What are some of the weirdest things you've Googled to write your stories?
I was laughing about this today. I've looked up a few fetishes, porn statistics, knife fighting, basic geography and weather of various locations, language translations, addiction basics, and homesteading... and that's just for erotica stories in the past year.
Practitioner of the art of the tease...
Strangest ever was probably different psychological disorders for background research on a character. I had some interesting banner ads for pharmaceuticals forever after that.
More recently remote or bluetooth enabled vibrators...
The only things I remember looking up for my writing were:
Flight schedules from Albuquerque to Prague, which was odd because I had sworn 20 years previously that I would never again fly with a commercial airline.
I am terrible with dates but I remember musical events. For example, a few days after moving to London to live with my mother in 1969 "Well All Right" came wafting through my window. Wikipedia told me it was June 7 when I walked into Hyde Park to watch Blind Faith's first concert.
Not particularly weird, but possibly interesting.
I use google images a lot for characters, settings - everything. I have a file of images for pretty much every story I write. The last thing I looked up was 1950 wallpaper and carpets for a horror story I’ve been writing.
That's a nice question.
I have a google map of Vancouver (Canada) open when I'm writing, it's the location of all my stories.
During my last story I had google translate open, to help with some Slovenian phrases.
It's not google but I have thesaurus .com open all the time I'm writing.
Quite often I look up the difference between American and English words and spellings: who knew that the word tea-towel would be a mystery to so many US bloggers?
I also write mysteries under a different name. I cringe at the thought that Homeland Security would ever look at my browser history.
Directional microphones for "Hooters". Also had to hunt up a kind of owl that would be exceedingly rare but not completely out of the question for the region in the story.
I did a lot of digging on the serum run for a story that's not here ( chain story where the authors in the chain take turns adding chapters, so the individual chapters don't stand alone so well ) An interview transcript with one of the mushers of the time heavily influenced the narrative/dialogue.
Those flashlights you shake to charge them, how much power they produce, how/whether they can charge while discharging, etc. for "Going Green"
Oximeters for XXXam. Side note: huge numbers of those were out of stock on every website I was checking because of Covid-19. Good thing I just needed information and not a device.
How to logically integrate a child into the world whose dryad mother obviously can't present herself anywhere, for an upcoming story in my Magic of the Wood series. After random digging here and there through various legal resources, the answer for that one came from Adam Sandler's "Big Daddy" LOL
Legal requirements for who can fill out death certificates, when autopsies are required, etc., also for Magic of the Wood. When you have characters who are so long lived as to be considered almost immortal, it's something you have to be prepared to explain eventually in a long-running series of stories that spans decades. I've been putting pieces in place for that to work out since story 5 in the series a decade ago. I'll need to activate all those Easter eggs soon, because the first character I'll need to phase out of the legal world is 86 in the next story of the series.
Just a few off the top of my head. Throw that on top of looking up various articles of women's clothing, stuff I actually need to look up for real life, my nerdy personal pursuits, etc. and Google is very confused by me. My FBI tracker probably needs therapy.
I'm so naive and innocent that I had to look up what "Queen of Spades" was about.
Such a great topic. I've researched fruit farming, rivers in Austria, flight durations, how to blackmail people and so much more that I can't remember now. I love learning while writing.
Yeah, I'm definitely on a Google watch list somewhere.
Some of my recent research included where Australia's poppy industry is located, countless definitions and synonyms, shades of pink, the psychology of hotwifing, balance beam routines, San Francisco high school sporting uniforms, Chupa Chup wrappers, the Gin Palace decor in Melbourne, the toiletries at The Westin, claw-foot baths, genocide in Rwanda, The Casbah in Algiers, the Opium Wars, Australia's nursing commitment during the First World War, prostitution in the late eighteen hundreds, and California condom laws in the porn industry.
That and a shitload of Halsey videos on Youtube. But that's just for me...
My latest story is a racy little piece about what happens when someone cute from work invites you over to watch Netflix and Chill. I googled Cuckold and BDSM before I realised that both interested both my wife and myself.
Google Street view is the best thing ever though
Great question! For my story The Billionaire's Deal I looked up different yachts and private planes along with Caribbean locations. For another story set in the 1920s including fashion, music, dances, instruments of that time, and Prohibition Chicago (this story is still WIP), for another WIP about a magician, I looked up magic tricks and bondage, and the Red Light District of Amsterdam. Also another WIP about a brave woman taking revenge upon Vlad the Impaler killing of her husband, I researched Vlad. I've watched multiple documentaries on Vlad and the myths surrounding him.
Now, I want to finish all these WIPs.
I think the story I needed the most obscure research for was The Sidewinder Caper... delving into the real-life crimes of the House of Saud.
Oh God, where do I start...
Here's some recent ones...
Using Google Maps to get the route to an obscure naturist beach in the Cote d'Azur (the name of which I forgot after twenty years) That involved looking a hell of lot of naturist websites, I learned a lot.
Was having sex on said beach illegal?
Did the decor of a certain club libertin in Paris match my recollection?
Checking that the word 'Putain' could be used in a certain context
How to spell certain yoga postures.
What did women wear at the turn of the millennium in Paris...
What was the name of the box pattern on one very memorable dress.
What was the actual name of the statue on my daily walk home from work.
The list is endless.
Not necessarily for this site, but I've had to google things that mentioning would probably get me banned. Though, I did (for this site) have to look up the longest a penis could be before getting an erection could cause blood flow problems. That story ended up getting scrapped.
I've also spent a lot of time looking up sex laws. I had this idea where violating an absurd sex law ends up getting brought to trial, and on the stand the witness/perpetrator describes the acts, in detail. I got into a weird dive about it where I looked into any prosecutions on them, and if I could find transcripts of the trial if there were. That's still WIP so don't steal the idea.
I had a lot of trouble finding one that was 'equal opportunity' absurd, a lot target only one party.
I also researched new-age medicine and sex stuff, to see if what I intended to write as a mockery of new age medicine already existed. Ultimately, my best ideas weren't even close to how ridiculous some of that stuff is.
Not particularly original, but have had a lot of fun lately researching restraint toys.
Tree fetish
The tree scene in evil dead
How to ski
Brownstones
Christmas porn
Catapults
Surfing
The history of pink flamingos
Wacky waving inflatable tube man commercial
Among many others
I google spellings of word more than 8 letter long.
Places near me if i have to visit i like to research parking places.
porn
*Edited by moderator - no banned topics please*
Nautical items as i`m ex military,and Merchant Marine.
medical items and cures too many to post.
Antiques.
Stock market prices.
plus what ever gets my attention that day.
Research for a story can be as enjoyable, and often less frustrating, that writing the story. One of the more unusual items I've searched out is spring wildflowers native to the Burren in Ireland. I have an unfinished Gothic story set there.
"It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.” Raymond Chandler
The Amazon River, and surrounding jungle and rainforest. The exotic and dangerous creatures that live there, especially large, long, wriggling ones. Anacondas, boas, electric eels, giant worms.
