How Do You Research For Your TLs?

What sort of effort do you folks put into researching your TLs? Is it mostly basing it off of your current knowledge of history and using quick sources such as Wikipedia for the rest or do you engage in much more extensive reading of relevant literature as if you were working on a research project or a paper?
 
Good question...

It's fairly random in my case. Though I tend to usually hamster up some bilbiography on a subject if I think online sources are deficient on the topic I'm trying to research.
 
Mostly I'll use Wikipedia, but sometimes I'll look deeper into a subject if I get interested in it (usually google books or JSTOR).
 
Very carefully :p

Usually I use the databases my school makes available to us for free, so it's not really a problem to do good academic research. Sometimes I'll get a couple books out from the library, or hunt up some statistics on Google. Oh yeah, and I use Google Maps to get a good idea of the terrain of a region if I'm writing an update focused around war strategy.
 
It depends. Since most of my TLs are based on things I already know a fair amount about and are written as if they were published non-fiction or encyclopedia entries from that TL, I start there and in my own library.

After that I check Wikipedia and other online sources as I am writing (not so much to check my TLs for accuracy but to add details to make the TLs sound more plausible).

I have also on occasion taken advice from sympathetic posters on this board.

Lastly, I compare what I am writing with other published works of history, conterfactual history, or AH fiction to make sure I am writing within a general range of accepted mass-market AH plausbility and to mimic a particular style I want.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Thoroughly....

I use my own library, material available from other libraries, and various on-line sources - google books is very helpful.

I also use, as was suggested above, Google maps to try and get the geography correct.

My basic foundation is that if you're going to try and do something like this semi-seriously, you owe it to the readers and the "real" people who end up showing up in whatever you are writing to take it seriously.

Otherwise, just stick to the equivalent of Middle Earth or Far, Far Away and make it up as you go along.;)

Or make the point of departure so far back that the story being told does not involve individuals and organizations from actual history behaving a-historically.

Don't make the RCMP mass murderers who make the SS look like the Girl Scouts, for example - unless you can explain why, convincingly.:mad:

It is a lot easier and tends not to cause the problems with suspension of belief that things like, oh, a successful ZEELOWE do, from those who have some knowledge to base their reactions upon...

Best,
 

Thande

Donor
I tend to wiki-walk from page to page for a while collecting interesting facts and then check more reliable sources to make sure they are facts :p One of the most useful things I do to keep an overview of a region/era in mind is to use atlases of world history such as the Times and DK ones.
 
More seriously, I think that the most important thing is synthesis. It's often difficult to get the specific information you want. Sometimes it simply does not exist. Sometime's its so peripheral that the information is sketchy. So you cast widely, sort around, google, library wiki multiple sources, compare, synthesise, extrapolate. Ultimately, doing a timeline amounts to making guesses of all sorts based on incomplete information.
 
I use my own library, material available from other libraries, and various on-line sources - google books is very helpful.

I also use, as was suggested above, Google maps to try and get the geography correct.

My basic foundation is that if you're going to try and do something like this semi-seriously, you owe it to the readers and the "real" people who end up showing up in whatever you are writing to take it seriously.

Otherwise, just stick to the equivalent of Middle Earth or Far, Far Away and make it up as you go along.;)

Or make the point of departure so far back that the story being told does not involve individuals and organizations from actual history behaving a-historically.

Don't make the RCMP mass murderers who make the SS look like the Girl Scouts, for example - unless you can explain why, convincingly.:mad:

It is a lot easier and tends not to cause the problems with suspension of belief that things like, oh, a successful ZEELOWE do, from those who have some knowledge to base their reactions upon...

Best,

Am I missing something on Google Books? All I seem to find are previews and links for where to purchase them. Can you get the books online as part of subscription for Google Play?
 
Am I missing something on Google Books? All I seem to find are previews and links for where to purchase them. Can you get the books online as part of subscription for Google Play?

IIRC, the earlier the book is, the more chance there is that it would be entirely free (in principle, all the stuff before circa 1920 should be free, but in practice this is not always followed). This is helpful if you're searching for contemporary sources on some event from the 18th or 19th century.
Other than that, it seems to depend on the country and/or the IP. I sometimes could see a book from one computer but not the other.

That said, I've never really been in a position of having to research for a TL, having written pretty much no TLs so far (and the snippets I did write bordered on crack, and didn't need much research).
 

TFSmith121

Banned
If the work is out of copyright, or an official government

Am I missing something on Google Books? All I seem to find are previews and links for where to purchase them. Can you get the books online as part of subscription for Google Play?

If the work is out of copyright or an official record, full scanned versions are available through Google books. As said, before 1920 or so, generally, is available.

I've used GBM sources a lot for BROS, including for all my British Empire OOBs.

Best,
 
Books, books and more books

I use my extensive collection of book, accumulated over nearly 30 years of study and interest as a starting point. I also have some very large collections of digital books acquired from various sources. Wikipedia is only ever a staring point, you would be surprised what you can dig up with some diligent searching...
 
Top