Details, S.M. Stirling — How Do You Do It?

[RealityBYTES]

S.M. Stirling, et al.:

One thing that has always impressed me about the Draka novels — and especially the trilogy omnibus — is the attention you pay to details.

From architecture to foodstuffs to clothing to environments to battle scenes, your descriptions really make me feel like I'm there, wearing those clothes or that I'm eating that food. How do you do it? Have you taken classes and/or experienced some of what you describe personally, so as to better impart it to readers in your novels?

That attention to detail is one of the major things — including the ending — of the Draka trilogy that really sticks with me. I do some non-professional writing on the side, and one of the things I strive to do is to give my readers (heh, what few there might be) a similar, albeit paler, experience. You, S.M. Stirling, are one of the few authors I've read whose attention to detail surpasses what's expected and reaches into the above-and-beyond realm.

So, how do you do it? It's gotta be homework, all right, but what sort of homework? Classes? Historical research? Knowing a world-renowned chef and/or a clothing designer?

RealityBYTES

 

[joatsimeon@aol.com]

So, how do you do it? It's gotta be homework, all right, but what sort of homework? Classes? Historical research? Knowing a world-renowned chef and/or a clothing designer?

RealityBYTES

-- what most people consider research is what I do for fun when I'm not reading or writing fiction. I'm sitting here right now surrounded by 8000 volumes of nonfiction and (having just done my taxes) I can say that I spend $6-$8K a year on more. The big problem is not putting too much of it in.

 

[Jesse]

-- what most people consider research is what I do for fun when I'm not reading or writing fiction. I'm sitting here right now surrounded by 8000 volumes of nonfiction and (having just done my taxes) I can say that I spend $6-$8K a year on more. The big problem is not putting too much of it in.

If you or any other fellow bibliophiles on this site are looking for a way to organize your book collection, I highly recommend librarything, it's got a nice tagging system which helps you find all your books in a particular subject, and it's web-based so you can let other people browse your collection (or keep it private if you prefer), look at who shares the most books with you and browse their collection, etc. I have a little over 1700 books in my apartment so it's been very helpful--you can see my collection here (and here is a link to all the books I have that I tagged alternate history, although it's not all that many at the moment...this guy has the most of anyone on the system right now, with 66).

 

[Adam]

-- what most people consider research is what I do for fun when I'm not reading or writing fiction. I'm sitting here right now surrounded by 8000 volumes of nonfiction and (having just done my taxes) I can say that I spend $6-$8K a year on more. The big problem is not putting too much of it in.

Holy smokes... I wish I got that amount of books.

 

[RealityBYTES]

S.M. Stirling:

Eight thousand volumes?! *jaw hits floor* Ye gods! Hmm. I imagine the topics are pretty wide-ranging, then? Who are some of the authors? Jared Diamond is among my favorites, along with Dan Simmons, James P. Hogan, Steven Pressfield, Eric L. Harry and more too numerous to mention here.

RealityBYTES

 

[NapoleonXIV]

-- what most people consider research is what I do for fun when I'm not reading or writing fiction. I'm sitting here right now surrounded by 8000 volumes of nonfiction and (having just done my taxes) I can say that I spend $6-$8K a year on more. The big problem is not putting too much of it in.

Now that's a proper attitude to research, and the payoff is in the bold, when you have to restrain youself from putting in too _much_ supporting detail.

I remember as a real estate agent having a really hard time finding a house with enough room for the mere 4000 books one college professor had. Where do you PUT them all?

 

[joatsimeon@aol.com]

I remember as a real estate agent having a really hard time finding a house with enough room for the mere 4000 books one college professor had. Where do you PUT them all?

-- well, on the original plans for this house, my office was a 2-car garage. And I still have boxes in the storage closet that I've been meaning to unpack for 6 years now.

 

[Akiyama]

-- what most people consider research is what I do for fun when I'm not reading or writing fiction. I'm sitting here right now surrounded by 8000 volumes of nonfiction and (having just done my taxes) I can say that I spend $6-$8K a year on more. The big problem is not putting too much of it in.

So reading a book a day it would take you 22 years to read them all . . . and that's just the nonfiction! When do you find time to write?!

I'm just guessing, but are you one of those people who buys a lot more books than they read?

And can you recommend me a good book on how European culture was just the right kind of culture for getting an industrial revolution?

 

[joatsimeon@aol.com]

So reading a book a day it would take you 22 years to read them all . . . and that's just the nonfiction! When do you find time to write?!

I'm just guessing, but are you one of those people who buys a lot more books than they read?

-- nope. I'm a speed-reader; I can do a novel in a couple of hours, or something like vol. I of Strachan's THE FIRST WORLD WAR in about six or seven. I don't think I have more than a couple of books I haven't read, if you don't count publishers sending me fiction freebies.

And I have several hundred in ebook format, of course. I managed to get a fair number of obscure Mundy and Sabatini novels that way.

 

[Diamond]

You know, I never understood speed-readers. Do you actually absorb anything when you speed-read a book? Do you get any satisfaction from pondering a turn of phrase? I for one like to take my time, occasionally going back a page or three to re-read something.

Does anything 'stick' after you've speed-read something, or does it just become something you vaguely recall reading at one point? I don't ask this to be rude; my personal experience with speed-readers, however, is that it was learned as a 'cheat' to enable them to plow through college texts or the like, and that, if you want to have a discussion with them about the book even a month or two later, they're lucky to remember anything more than a title and general outline.

 

[Nicksplace27]

You know, I never understood speed-readers. Do you actually absorb anything when you speed-read a book? Do you get any satisfaction from pondering a turn of phrase? I for one like to take my time, occasionally going back a page or three to re-read something.

Does anything 'stick' after you've speed-read something, or does it just become something you vaguely recall reading at one point? I don't ask this to be rude; my personal experience with speed-readers, however, is that it was learned as a 'cheat' to enable them to plow through college texts or the like, and that, if you want to have a discussion with them about the book even a month or two later, they're lucky to remember anything more than a title and general outline.

I'm an avid-speed reader, and the key to it is to read the siad book more than once. I'll read a 400-page book in 7-8 hours non-stop, but in several days I will have read it several times. This allows me to get all of the book and go back a get the little details later. I know it sounds kinda wierd, but it works for me.

 

[Adam]

I'm an avid-speed reader, and the key to it is to read the siad book more than once. I'll read a 400-page book in 7-8 hours non-stop, but in several days I will have read it several times. This allows me to get all of the book and go back a get the little details later. I know it sounds kinda wierd, but it works for me.

Works for me on certain books, most of them no.

 

[wkwillis]

I'm a security guard. I read a lot more than most people. Helps that I live in the Bay area and have eight local library cards, and I use the Stanford and Berkeley and USGS library a lot.
You'd be surprised how much you can read if you don't have a real job.

 

[Susano]

Im not a speed reader by choice., I simply hve a very high natural reading speed. Always has been so. In classes Im usually first to finish a text by a large margin. *shrugs* Though, hjudging form our AIM conversations, thats nothing compared to Faeelin...

I dont reread a just finished book again, as Nickplace said. No use in that. I think I simpl read books like everybody else, just at a higher speed. It IS a waste, of course, as I draw enjyoment from, reading itself, but theres not much I can do about it except maybe having "artifical pauses", and those I detest. As for your question, though, Diamond, yes, everthing does stick. Again judging by classes, I also seem to have, if I may say so myself , an above-averge text comprehension. Of course, those are factual texts, but stories do stick, too.

However, that only works for "normal reading". The problem is with learning, when facts are supposed to be saved long-term. I mean even so, facts are emmorised longterm, as said, things do sink in. But a problem that I have in general (I atcualyl couldnt say if it is to speed reading or nt) is that often Id know a fatc, but not its source, or if its a story, Id know a certain plot, but not its details. Though, as this is also so with information gathered by other media then just text, that probably is a general problem of me. For leaning, in any case, readings not enough for me. Others might just di by underlining critical passages (even though my experienc ei smost people really, really suck in efficently doing so anyways), but I usually write out _very_ short summaries of text passages, and maybe even summarise the summries further. That does help, though... but as said, for me reading (which is always "speed reading" for me) alone would ne ver be enough to properly learn.

 

[Prunesquallor]

At the last count I've something like 18,000 books- and a lot of them will never be finished. For instance, when I start a novel and it turns out that the hero comes from an old family and is serving in a space navy and has trouble with people because of family feuds, then unless it's Bujold or something at that level , off it goes to the shelves. Or if it's a thriller and the hero has troubles with women, authority, drink, and a murky past with a background in special services or what have you, it's got to be pretty good for me to persevere. There are whole genres when I've read a chapter or two before realising that I've tried this one before. Anything to do with medieval monks/nuns involved in detection or stories where the hero is on the run from some shadowy organisation without knowing why for instance. Much non fiction is of interest only in places. Exceptions include those where the literary style is good enough (eg, THE ROMAN REVOLUTION, THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA) to make the book worth reading for that alone even discounting the interest of the subject matter.

But to get back to the alleged thread, detail in S M Stirling. Yes, it's very well done and I enjoy his books, but there have been times when I wished that he'd spend less time telling us about the rate of fire of a Holbar and devoted more to details of his plots. The sudden appearance of a previously unmentioned former Stasi agent in the Nantucket series is one example.

 

[Ian the Admin]

I suspect I read a lot less than many members of this board (I definitely have a smaller book collection, only a few hundred nonfiction books. Don't have too much reading time (work at tech startup + social life + other hobbies like, for example, running this site). So I focus a lot of effort on making sure that if I read a book, it's one of the best if not the best books available on a subject. I figure if I'm going to spend 10 hours reading a book, I might as well spend an hour or two making sure those 10 hours will be wisely spent. So I spend a lot of time reading reviews, making use of the Amazon recommendations system, letting books set on my very long Amazon wishlist for a while before actually buying them, etc. I get a fairly high portion of academic books which require a strong social science background to understand, and it's no small effort to find the "right" books in fields that I am obviously not a specialist in.

Sometimes this means pain-in-the-ass searches. Currently I'm reading "A Savage War of Peace", on the French war in Algeria. It's way out of print, although a paperback version is apparently coming out late this year due to demand inspired by Current Events. Used copies had practically dried up because it went on some general's recommended reading list for officers in Iraq. Took me a fair bit of effort to find a copy for less than 100 dollars.

 

[Ian the Admin]

I'm an avid-speed reader, and the key to it is to read the siad book more than once. I'll read a 400-page book in 7-8 hours non-stop, but in several days I will have read it several times.

Peoples' definitions of "speed read" must vary. To me, speed reading is "scanning" a book very quickly, deliberately too fast to absorb most of the content, but identifying key passages and bits of information to focus on in more detail. I can read every word on a page in 5-10 seconds, but I'll retain very little of it.

My "natural" reading speed, at which I absorb all the information, is proportional to the difficulty of the material (and also of course to number of words on the page - some nonfiction books have considerably more than novels). My novel pace is very close to 60 pages per hour. For well-written, fairly popularized nonfiction (e.g. Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink"), 40-60 pages per minute. For nonfiction packed with ideas that I have to think about (e.g. "Guns, Germs, and Steel"), 20-30 pages per minute depending on just how packed with ideas.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Careful which paperback edition you get of A SAVAGE WAR OF PEACE- one was abridged. I always enjoyed the story of the French paratroop commander, Bigeard, who used to outdo Patton by parachuting in to inspect units, hand raised in salute as he hit the ground. Unfortunately, on one occasion they got the map references confused and he ended up in shark infested waters and had to be rescued by his staff. I always imagined the ageing general in the middle, as the junior officers swim around on the outside making splashing noises to scare off any marauder.

 

[Tetsu]

Peoples' definitions of "speed read" must vary. To me, speed reading is "scanning" a book very quickly, deliberately too fast to absorb most of the content, but identifying key passages and bits of information to focus on in more detail. I can read every word on a page in 5-10 seconds, but I'll retain very little of it.

My "natural" reading speed, at which I absorb all the information, is proportional to the difficulty of the material (and also of course to number of words on the page - some nonfiction books have considerably more than novels). My novel pace is very close to 60 pages per hour. For well-written, fairly popularized nonfiction (e.g. Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink"), 40-60 pages per minute. For nonfiction packed with ideas that I have to think about (e.g. "Guns, Germs, and Steel"), 20-30 pages per minute depending on just how packed with ideas.

A page every two seconds....?

 

[Ian the Admin]

Careful which paperback edition you get of A SAVAGE WAR OF PEACE- one was abridged.

I have a hardcover, actually. The paperback version due out October 2006 is listed as 600 pages, so I doubt it's abridged.