express the universe and humanity\u2019s position within it shall always limit our comprehension because death comes to us all.\u00a0 Ultimately each of us, like Socrates and the Buddha, is a \u201cnon-knower\u201d who suffers poverty, failure, exile, and loss.\u00a0 But we still search for understanding and search yet again\u2026<\/p>\n

Storytelling helps us out.\u00a0 Speculative fiction speaks to the anxieties percolating in its age.\u00a0 Indeed, storytellers who have researched their novels extremely well do restore some order to the world.\u00a0 They offer up material worthy of their potential readers\u2019 time and money.<\/p>\n

Whether in fiction, science, or other non-fiction endeavors, the first rule I try to follow when undertaking research is to acknowledge my inherent preferences and their limiting influences upon my imagination and the subsequent selection of background facts that will anchor the writing\u2019s core themes.<\/p>\n

Before I started my novel, Spirit Made Smaller, <\/em>I had to recognize that I, as a human being, had four basic inclinations, or biases, which constricted my ideas:<\/p>\n

\"Spirit<\/a>
Spirit Made Smaller by Douglas Phillip<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

First, I tend to anthropomorphize all animals, forces, and manmade machines.\u00a0 Placing human characteristics into non-human entities can turn away from truer comprehensions of actual creatures, conditions, or situations.\u00a0 Of course, the opposite in bestowing human attributes upon other species or natural forces such as thunder and hurricanes does help to shape those entities and create a sense of psychological satisfaction or relief, however mythical.\u00a0 Even more so, all the fine poetry, literature, and cinematic films predicated upon variations of artificial intelligence and diverse science fictions and fantasy projections of the human psyche would not have been created had not those intrepid authors and screenwriters employed this bias.\u00a0 Yet to this day science or metaphysics, however, cannot explain how and why human consciousness exists.\u00a0 If we cannot understand our own consciousness, how then may we hope to eventually chip it into a computer?<\/p>\n

Second, I am inclined to look skyward for potential natural explanations instead of under my feet.\u00a0 Every day I view the sun, moon, and stars. \u00a0So I prefer to search for meaning in the heavens rather than out of the center of the earth despite the occasional earthquake.\u00a0 Yet when I had forced myself to think about all the heat generated within the earth\u2019s core and how it escaped through shifting tectonic plates on the planet\u2019s surface, it was only then that I had effectively molded one my secondary characters in my recently released novel, Spirit Made Smaller.<\/em><\/p>\n

Third, because I grew up in western Montana, I am biased toward accepting events happening on land being more significant for our world than the ever changing conditions that had manifested throughout the world\u2019s oceans.\u00a0 Since the Earth\u2019s surface remains 79% ocean compared to 21% land, it made sense to me to study the science of oceanography for critical background in my last book as well as writing my current novel.\u00a0 From an introductory course, I learned that the entire ocean floor turns over every 190 million years \u2013 this has happened at least twenty times since our planet was formed.\u00a0 Yet there are some surface land features which have lethargically existed for longer than three billion years.\u00a0 Obviously, the primary geological activity that happens on our planet, overall, is in the oceans and not on the continents.\u00a0 Thus, any theory regarding overall planetary surface and atmospheric conditions must account for the oceans providing the major driving component or it is worthless.<\/p>\n

\"USA<\/a>
USA Best Book Awards Finalist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last, I have known only carbon-based life forms \u2013 perhaps this is the most fundamental bias that we all possess.\u00a0 Asking the following question ended one of my bouts with writer\u2019s block: \u201cDo non-carbon based, sentient life forms exist within our galaxy?\u201d\u00a0 Oh, the research I\u2019ve done trying to answer that one\u2026!\u00a0 And I\u2019m doubly thankful for my college degree in chemistry.<\/p>\n

When I remind myself about my core biases, my research becomes less inclined to employ confirmation bias — where I only select a few pieces of information and then leap to some faraway disaster, conspiracy theory, or Armageddon.\u00a0 The philosopher Thomas Kuhn pointed out that individuals often simply ignore facts that don\u2019t fit their existing paradigms \u2013 yet the intellectually courageous person is willing to look at things that are surprisingly hard to look at.\u00a0 Thus, such a reasonable framework guides the background research that buttresses my characters and plots into broader landscapes about ascents and setbacks, forgiveness and redemption, and the back-and-forth, easy movements from the close-ups to the horizons.<\/p>\n

Yet biases are indeed fundamental to conflict\u2026and conflict creation and resolution are the DNA double helixes of fiction writing.\u00a0 Biases do have their critical places in creating a novel.\u00a0 I try to be aware of my core biases and realize that there is a time and a place to employ them and to reject them.\u00a0 As an editor once told me, \u201cThe wise writer knows when to anthropomorphize an object, force, or species, and when not to.\u201d\u00a0 I agree.<\/p>\n

About the author\u00a0and his work: Douglas Phillip’s Website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a guest post by Douglas Phillip,\u00a0author of Spirit Made Smaller. If you would like to write a guest post on my blog, please send me an e-mail at contact@cecilesune.com. Why do we read, blog, and tweet? We hunger for connection and meaning.\u00a0 We crave to make sense of the world \u2013 past,… Read More »How I Research My Books<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":1630,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[718,365],"tags":[723,632,719,722,703,558,720,721,534],"yoast_head":"\nHow I Research My Books - C\u00e9cile Sune<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Douglas Phillip talks about the research he conducted before writing Spirit Made Smaller.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/research-books\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How I Research My Books - C\u00e9cile Sune\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Douglas Phillip talks about the research he conducted before writing Spirit Made Smaller.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/research-books\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"C\u00e9cile Sune\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Phillip-Douglas\/241061396017651\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-10-28T15:02:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-12-10T02:22:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Phillip-Douglas.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"348\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"488\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Douglas Phillip\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Douglas Phillip\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/research-books\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/research-books\/\",\"name\":\"How I Research My Books - C\u00e9cile Sune\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/research-books\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/research-books\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Phillip-Douglas.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-10-28T15:02:52+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-12-10T02:22:58+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/#\/schema\/person\/6e4e537350ca2f86b278c1ab318f3ffb\"},\"description\":\"Douglas Phillip talks about the research he conducted before writing Spirit Made Smaller.\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/research-books\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/research-books\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Phillip-Douglas.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Phillip-Douglas.jpg\",\"width\":348,\"height\":488,\"caption\":\"Douglas Phillip\"},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/\",\"name\":\"C\u00e9cile Sune\",\"description\":\"Book Obsessed\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cecilesune.com\/#\/schema\/person\/6e4e537350ca2f86b278c1ab318f3ffb\",\"name\":\"Douglas Phillip\",\"description\":\"Phillip Douglas, born in Montana of Scottish, Native American and German descent, served 28 years in the United States Army Medical Corps in several command and consultative positions across the globe. 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